Fundraiser Painting

Taking a break from Zombie dolls to do this post….

 I was honored to be asked to paint during the Dia de los Muertos Celebration, a fundraiser for our local historical cemetery.  I frequently sketch and paint at the Lakeview Cemetery, so I was more than happy to donate my time and a painting for a good cause. 

The morning of the event, John and I went out Fire Island so I could take a sunrise photo of the lighthouse.


I took several photos and decided on this one.  The next step was to sketch several thumbnails, cropping the photo to determine the best view to paint. 


After I picked my favorite, I sketched the image on the pastelbord so that once I set up at the event, all I had to do was to start painting.


And here is the painting before it went home to it’s new owner:

Zombie doll from Sktchy

Ok. So by now you are all wondering how this got started.  I wanted to work on a project for Halloween. Last year, I took an internet workshop with Leslie Wood.  I saw her Little Deads in Art Journaling magazine and drooled.  I took the class, and Leslie encouraged us to create our own characters.  I saw a few dolls people posted on Sktchy and decided that spoofing dolls would be the perfect theme.  This was the first doll I finished.  I still have 5 pages to do.

The doll theme has me attic diving for my daughters old dolls.  In the process of doing this, I am reorganizing her doll stuff and giving them some TLC.  In the days to come, some of her dolls are being zombied.

The book is the 16 page Teesha Moore style that I had started several years ago with the intent of trying her collage technique.  Instead, I used it for this project.  I originally used watercolor, then took the book apart and added a little acrylic splashed over it for interest.  The orange and violet (Daniel Smith moonglow) are the background.  Probably some DS indigo, as well.  Leslie’s layering technique has repurposed many of my pages that I thought weren’t working.  I used Leslie’s technique over collage and I did a bunch of portraits in November last year with this technique.  I also use this technique in my regular sketchbooks to pre-prep pages before I go out and sketch.   Then I do sketches over the acrylic. Fun!

Here is today’s zombie doll.  This doll was posted on Sktchy and I used the photo as inspiration.

Here is the link to Sktchy and the doll, you have to swipe my image to see the original:

http://sktchy.com/wVeUUD

Below is a link to Part 1 of Teesha’s You Tube on how to make the journal.  There are two parts so make sure you watch both!

Here is the Little Dead class for the layering technique:

https://coursecraft.net/c/dayoflittledeads/splash

Zombie dolls

What do I do for fun?

Lately, I have been working in this Teesha Moore style sketchbook.  I started with a 22×30 sheet of watercolor paper and I actually painted it several years ago with watercolor on both sides.  I had used Halloween kitchen towels as my inspiration, then cut the sheet up for the Teesha Style journal.  It sat in my drawer for a few years until I thought of doing zombie dolls.  To smoosh the watercolor a bit, I went over the pages with acrylic, then I added my dolls.  As you can see, this is 3 page spread. 

These three zombie dolls are naughty siblings.  They make Pugsley and Wednesday Addams seem like saints.

The orange is cadmium orange watercolor.  It’s really bright, even when photographed.

Inktober Days 24 through 31

Here is the final week of Inktober 2017

For me, Inktober 2017 was not about being “popular” or creating works of art.  I believe that creating art, even in sketchbooks, is about finding myself, my voice, my style, and not following the herd.  I didn’t care if I got a lot of “likes” when I originally posted these on Sktchy.  It was about my own challenge of doing short timed sketches first thing in the morning, experimenting with colored ink instead of using watercolor or another media to add color, using a waterbrush to spread the ink to create values.  It was about practice and finding ways to work quicker when I am out sketching in public.  It was about perfecting and tweaking my ideas of interpreting the prompts and finding ways of manipulating the media.  To not get hung up on being perfect, to create more art and less representation.  

Most of the sketches were done in my morning pages in a box that I draw on the page and reserve for sketches.  This is why some have a color “frame” around them.

Enjoy these final Inktober 2017 sketches.







Recent sketches out and about

This past Wednesday I went out with my sketch club to sketch at the local bowling alley.


Yesterday, I went into the city to sketch with the NYC Urban Sketchers.  We were sketching several alleged haunted houses.  The first one is a Colonial style home that was once a speakeasy. It is the home of the Gay Street Phantom.


Haunted house #2 was a fail because itnwas behind scaffolding so some of us sketched the historical home of Emma Lazarus.  You know, she wrote the poem on the plaque on the base of the Statue of Liberty:

The New Colossus

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame, 

With conquering limbs astride from land to land; 

Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand 

A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame 

Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name 

Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand 

Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command 

The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame. 

“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she 

With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor, 

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, 

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. 

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, 

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” 

So there is your history lesson for the day….


It was getting pretty chilly and by midday, most of us were getting cold.  We went to Washington Square for lunch.  I sketched the church on the left  because I was too cold to eat.


The page on the right was our final stop on the tour de Haunted houses.  This Haunted Fire House in NYC is where a fireman hung himself because he caught his wife cheating on him.  Firemen used to see him his ghost, oh wait, excuse me, he was an “apparition American.” Anderson Cooper lives here now. Which probably explains the white hair.  John says that Anderson Cooper is probably the ghost.

NYC Urban Sketching at the Dyckman Farmhouse

Today I went into NYC to sketch with the NYC chapter of Urban Sketchers.  Today’s sketch outing was a joint venture with the Urban Sketchers of Indonesia to commemorate the Treaty of Breda, where the Dutch traded Manhattan to the English for a monopoly on nutmeg.  We are trading sketches with the Indonesians and this is the first time two Urban Sketcher chapters sketched jointly. We sketched at the Dyckman Farmhouse on Broadway in the Bronx.  Yes, there is a farmhouse in Manhattan.