Can these pears be saved!?

This is 7"x10" on very rough watercolor paper that I coated with white 'Fine Tooth Colourfix Primer' and then toned with deeply pigmented watercolor. I put red under the green pears and green under the reddish background. I got so much into the layering that I ended up nearly smearing. I had to spray it with workable fixative often. The 'tooth' of the primer isn't as good as the that of the sandy papers. Maybe I will add more grit to the primer and see what that does.

By George . . . . !

. . . . I think I may be getting it. This is 6" x 9", done on Wallis "Belgian Mist" paper, with Nupastels. This whole layering thing is very riveting. Also Belgium is a great place. So the paper is definitely helping.

The Learning Curve is steep indeed

The pastels learning curve is taking me for a ride. Pears rulz. I suppose.

Below is a page from the everyday sketchbook. Gouache+pen+ink+watercolors on darker colored paper. Quebeçiose St. Armand 'coloured' paper rulz. Although those pink legs look a tad skanky.

Q: How many days until the beginning of hockey season?
A: 27 days, or 653 hours, or 39,234 minutes, or 2,354,063 seconds
Addendum: SOON!

Homestead Farms Field Trip

This is one of the barn complexes at Homestead Farms, along with one of their dragon flies.

Figure Class - done - for now

The Figure Class at the Art League is finished. I did detect some improvement in my work, albeit not record-shattering in speed or in impact. I am going to see about regular open figure sessions elsewhere here in town.

According to the Post, that Figure Models Guild of Washington DC is a very talented pool of models here in the Metro region. With such a resource at our fingertips, who can resist?

Polkadot Wednesday

Metro sketching benefiting a bit from the figure drawing class. Look and look and concentrate. In the upper right I am experimenting with diluting pastels with watercolors. I am trying to start a Color Journal but keep getting sidetracked. Soon!

Bruised Pear

Old, tired pear with bruise front n' center.

Pear Plan

Day One? K! Day Two? Dunno!

Monacacy Encampment

I stopped at Monocacy National Battlefield on the way home from Libertytown yesterday and discovered an 'Encampment' event being held on the grounds of the Gambrill Mill section, which is my favorite part of the battlefield. There was a group of Confederate re-enactors and a group of Yankee re-enactors. The Yankee group did a nice artillery demonstration. There were only six of them, but it wasn't hard to imagine that same sound, but coming from a thousand guns. Pretty scary.

I was sketching this view of the Confederate tents (they had slept in them the night before) when four of them came over to chat. To see what I was doing. And then one of them showed me his sketchbook! He had been working in it for years! It was chock full of delightful pen and ink drawings done with an historically accurate steel nib! (I should have asked him about his ink.)

His drawings recorded encampments and re-enactments that he had participated in. It was meant to be like the sketchbooks Civl War soldiers and their contemporary newspaper illustrators kept during the War. The other three guys looking over my shoulder pointed out buddies and relatives and recognized events they had attended from these drawings. This is testimony to how well the artist had captured likenesses! These were great drawings, very delicate and precise, and I urged him to take very good care of them! He just shrugged.

Anyway, these Confederate fellows were telling me about some of the odd questions that they get from onlookers during these kinds of re-enactments and encampments. I wrote some of the good ones down. These were NOT questions from children either:
-- How come all the battles were fought on National Park Service land?
-- Were all these monuments here during the battle? Is that how the troops knew where to go?
-- (and my favorite) Is that real fire?
-- (and the one I asked yesterday) So, who won?

Later in that same general area I got out my new sketch box and set it up to paint a small view of the edge of a pond and a path leading off into the dark woods. I learned a bit about the logistics of the set up and the limitations of the watercolors. (Gouache or the pastels will be much more fun!) As well as the odds of attracting folks who want to look and chat. I suspect that the sketch box all set up is a magnet. I actually enjoy this chatting part. Especially when they have to come some distance off the 'beaten path' to get close enough to talk. You do meet some nice folks! Which I did yesterday.

On the way home from there I stopped at Homestead Farm, just a bit south of Poolesville. I got the most beautiful peaches and blackberries. There were folks emerging from the orchard area with wheelbarrows full of peaches! Who were they? What on earth do you do with thirty pounds of peaches? Cobbler for a hundred!

Summer Slump

The Arf Arf Days of summer are in full swing. Note to Tourists: Stopping at the top of a moving escalator on Metro is generally not practical. You could get trampled!

Q: How many days until the beginning of hockey season?
A: 70 days and 1,686 hours.
Addendum: [sigh]

My Figure Drawing Class is going well, despite my sloth. I really enjoy drawing 'from the figure' and may sign up for open figure drawing sessions. Someday.

My experiments with pastels are going very slowly. The noteworthy mess that the whole enterprise makes is daunting. Despite that, I have a plan predicated on my friend Samter Petuel's stellar+inspirational example: a Pear A Day, with these variations:

• different color schemes (analogous, complimentary, split complimentary, complimentary with the "discord"
• different lighting effects, different directions
• different points of view, such as straight on and from above
• different kinds of strokes - cross-hatched, scribbled circles. layers, layers with intervening fixative
• different surfaces
• different colored surfaces
• different kinds of pastels, hard, soft, pencils

The theory and framework are there. Where is the get-up-and-go? We'll see.

Watch my Dust!

I have been lately playing around with pastels --> literally solid sticks of (almost) pure pigment. I have rarely encountered a messier medium! You just have to pick one of these little pastels up and you are all blue -- or red or magenta or green -- all over. But the colors are really lush and the mark is nice and sketchy, if I can stop myself from blending, blending, and over-bending. I have a miscellaneous set of various very soft pastels and a full set of hard pastels. I like the soft pastels for the lushness and goopiness of the mark and the brilliancy of the color. But I like the hard pastels for the control. I took a few of the hard pastels out with me to the Palisades Farmers' Market on Sunday morning and sketched some fruit with them. I didn't really give them a good try because of the gnats. (Note to self: put insect repellent on, even if you're in town!)

The sequence for value is dark-to-light, for the most part, as it is with gouache. But not so strict. Another variable is paper! Paper color is one choice and another is paper texture. The hue and value of the underlying color seems to be a key element in pastels (as it is in gouache!) and the texture of the paper coating has to do with how many layers of color you are able to lay down. The coated papers are like very fine sandpaper and they accept a lot of layers. And you can buy light colored coated paper and color it yourself, any color (or combination of colors) you want, with watercolor or acrylic washes.

So much new stuff to try and so many variables. And sooooo much more money to spend!

Figure Class

Yesterday was the first session of my 7-week Figure Drawing in Varied Media class at the Art League. It's three hours every Saturday morning, led by Priscilla Treacy. It's a fairly large class, as these classes go, so I'm not sure how much individualized attention each of us will get. But oh well, I'll make sure that it will be fun.

What luxury to:
-- Have a model that will hold still! So much better than my usual "models" on Metro.
-- Get all messy with charcoal! This stuff called Char-Kole is the greatest! As black and as heavy and as creamy as you could ask. Neat stuff. (I definitely need to bring hand wipes next week.)

Eventually we are going to paint on paper with a technique called "peinture a l'essence" (used by Toulouse-Lautrec and Eddie Degas), which appears to be regular oil paint that has had the oil leached out of it by letting it sit on absorbent paper for a while. We'll use turpentine to dilute and apply it. It sounds stinky and awful to me and I wonder, if the 'requirement' is that we have to use paper as the support in this class, why we don't just use gouache. No muss no fuss. No turpentine! Maybe I'll be a pest and ask her.

White Cap Crowd

Some folks on Metro last week. The tan paper on the left is the BFK again. I am obviously into those white gouache highlights. This is a page and a half scanned from my small everyday sketchbook.

The little blue sliver on the left is a page of Québécois St. Armand paper, which was part of a sample pack that I found in New Mexico. I chopped it up and put pages into the sketchbooks here and there. Nice to have different textures and colors to mess around with.

Pinch

Fingers portrait and why not? Done with ink, watercolor, white gouache, and then finally some smudged Pierre Noire, on tan BFK Rives paper. The "negative space" is kind of a smile, isn't it? Hadn't noticed that.

BFK, by the way, stands for Blanchet Frères et Kleber, the original manufacturers of the 'Rives' paper, at a mill in Rives near Grenoble, France.

Speaking of France, I have been studying (not reading, but actually studying) the old and respected book about Cézanne by Erle Loran, an art professor at UC Berkeley, entitled Cézanne's Composition: Analysis of His Form with Diagrams and Photographs of His Motifs. It was written in 1963 and lately re-printed.

The term 'motifs' in the title refer to photos of the actual places and scenes in France that Cézanne used as subjects. One of Professor Loran's excellent analytic diagrams is reproduced below, from page 77. (It's his diagram of La table de cuisine, now at the Musée d'Orsay.)


I have learned two new and interesting things from the book so far. First, that Professor Loran is convinced that Cézanne himself did NOT construct his compositions using the same kind of analysis or forward planning that the professor uncovers. He goes to great lengths in the introductory material to 'prove' that Cézanne had no systematic/academic understanding of the theoretical underpinnings of composition.

It was all pure instinct, according to the fine professor.

And second, for Cézanne, the choice of initial subject matter had little to do with the success of the painting, as measured by Professor Loran's analyses. So really, all the parts in the book that are devoted to discussion of the original 'motifs' are pretty moot, in my opinion. Cézanne wantonly re-arranged what he saw in front of him to meet the needs of his picture. He made a timeless masterpiece out of a picture of some old rocks in a quarry.

What this also says to me is that you need not and ought not to wait for your surroundings to provide you with exciting or inspiring subject matter. You can learn and grow and get satisfaction and enjoy the heck outta just drawing a door handle or a chair leg.

And so there it is.

Sketchcrawl, Saturday June 21st

Sketchcrawl June 2008! Once again, I am the only one to show up. But it's still fun. Above, on the right of the sketchbook page, is the view along the north side of the golden NMAI, with pinky-gray Air+Space in the background (with the top of Ad Astra, which means 'To The Stars', that spiky sculpture by Richard Lippold in front of Air+Space, popping up above the trees), as well as ye ole Washington Monument.

On the left side of the page is an experiment: sketching a face with just a dark watercolor tone. No detail, no line. A few more wc sketches are below. (Here is another one.)

Speaking of NMAI's Mitsitam Cafe, is it my imagination or is it getting even more expensive? A simple lunch of roasted salmon with two sides, and a Key Lime tart (excellent!) cost just shy of thirty bucks. Oh, wait. I guess it was that cup of coffee that almost put me over the top. Hmmm!

Gouache for Field Studies

I enjoyed my weekend workshop at the Art League with Diane Tesler entitled Gouache for Field Studies & More. We spent all of the second day outside, painting scenes in Old Town. There were a few demos at the beginning, but we were pretty much on our own, with a little bit of individual critique, when and if Diane could catch up with us. It was very instructive just to get down to it and mess around.

One of the elements that she emphasized was to begin with strongly tinted paper. Depending on the scene you intend to paint, tint with a warm or cool acrylic wash. The watered-down liquid acrylic wash also seals the charcoal underdrawing, which is very handy. (But I'm not sure I am willing to give up that pristine white page! I suppose when one of your colors is white, it isn't that critical. I have put some BFK Rives tan colored paper in my everyday sketchbook, to test it with watercolor. If it works well I might add that white gouache to my palette.)

Once again, there were some very nice folks in the workshop. As always at the Art League. One of them is going to Provence with Susan Abbott in a few weeks. ENVY!!

I spent some considerable time on the painting above. Really messed around with it. The one below was a very quick sketch with minimal prep. Gouache worked well for both of them. I think.

Pierre Noire

Here is an experiment with Conté à Paris Pierre Noire charcoal pencil and watercolor. The charcoal is dark as the darkest night and smears really nicely. More experiments to come!

I have enrolled in a two-day workshop on gouache this weekend. I am worried because the techniques used for gouache are diametrically opposed to all those used in watercolor. In common with oil painting, with gouache you apply the paint dark to light. Where in wc, you do the opposite. As per MacEvoy: We get a hint of what's involved in the use of gouache (pronounced "gwash") by considering the origins of the name: it comes from the Italian aguazzo, for "mud." I may be hopelessly muddled/muddied by Sunday afternoon.

Corkscrew

I don't know why. Why not?

Back Home Again

I arrived home here to Maryland yesterday and very much enjoyed all the familiar smells. Particularly the smell of honeysuckle. Honeysuckle and rain-fattened foliage and the smell of Thirteen Original Colonies dirt. At the least the northern seaboard Old Confederacy Thirteen Original Colonies dirt and foliage. There is something very satisfying and cozy -- for me -- about the smell of Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina. In the spring and autumn especially, the smell is all of mustiness and life. Or maybe it's just a reminder of the good memories of my time in NC and now here in MD. This is also the season where I have to resist the very strong urge to buy a farm. Or at the very least a cottage in the countryside.

(I visited my favorite cottage in the countryside, overlooking Burkittsville and, yet again, there was no For Sale sign on it. Luckily for me, I suppose. I ought to go back there and sketch the expansive view from the front porch. I wonder if the residents would mind. Hmmm! Field trip! For a photo at least. Quickly snap a pic before taking a pants-full of buckshot, for trespassing.)

The sketch above is of another lazy old porch in the late afternoon, with the sun on the backs of the dark green Adirondack chairs filtering through some enormous trees. It's part of an old country inn nearby that I stopped at, to prolong my vacation.

El Santuario de Chimayó

I went on a scenic tour of the area north of Santa Fe yesterday because I wanted to sketch the church at Chimayó. It's a very powerful pilgrimage destination. It was a very nice drive up there and a lovely day. There were a few folks inside the church chanting the Hail Mary, a group that I joined for a while. Then I found myself a seat outdoors, in front of the famous doors that have never been closed. It's a lovely spot and I did a few drawings, one of which is above.

Next I stopped at the famed Rancho de Chimayó Restaurant, which on all my other trips to Chimayó I seemed to hit at a time when the parking lot was overflowing. Yesterday I got there at about 11:40am and got right in! The service was delightful, a very sweet waitress in 'traditonal' Hispanic costume of black full gathered skirt, mid-calf length, wide red sash, white blouse with white lace around the neck, and puffed sleeves. (The blouse was worn sort of off the shoulders and, on my waitress at least, revealed a --[sigh]-- tattoo on her back! But oh well! She was a sweetie!) Anyway, the food was not at all great and the place was messy and cluttered and dusty. The gardens around the patio showed quite alota bare dirt.
But! When I left, the parking lot was overflowing. Which says that yes, you can rely entirely on reputation, service, location and dispense with that pesky detail of offering good food.

The sienna tint on the blouse of the woman in the above sketch is done with the red pepper sauce from my Carne Adovada, smeared onto the paper with my little finger. Discretely of course! Alas, the peppery aroma has since vanished...

Grand Pic

I got only one good picture of the Grandest Canyon. It is a view down the Bright Angel Trail, with the oasis-like Indian Garden in the foreground.

Grand Canyon webcam is here.

Shorts, you think? Ha! Not in May!

I left Flagstaff this morning at about 8:30am, having made the foolish decision to wear shorts. Subsequent events will cause me to rue that recklessness. Arrived back up at the South Rim of the Grand Canyon later in the morning. There are gray clouds all around. Real windy too.

I began to lament my decision about the shorts as soon as I got out of my car near the lodge.

I suppose I could have scrounged up a restroom somewhere where I could have changed back into jeans, but nooooooo. I am Betsy Backwoods and a toughie. I commit, brazenly, and go to find the shuttle stop. (Most of the rim west of here is under re-construction and is closed to all except shuttle buses.) But I have second thoughts when a big gust of wind and rain hit me while waiting for the shuttle. I estimated the wind chill at that moment to be somewhere in the thirties. Thank goodness for my hoody fleece and the rain jacket on top of it. My legs, however, were out there a-hangin’. Yee-ouch. Too late now. I get on the shuttle. We’re off. (Gad, this shuttle is nice and warm!)

So we get to the first overlook and it’s still windy and drizzly and natch – no one gets off the shuttle. Yeah, we all say to ourselves, glancing around at each other, it’s grand and all but, umm, I’ll wait just a bit on this particular view. I’ll come back! (Oh yeah, right.)

Second overlook is Maricopa Point and now the sun is shining, the wind is gone, so I got out and sketched for a quite a bit of time. Next stop is Hopi Point, the last stop, and the wind is kicking up again and here come some more gray clouds. But this is the westernmost viewpoint that is currently accessible, so I get off the shuttle. I had to!

My remorse about the shorts reaches a new high when the wind comes back and it starts to rain again. I shelter under a small piñon pine tree and am pretty snug and kind of change my mind. I am actually enjoying it, in an irrational way probably induced by the lightheadedness that accompanies hyperthermia. That is, I like it until I hear thunder. Uh oh. Ummm, thunder is possibly not a good sign when you are sheltering under a tree on the very rim of a massive chasm. I make a note about the rain and thunder in my sketchbook, but then look up and notice that the rain has turned into little white balls. By god -- it’s frigging hailing! Sheesh! But … WAY COOL!!!! I shout to the person across the walkway ‘Hey, look! It’s hailing!’ My icicle legs are forgotten. This is fun!

Alas! The hail lasts only a few more moments, turns very briefly to sleet, and then is gone. Blown away. In about five minutes here comes the sun and I stick around at that Hopi Point viewpoint for quite some time after that, to do more sketches. The ink lines on the one drawing that I had open when I was under the tree is all mottled with water drops. Extremely nifty and I have enjoyed it all quite a bit. Despite the fact that I can no longer feel my legs. (That coffee after lunch sure tasted good!)


My palace of a room in El Tovar is finally ready at about 3:30 but when I get into it is smells odd. Like cleaning products from 1920. I have opened the windows but they tell me it’s going to go to 22 degrees tonight. So close them I’ll have to. Later on. I may leave here tomorrow smelling like a flapper. Albeit a clean one!

The dining room here at El Tovar is listed as one of the best 50 restaurants in all of Arizona. I confess that I am a doubter. This is a federal operation (at bottom -- despite being a “concession”) and I have my doubts about a federal operation spawning an outstanding restaurant. That concept conflicts with good reason. Anyway, we’ll see!

Later: Unfortunately, I was right about both the food and the service. Especially the service. Blah.

Significant Grandness

Yesterday John and Marie and I made a pilgrimage to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. None of us had never been there before, so we felt a proper day of homage was necessary. It began with a stop at Cameron Trading Post north of Flagstaff on Highway 89, based on a tip John had gotten in Utah. I have seen quite a few native arts stores but this one (I have to admit) was the best I have ever seen. To think that I have passed it by well onto fifty times in my travels hither and yon, thinking it was just a tourist trap/gas station. WOW! Great stuff to see (museum quality) and buy. It's now on the 'must stop' list. Above is a sketch of John driving up there and Marie in the other front seat.

Arrive at the East Entrance of the Park and we're a bit let down. Very few overlooks and the rim road is hemmed in on both side by dense pinon pine forest. (Is this Maine or Arizona?) No views! Except at overlooks overrun with German and Japanese tourists. Then --- gosh. We stopped at Desert View overlook, the one with the faux Watchtower, and we could clearly see the Colorado below. I felt a peculiar tightness in my chest -- which was (I decided) a remnant or a memory of the fear and anticipation from thirty years ago --> when we assembled outside of Page, on the shoreline of the river, at Lee's Ferry just above Marble Canyon, and got ready to launch the 2nd River Trip. Sanderson River Expeditions. Back in the 70's, a million years ago, but the sensations were vivid.

In any event, I sketched the view of the green-watered river from that overlook:
And wrote a bit about what I was feeling/reliving. It was exciting, the remembering, And presto --> all the yammering tourists disappeared.

We three had a nice picnic (sort of, given the bee the size of a hat that was hanging around and the fact that the picnic table was so tilted on the slope that no bottle on it could stay upright --- the future 'Legend of How the the Picnic Table got to the bottom of the Grand Canyon') and then went on to a few other overlooks, To jostle other tourists. ("Entschuldigung." "Vielen dank!")

But then finally got to the El Tover Hotel overlook area at about 4pm. Hey, wait!! LOVELY!!! And few folks there! I am going back on Wednesday to spend the night there (don't even ask how much the rooms cost) and to sketch again. Below is my fav of what I sketched from that walk area yesterday and what follows it is a quote (to go with it -- to engender suitable humility) from the current show at the Museum of Northern Arizona entitled 'Grand Canyon Grandeur':
"I struggle in mad haste to utilize the moment but ah! How futile! How hopeless! What a wretched makeshift these paltry pigments! How hopeless to attempt. What inconceivable impudence to dream of imitating anything so ineffable! It challenges man’s utmost skills. It mocks and defies his puny efforts to grasp and perpetuate, through art, its ineffable grandeurs." William Robinson Leigh at the Grand Canyon, 1929.

Arch at Arches

Relaxing in and around Moab with my friends Marie and John. (It has been quite a pleasure showing my dear friends all my favorite spots hereabouts.) I sketched this view of South Window in Arches while they hiked up into it. I thought that I ought to add a vibrant blue sky to it, especially inside the arch. But decided not to. It's my favorite thing that I've sketched so far. Off tomorrow at the crack o' dawn for Sedona and the drawing class.

Colorado Plateau Week One

Day 1: end at 726.8 mi. on the trip odometer, ending in IN (the first 0.1 of which, I noticed, was getting out of the Irene parking garage)
Day 2: end at 1,165.1 mi. ending in KS
Day 3: end at 1,795.3 mi. ending in drab Dillon, CO
Day 4: finally off the interstate at 2,033.6 mi. in UT ← hip hip hooray!!!
All is well here in Moab. I am busy getting reacquainted with all the spectacular scenery and coffee shops. Love it here!


Trip Notes

Q: Was that really the carcass of a bear in the median of the Slot Car Track section of I-70 west of Denver through the gut of the mountains? Couldn’t have been! But there were indeed three different herds of big horn sheep grazing along the shoulders of the highway. They looked pretty ratty, ragged winter coats partly shedded and partly hanging on in tufts. To think that in most places you need a telescope to see big horn sheep where they (literally) hang out on remote mountain cliffs. In CO you just pass them on the left.

Coldest Moment: Vail Pass, where it was 28 degrees.

Wind Farms: I’m sorry but I find these "farms" beautiful. Passed one in west-central KS that is called the Smoky Hills Wind Project. Its two phases will encompass 26,000 acres and hundreds of wind turbines. I passed sections of the shiny smooth, bright white poles (pylons? towers?) being hauled on semis on the highway the day before and wondered just what they were. They were so pristine and perfect. I couldn’t imagine. And when I saw the wind farm, I realized what I had seen. The blades are most graceful in shape as well. The full spread of the three blades is about 270 feet. Spectacular to see hundreds of these things across a low ridge with no other landforms in note anywhere in site. They were visible from about 30 miles away. Lovely! Works of art! I rarely thank engineers for anything, but I make an exception with this grouping of objects.

Microbrew at Elevation: Note to self→ at 9,100 feet above sea level beer must be consumed very slowly.

Home made pigment: I have decided to collect various kinds of red rock soil around here and see if I can make watercolor pigment out of it. I have studied my geology and am ready! (But dang, I forgot my mortar and pestle!)

The image above I took yesterday afternoon of a big bend in the Colorado River, seen from the overlook at Dead Horse Point State Park. I shared the overlook area with an entire busload of French people. (Hey, aren't French people supposed to be the best dressed people on the planet? I guess not so much when they are on vacation. Je suis désolé, mal habillés dame, mais il ya une file d'attente ici.)