Watercolors by Lynn Holbein

Scenes like this have always fascinated me. Maybe it’s the mixture of machines and men, maybe it’s a day-glo vests. This was hard to sketch on location, so I snapped a photo and did the sketch when I got home. 

Last Saturday at the Public Garden I sat near a beautiful copper beech tree. Looking through my sketchbook there was a page I had previously painted yellow and orange. Superimposing this sketch of the tree, I used the thick and thin end of the brush pen for the trunk and foliage.

On Saturday I had the most heavenly afternoon on the Boston Common sketching. It was a glorious day. An Asian couple, complete with wedding party, were getting married; a Muslim family were picnicking; kids were playing frisbee. A wonderful scene.

My #1 sadness about the art I see is that so often artists are intimidated about including people, and often paintings are rich in architecture and other features but totally depopulated. Sketching people, as long as you’re not aiming for a portrait, is not hard. Note here the squiggles and dots of color which somehow say enough.

Swans began populating the Charles River near our house about a dozen years ago. This one kindly posed for me as I sat on a bench next to the river last weekend.

A number of people have asked about buying my paintings. I’ve been hesitant about this, because my motivation is to share my love of art, and I don’t want anyone to think they need to buy anything. But if you would like a print of my paintings, including any from the past, let me know. Sketches, like this one and most of what I post: 8 x 10s are $35, 11 x 14s are $50,(+$5 S & H per order); all are matted and fit standard frames. Add $25 for finished paintings, like “Apple Tree” on May 10th.  Many originals are also available for $50-$150, depending on size. If you haven’t been to my website, take a look at www.lynnholbein.com; the homepage has all these emails in a rolling blog.

How do you spend your evenings? For several months I’ve been seduced by Amazon Prime and Netflix. Now I’m going back to my first, and much more dependable love: reading. Like many avid readers, bookstores and libraries are some of my favorite places on earth. I did this sketch on Saturday at the Watertown Public Library, which is an wonderfully architected blend of the old and new parts of the building. There is a pink dogwood tree in full bloom outside the windows.

Sometimes when you’re “in the zone,” just a few lines can capture a likeness. Many years ago, I did this sketch of our son Chris.

Last weekend I visited our son Andrew and his wife Eva in Brooklyn. They got married last June. Eva and I went late Friday afternoon to a coffee shop near the school where Eva teaches 4th grade. While she checked her email, I did this sketch of the bike shop across the street. Sycamore trees line many Brooklyn streets, and I especially love the variegated bark, which I tried to portray here.

This Sunday, May 7th, I will go on the Walk for Hunger for my 37th straight year. I will walk ten miles to raise money for 400 food pantries and soup kitchens across Massachusetts. If you are interested in sponsoring me, you can click here to go to my personal Walk page. I will be pleased to send you this thank you painting.

In Betty Edwards’ classic “Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain,” she teaches that speech, logic and math all occur on the left side of the brain. Intuition, holistic thinking and drawing are on the right side. When we take a break from the left-brain thinking which occupies most of our day, it feels like a mental vacation. Here, Bruce and I were touring the Museum of Science with our granddaughter Lila like month, and I took a break, between the planetarium and the exhibits, to have a cup of tea and sketch in the food court.

One of my favorite art memories: One sunny day a couple of years ago I sat down on a bench at the playground in West Newton, to draw the swarm of kids and parents on the slides and climbing structures. An older Asian man sat down next to me with his six month old granddaughter in his lap. His eyes were glued to my sketchbook. I did a fast loose sketch which took 10-15 minutes, and the whole time his eyes never left my paper. When I was finished, I dropped the sketchbook onto the ground and took this photo. Then I ripped the picture out and handed it to him; he still didn’t say a word. As I walked down the block, got into my car, and drove away, I looked back at him several times. He was still staring at the sketch.

We have a Tuesday art group that paints together once or twice a month. Yesterday, we painted a variety of overlapping objects in a makeshift still life. Fun!

As I look outside my windows in Newton, MA, I see houses painted gray, white, cream, and other subdued colors, to match the subdued colors of our March landscape. The colors of this Mexican Street, which I photographed in February and painted last week, are far more cheerful. 

Every morning I meditate for ten minutes, using Headspace or Calm. “Beginner’s Mind” is a big thing in mediation, and it’s never a problem when I’m drawing or painting. Though I’ve been doing sketching and watercolor for 20 years, the fascination and frustration is that it always feels new and challenging and there’s always more to learn. “It takes reams of paper to make a decent painting,” one teacher said.  This little coffee cup, with the steam and the shadows on the white cup, is the only thing that escaped the recycle bin after an hour and a half of sketching the other day. 

The New Year is celebrated in Iran on the first day of spring, and Iranians set a table full of plants, goldfish and food which symbolize life, fertility and rebirth. My 17-year-old friend Sara is half Iranian; her father emigrated from Iran with Sara’s grandparents when he was eleven. So Sara and I went to an Iranian New Year’s event last weekend, just a day after we had celebrated St. Patrick’s Day. How blessed we are in the US with our wealth of diverse immigrant traditions and heritages.

The Newton Watercolor Society sponsors life drawing during the winter, and last Saturday hosted this wonderful model.

As the March snow has been falling, I discovered a free online class I’m enjoying, and I recommend it if you’re interested in learning or improving your drawing skills. Here’s the link: http://thevirtualinstructor.com/blog/improve-your-drawing-skills-in-6-days

On Wednesday, Bruce and I made a day trip to visit Keith and Ann Palmer. Keith was Bruce’s high school science teacher many years ago, and Keith and Ann have been “honorary grandparents” to our children, attending every graduation and wedding. They live on a ridge line in the hills north of Hartford. After we ate lunch, I sketched the view out their windows.

The Newton Watercolor Society hires models during the winter months to teach us humility as we try to sketch a model who stays in one position for 2, 5 or 10 minutes. Izebel, our model last Saturday, is very experienced, modeling for art schools around Boston. Here is my effort to capture one of her 5-minute poses.

This Mexican market was even more colorful than my painting shows, with bags hanging from hooks all over the ceiling. The produce was plentiful, fresh and fragrant. Passing through the market was an overload for the senses.

Painting this picture for you made me think about how much of our fruit and vegetables come from Mexico or are picked in the US by Mexicans. As I passed through the Dallas and Boston airports to return home last Tuesday, every TV screen blared the headline, “Trump orders increased deportations.” If undocumented immigrants are now unwelcome, are their low-wage jobs in our fields, which keep our produce prices low, really jobs Americans want? Or should we be grateful to the men and women who do this backbreaking work to support their families, and who bring healthy food to our table?

I arrived back in Massachusetts last night. Waiting in the passport line at a stopover in Dallas, I felt both relieved that it was so simple for me to get back into the U.S., and anxious for the many others waiting in line for whom it might not be so easy. Arriving home, I learned that Newton has become a Sanctuary City.

Though I’m home, you’ll be seeing sketches of Mexico for a couple of weeks, as I paint from my memory and photographs. These are from the Botanical Gardens near San Miguel Allende. You can see the cactus in the first sketch. It’s the winter dry season there, and the colors are muted green and gold.  There were two young men climbing the rocks as I did the second sketch.