Category: Sketches

Wishing you and yours a blessed holiday!

It’s really fun to sit and sketch. Since people are usually moving, snapping a photo to freeze them in one position helps. Drawing figures from the back avoids facial features. Once you’re happy with the figure, you can sketch the background with no time pressure.

Such a glory at this time of year! Slathered with butter and salt. Heaven.

Our 14-year-old granddaughter Lila is visiting from North Carolina. Yesterday we went kayaking on the Charles River, both taking sketchbooks and a little paintbox. We didn’t need take water, because we just dipped our brushes in the river. We floated next to each other and painted for awhile. Heaven!

Last Saturday, June 20th, was the summer solstice, the longest day of the year and the first day of summer. Enjoy!

Watching a raccoon amble across the front yard as it did yesterday, followed by a skunk a couple of hours later, is a good reminder that we are far from alone in our neighborhoods. Every morning before meditating in the front yard, I put out two little piles of birdseed, and the chipmunks keep me company. Who’s training who?

Yesterday I kayaked on the Charles River for the first time this year. It’s tricky to paint in a boat, a little tippy and the paint is bound to run. But fun. I put a little ink on top of the paint when I got home.

Faces are so interesting, aren’t they? We spend our lives looking at them, interpreting them, reacting to them. This drawing was inspired by a photo I found on Flickr. Fun to translate it from a photo to pencil, pen and ink.

We’re all spending a lot of time at home, and sketching is a fun thing to do. Try it! I draw first with pen or pencil, and then apply watercolors; you could use crayons, markers, whatever you have. Take the pressure off and don’t worry if it’s messy or the lines are wrong — so what? It’s just a piece of paper, not an SAT test. Here’s my sketch of our family room, and the real thing.

Last week I discovered Flickr as a source of photos to draw from. I started a new sketchbook, planning to fill it up with faces and people, using only black, white and gray from pencils, pens and waterbrushes. Fun and challenging!

I am grateful to those who generously donated to my (virtual this year) 40th Walk for Hunger, enabling me to raise over $8,000! Many of you have supported me for years, and this year, you helped me set a new record, making me the seventh highest Walker! Thank you!

Your donations will fill the shelves of the 400 food pantries and soup kitchens supported by the Walk, providing groceries for the 38% of Massachusetts residents who are now “food insecure” (up from 8% just two months ago). If you haven’t had a chance to donate and would like to, here is the link to my personal Walk page. Here’s my sketch, which the Walk is using as its logo.

When you see a sketch of people, does your mind start making up stories? Are these people friends? Younger or older? Sightseers? At home or overseas?

Now that we’re all spending a lot more time at home, it’s a good time to make our space as clean and appealing as possible.

My art table had been cluttered and messy for months, so I have been avoiding sitting to paint. This week I spent two hours cleaning and decluttering it, and even walking by it makes me happy.

Amazing how the world has changed in a single week, isn’t it?

This may go on for quite awhile, “the new normal.” So let’s think of ways to safeguard not just our physical, but also our mental health. Getting out in nature, especially now that spring is unfolding, is great for our outlook and the exercise is great for our health. It’s easy to maintain “social distance” from strangers, and even friends, while walking. Bruce and I are resolved to take a walk each day. Sometimes, for a change of pace, we’re going to drive to a nearby green space for our walk. Here’s a sketch I did a couple of years ago of one such place.

At this time of year, I get an itch to go someplace warm and exotic. But that’s not happening this year, so I have to rely on memories. Five years ago this month, our son Andrew and I spent ten days in Thailand, a truly amazing trip. Two highlights were close encounters with other species. The first was a ride on an elephant, sketched here. The second has to be seen to be believed.

There’s nothing more peaceful on a cold winter day that to sit cozy inside with a cup of tea and watch the birds coming to the feeder. These goldfinches will start to molt into their brilliant yellow outfits in a month or so.

P.S. Thanks to the many people who replied to my last post “Two Versions.” Opinion was pretty evenly divided between which version of the red onion was better.

Yesterday I went to the fourth Women’s March with my daughter Kate and granddaughter Lila. I attended the first two in Washington, the third in New York, and the fourth in Raleigh, N.C. Here’s my painting of the first Women’s March in January, 2017. Prints, to benefit 2020 voter registration in swing states, are available here.

One of the best views in Boston is from the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA). The entire side of the building facing the water is glass. You can see part downtown Boston (left) to the Tobin Bridge and Logan Airport (right). Last week it was fun to sit and sketch, and paint later at home.

At lunch at a ramen noodle restaurant yesterday, this young man didn’t want to miss a drop.

Wishing you and yours a holiday of love and connections.

Painting faces is intimidating, because it’s so easy to get “the most carefully studied 22-square inches in the universe” wrong. Since I took a portrait workshop in September, it has been easier. The Newton Watercolor Society hires models every other Friday morning, who sit for a series of short poses. This is my result today of one of the 15 minute poses. I see some mistakes, but believe me, 15 minutes goes by quickly.

In New York last weekend, we had delicious bowls of soup at a ramen noodle shop. It was fun to eat and sketch. When you compare the sketch with the photo, you can see I took a lot of liberties, especially with the signs and walls, which were mostly neutrals. I paint because I love color.

This weekend I visited my friend Jeff, the grandson of my mother’s best friend, who is 26 and a graduate student in New York studying how to assist in international humanitarian crises. Saturday was a beautiful fall day and we spent time in Central Park. I spent a wonderful half hour sketching the view across a pond.

“The most carefully studied 22 square inches in the universe,” is how the human face is described. Faces are intimidating to draw because we know them so well, and can detect the slightest distortion. But there are simple guides online to help you; here is one. The most surprising fact is that the eyes are at the halfway point between the crown of the head and the chin. Here’s my pencil sketch of a photograph I found on the internet. The placement of shadows shows that the light is coming from the right. It helps to have a good eraser!

In the last 20 years, swans have become year-round residents on the Charles River. 

A quick sketch, floating along and dipping my brush in the Charles River beside my boat.

We are lucky enough to spend time each summer beside lakes in Vermont and New Hampshire. Here’s a sketch (pencil, then watercolor in sketchbook) of my view of Caspian Lake, VT this weekend.

Yellowstone’s Old Faithful geyser is so named because it can be counted on to erupt every 90 minutes or so. We were lucky enough to see two such eruptions. On the July day when we were there, a crowd of perhaps 1,000 people watched from the nearby boardwalk. Below is my sketch, and click here to see my 30 second video of the second eruption we saw. The park ranger said it was an unusually dramatic one.

I did this sketch while we were eating lunch on the porch of a restaurant overlooking the panorama of the Grand Tetons and Jackson Lake. This Moleskine sketchbook is 5” by 8”, and when folded open it’s perfect for a view like this.

Not sure what to expect with that title?

Painters often do exercises like this, and the chickens are a fun twist. In watercolor, when an area of wet paint touches another wet area, the colors naturally mix together (which isn’t true with oil or acrylics). Keeping a chart like this helps to know how colors will look when they blend.

Hope you are having a good 4th of July weekend!

It’s the longest day of the year, and the first day of summer. Time to break out our sandals. Here’s loose sketch of my green Teva’s on our red and green rug.

Sketching on location rarely produces great art, but it’s a fun way to be in the moment and really tune into your surroundings. I have a small sketching kit so I can “grab and go.” I love cafes like L’Aroma in West Newton. Last week I visited a wonderful cafe/bakery called Flour and spent a lovely hour munching and sketching.

In the South End of Boston last week, I saw this half block community garden in the midst of an expensive gentrified neighborhood. There was a sign on the gate telling how neighbors could sign up for a plot. I took a quick photo on my phone, went into a coffee shop and sketched it.

We’re having some late snow here in New England, but now that daylight savings time has arrived spring can’t be far away.

After a snowstorm I did this crazy sketch through our bay window of our backyard and the back of our neighbors’ house. In watercolor, anything white (like snow) is the unpainted white of the paper.

Houseplants are so wonderful. They add oxygen and remove CO2 and pollution from the air. They are an oasis of green on the grayest indoor days. This one, on a shelf in front of our window, has an interesting thread hanging down which made a fun sketch.

As I’ve tried to lose a couple of pounds in the New Year (using an excellent online program called “Noom”), I’ve been thinking of this quote.

In Brooklyn last weekend we got to visit the home of our daughter Kate’s friend Elsie. A fun place to sketch.

Our daughter, Kate, and her daughter, Lila, came up to Brooklyn from Chapel Hill. Happiness is seeing our two granddaughters together, Lila holding her cousin Maggie.

We visited family in Brooklyn last weekend. Here is a sketch in our son and daughter-in-law’s apartment. Can you make spot the mistake I made in the chair legs?

And here is our nine-month-old granddaughter Maggie, who, as you can see, is already a Patriots fan.

Given all our New Year’s resolutions to exercise more, this seems a timely quote. I heard it for the first time last week, then dug out an old sketch I made years ago on a trip to Florida to go with it.

Sunday will be the 10th anniversary of my mother’s death. A few years before she died, when she was suffering from dementia, I took the photo on which this drawing is based. If you look closely you can see that the expression in her eyes is both “with it” and a bit “out of it.”

I owe artist Susan Avishai a debt of gratitude for teaching me this technique. Take a photo, enlarge it, put it on a light box, cover it with drawing paper. Then trace the photo using pencil, pen, markers, and paint.