When I first started painting 20 years ago, I preferred to paint slowly and take hours to create a finished painting. Now I get a kick out of doing quick sketches, and especially get a high when there is time pressure. This sketch of the Seattle waterfront was done while we were waiting for our order at the Sound View Cafe in Pike’s Place Market. The orange cranes and crates in the background are loading container ships. 
The design of small living spaces — mobile homes, RV’s — is a real art. Bedrooms on Amtrak are cozy and have a couch, chair, closet and storage spaces, sink, toilet and even a little shower. At night they convert to upper and lower beds. They are quite comfortable, the food in the dining car is good, and the views from the observation car are often spectacular. Here are sketches facing each side.
Our first destination on our Amtrak tour of the U.S. was Chicago. We went on the Architecture River Cruise, which is terrific. Chicago is rightly proud of the distinctive architecture of its skyscrapers which line the three branches of the Chicago River. In the last decade the river has become so clean that kayakers paddle nimbly among the big tour boats.
I’m so grateful to modern medicine and my double knee replacement two years ago which, after nine years of limited activity, are allowing me to indulge my travel bug. Bruce and I are just starting a 12-day train trip around the United States, something we’ve wanted to do for a long time. We’ll be taking overnight sleeper trains from Boston > Chicago, Chicago > Seattle, Seattle > Los Angeles, and Los Angeles > Chicago, spending six nights in the train and two nights in each city before returning home. I look forward to sketching and sharing with you.
In over 600 cities last weekend people marched to protest harsh treatment of immigrants and separating children from their parents in different detention centers. In Boston, despite sweltering heat, thousands turned out. I finally found a shady tree in the Boston Common to apply paint to my sketch.
One sign quoted Matthew 25:40 “Whatsoever you do to the least of these you do unto me.” Did you know (see map here) that there are juvenile detention centers in Connecticut and New York, and adult detention centers in Boston and all over New England?
As every advertiser, decorator and designer knows, we have emotional responses to colors.
If you are interested, here are the basics. The color wheel is made up of three primary colors — red, yellow and blue — and three secondary colors — orange (red + yellow), purple (red + blue) and green (blue + yellow). Yellow, red and orange are the “warm colors,” reminding us of fire. Blue (ice), green and purple are the “cool colors.”
Using contiguous colors together (green trees + blue lake and sky) produces a peaceful feeling. Combining opposite colors (blue/orange, red/green, yellow/purple) creates a vibration of excitement. A woman in an extroverted mood might accent her green blouse with a red scarf. When she was feeling quieter, she might dress in neutrals (gray, black, brown) or contiguous colors.
The last two paintings which I posted, “Clementines” and “View of New York City,” used the blue/orange combination to produce interest.
This is a view from the “Top of the Rock”, Rockefeller Center. Looking north toward Central Park, this unfinished skyscraper caught my attention.
Our daughter Kate, son-in-law David and 12-year-old granddaughter Lila joined us in New York last week to meet baby Maggie and enjoy the sights. What a city!
I’m working on a view of New York City for Monday’s post, so in the meantime here’s a painting from awhile ago of one of my favorite fruits. With gratitude to our dear late friend Ned Schofield for his photo that inspired the painting.
Tomorrow is my birthday. When I took my first watercolor class at age 49, never having done any art before that, I never dreamt of all the blessings it would bring, including making paintings and sketches to share with you.
Our two granddaughters met yesterday when our daughter Kate and her husband and daughter joined us in Brooklyn. Here is a photo of 12-year-old Lila meeting two-month-old Maggie for the first time!
And here is a drawing of a cafe.
Bruce and I took the subway to Greenwich Village yesterday and spent a couple of hours walking around, sitting on benches and in cafes. I did these sketches on a bench in front of a Portuguese coffee seller and in a playground. The figures are pretty rough, but they had no interest in standing still while I sketched them! After drawing on location, the paint was applied in a cafe and on the return subway ride. A fun way to really tune in to you’re seeing!
What I love about watercolor is the very thing that drives some people nuts: the difficulty of controlling it once wet paint touches wet paper. It’s much easier to control in the areas where the paper was dry. Often paintings are a combination of both. See if you can pick out the parts of this painting where wet paint touched wet paper, and the parts where dry paper left clean edges.
In Cleveland before my Oberlin College Reunion this weekend, a bunch of us went to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. I wasn’t expecting much, but it was really fun. A comprehensive look at the roots and branches of rock, lots of great music and videos, not to mention costumes, guitars and gift shop souvenirs. Here’s what it looks from the front, with 3-D letters that kids had fun climbing on. Worth a visit!
Aren’t cafes the best? A place to buy some coffee and a croissant and sit down with your laptop and relax. Here’s a sketch I did at one of my favorite cafes. Since this customer wasn’t going to pose for me, I snapped a photo of her and did the sketch from my photo. There’s no need for people to be more than simple shapes.
I read this quote recently and thought it might make a nice small painting.
I love the poem below so I superimposed it on a painting.
I am sending you a painting every Monday and Friday, and sometimes Wednesday, at 5 p.m. I post it earlier on my blog at www.lynnholbein.com, which is a rolling blog starting with the recent postings and going back 1 1/2 years. At 5:00 on M, W and F, WordPress automatically checks my blog and sees if there is anything new, and if so, it’s converted to an email and sent to you. The magic of technology!
The dogwood trees are so beautiful at this time of year. I tried to paint this in a somewhat Asian style, and took liberties with the pinks and blues.
Yesterday was the Walk for Hunger, and it was lovely to walk along the Charles River and see the trees budding and hear the migrating birds singing. Thanks to everyone who enabled me to surpass my $5,000 goal! You have been so generous to me during my 38 years of walking. If you haven’t had a chance and would like to donate online, for my personal Walk page click here. I’ll mail you this year’s sketch, which I posted two weeks ago; here’s my “thank you sketch” from last year.
The food pantries and soup kitchens funded by the Walk are likely to come under increased stress in coming years. The House version of the Farm Bill now before Congress would tighten restrictions to qualify for food stamps. If passed, this would mean millions more adults and children could go hungry.
My friend Linda and I went out to dinner last week. While we waited for dessert I used my portable watercolor kit (see previous post) to do this sketch. One fun thing about sketching is that it’s a conversation starter; we ended up having great conversations with two of the servers.
It’s fun to have a kit with watercolor supplies sitting by the front door, ready to grab as you go. If you find yourself in a waiting room or a coffee shop, you’re all set to make a quick sketch.
Here’s what’s in mine, both in and out of the bag. Each underlined word is a link to that item on Amazon. These supplies are surprisingly affordable, especially considering that watercolor paint, when rewetted, is good for years — the total cost of this kit is $47 plus $40 for the optional items.
Watercolor Palette with 24 colors and three waterbrushes. (Just $19!) (Video: how to use a waterbrush.) Field sketchbook. Sharpie. Bag. Ordinary #2 pencil. Napkin. Optional four items top left: Kneaded eraser. Travel brush. Collapsible cup. Pencil Sharpener.
A few lines are all you need to make a sketch which turns out to be universal of mothers and their infants. And what is more appealing than the way newborns scrunch themselves up when they sleep?
As we eagerly await the birth of our grandchild, I’ve been thinking about the overused word “love.” While it’s central to all the world’s religions, and found in nearly every pop song, what does it really mean? I like this quote from Sharon Salzburg, “When we really examine kindness, we find it is a deep and abiding understanding of how connected we all are.”
You’d never know that spring is coming if you looked outside to see snow falling in Boston right now. But the bunnies who are appearing in the yards in our neighborhood seem to be confident that spring is on the way.
Meanwhile, Bruce and I are on pins and needles because our son Andrew’s wife Eva is 9 months pregnant with baby Maggie. We jump every time the phone rings, and can’t wait to hop in our car and head to Brooklyn for our granddaughter’s birth day!
My daughter-in-law’s birthday was yesterday, so I painted a portrait of Christopher and Angela’s cat Katie Rae (which they adopted from a shelter) as a present. Although I finished it awhile ago, I couldn’t send it out until after her birthday.
After 20 years of watercolors, I decided to try my hand at acrylics, so I took a class. Acrylics look a lot like oils but are water-based. Advantages: you can keep changing and correcting and revising. Unlike oil, there are no fumes and no messy cleanup. Disadvantages: You use a lot more paint than watercolors do, they are less portable, and if you get them on something they can harden. And when you can keep changing things forever, how do you know you’re finished? For me, there is nothing to match the convenience, lightness and transparency of watercolors. Which is why I’m still in love with watercolors, adorable cats notwithstanding.
Last week I spent a week in San Francisco, visiting my friend Becky and my step-sister Elizabeth. What a beautiful city! I did this little sketch while sitting on the 9th floor observatory of the deYoung Museum. The museum is in Golden Gate Park, which is why the trees are in the foreground. I have a small Moleskine sketchbook which is “landscape format” (as opposed to “portrait format”) so it was perfect for this horizontal view.
Our suburban Boston neighborhood is blessed with many trees, including nine 60-80 foot tall white pines within ten feet of our house. On Friday, during the height of the Northeaster which hit the East coast, one of the trees uprooted and fell across our yard, snapping a telephone pole, blocking the street and cutting power to our neighborhood. Miraculously, it did not hit our house or our neighbors. On Saturday the tree men concluded that a second pine tree, about 150 years old, was unsafe, and that too was taken down. For a tree hugger like me, this is very sad, but we feel blessed that no people or houses were harmed.
Here is my watercolor of a stand of beautiful white pines.
For Christmas our daughter Kate surprised me with a book of the paintings I posted throughout 2017.
The book came out beautifully, with high quality 8 1/2″ x 11″ paper and excellent colors, and I am going to order a number of copies. Each page has one of my sketches plus the narrative from that day. If you are interested in buying one at cost, they are $36 plus $10 shipping. Please let me know (just click “reply” and it goes right to my inbox) by next Sunday, March 4, and I will place the order next Monday.
For fourteen years, I loved teaching art to adults. Eventually though it became a chore to think up new lessons every week. When I stopped teaching several years ago, it helped bring some of the joy back into the process of painting. Painting to share with you is the “sweet spot” which makes me happy. This image popped into my mind — the universal desire to enjoy our work and lives more.
“Connection” seems to be crucial in making us happy. Connecting to family and friends, to animals, to nature, to creativity, to our Higher Power. Nurturing connections takes time and effort, but we are repaid many times over. Here’s wishing you a mosaic of connections, big and small!
Today is my husband Bruce’s birthday. Yesterday was our youngest son Andrew’s birthday. In April we will celebrate a real Birth Day when Andrew’s baby is born.
If, like me, your birthday is not today, or even this month, let’s celebrate anyway. Happy unBirthday!
If you are really lucky, you have a local eatery which is a welcoming place to meet a friend and enjoy delicious food, coffee and conversation. One such special place is L’Aroma Cafe & Bakery in West Newton Square. Afkham, the proprietor who runs the cafe with his parents and son, greets everyone with a smile, often remembering your name and your favorite thing to order. It’s full of regulars, and new people too, who love the sense of community which is all too rare these days.
I am working on a sketch of last weekend’s Women’s March, which I will send you later this week.
A year ago this weekend, half a million of us were in D.C. — and three to four million around the world — at the Women’s March the day after the Inauguration. Today I’m headed down to Washington for a second march on Saturday, where we will meet in front of the Lincoln Memorial and march to the White House. Others will be marching in Boston and other cities. For those of us who are upset and worried about the path the Administration is taking, it feels important to stand up and be counted. Here’s my sketch from last year.
Trying to capture the human form is quite a challenge. The model at the Newton Watercolor Society’s Life Drawing Class last Saturday was beautiful. It’s astonishing that someone can stand absolutely still for 20 minutes at a time while a roomful of people are drawing and painting them. In this pose she was leaning against a stool. I tried to mostly paint the shadows, plus the dark shape of her hair.
What are your realistic goals for 2018? Consider these areas: health, family, friends, creativity, learning, spirituality, contributing to a better world. How can your goals be broken into achievable bite-sized pieces?
What are three good things that happened in your life in 2017?
And what are three things you accomplished this year that you are proud of?
Hope you are having a Christmas which is nourishing you, body and soul.
It was fun creating this last year on the Procreate app on my iPad.
A good thing to remember at this time of year, when we tend to get frantic with holiday errands.
Tall white pines grow right next to our house. Raccoons nest in these trees, and in the late summer evenings we sometimes see a mother raccoon leading her young ones down the tree trunks to look for food. Here they are waiting for her return.
As you may know, our daughter Kate’s memoir, Following the Red Bird: First Steps in a Life of Faith, (available here on Amazon) was published earlier this year. The book includes a chapter on Advent, and she quotes from Caryll Houselander who describes Advent as a “season of growth and expectation.” In Kate’s book, the red bird becomes a metaphor for how we can begin to listen for and respond to the ways that God is calling us in our lives. Here is my cardinal painting, with hopes that you have a blessed Advent season.
When we think of specific people or things we are grateful for each day, studies show, it makes us happier and healthier. There are some good gratitude apps and tools online to help stick to a daily practice.
Crazy is fun.
This is a foundational mantra for meditation. Thich Nhat Hanh said he practiced it even while sweeping and scrubbing dishes with ashes in his unheated monastery in Vietnam. I would welcome a daydream in such circumstances, but, hey, what do I know.
What a blessing to have older people in our lives to learn from and look up to! This week I’ve been in the DC area, and have visited my 87-year-old cousin Mary Cary and my 97-year-old godmother Aunt Penny. They are amazing role models of how to age while keeping your mind sharp and your body active, staying interested in and loving toward others, and keeping a resilient and optimistic attitude despite life’s challenges and losses.
We’ve had a warm and dry fall, so the turning leaves has been late this year. Finally we’re starting to get some of the color that New England autumns are famous for.
The simple shapes of fruit and vegetables and wonderful to draw and paint. The shadow which anchors them is always a challenge. In this one, I pre-wet the shadow shape before dropping in a little green muted with red.
After trying to meditate for years, I’ve discovered the apps “Calm” and “Headspace,” both of which keep me on track with lots of choices for guided meditations. Here’s a wonderful quote, with one of my paintings. Feel free to print it if it helps keep you on track.
Who doesn’t love an ice cream parlor in the summertime?
At a farmer’s market in Colorado, I bought these amazing radishes in a rainbow of colors.
Several people have recently asked how to easily find past paintings. All of the paintings I have sent since January are on the home page of my website www.lynnholbein.com. The blog scrolls from newest back to oldest (ten per page on nine pages), a total of about ninety paintings so far.
