drawing loop
Sometimes it’s about noticing the connections. We got a ride back to retrieve our bikes from neighbor, Dick Reed. The weather looked more promising, so we rode to New Gloucester to check out the new Bresca spot and then loop back to Portland to see the Sketchbook Project. When I began my 2013 Sketchbook last October, I drew the bench in front of Bresca with my lovely cohort, Kirsten. Chef/owner Krista Kern Desjarlais has moved her operation to Sabbathday Lake. I knew we’d found it when I spotted the same bench! They weren’t open yet, but we delighted in the location. This...
Read Moreeverything’s related
Sometimes you notice how everything’s related. I’m closing out an entire week in my studio, with not one trip off-island. Splendid. Even though it’s nice to be done with the MECA semester, I’m enjoying working with an art student, Olwyn. She lives across the street. I’ve actually drawn almost everyone in her family, who’ve been handy models on many occasions. Her younger sister, Imogen, posed for a drawing in my 2011 Sketchbook Project. And here’s their little brother, who provides plenty of amusement, in the same sketchbook. Nikolai also posed for a...
Read Moreon the drawing trail
I drew this still life while waiting for Judy LaBrasca to join me last week at the Portland Museum of Art. Drawing is the best thing I know to create patience and awareness. It occupies and lightens the mood, anytime, anywhere. We sat in the newly renovated cafe and caught up. Judy was my first mentor at Maine College of Art when I began teaching there several years ago. She shared some of the sketchbooks she’s made for her Narrative Sketchbook class in Continuing Studies. Lovely! A couple of days later, I joined with another MECA colleague, Mary Anne Lloyd, who shared a batch of...
Read Moredrawing with color
“Colors are the children of light.” So said Johannes Itten, a Swiss painter and Bauhaus teacher. Here’s a glimpse of some color fun that happened in a recent youth art camp I taught at the TEIA on Peaks Island. We started with color terms, creating a color wheel, and drawing a palette of 10 favorite colors. Below: Owen’s choice of colors with very original names. Color naming and branding can be very associative and personal. I like “ish.” I also gave everyone a color journal. Just for fun, and for keeping notes and sketches and anything that might strike...
Read MoreLegal sketching
When was the last time you drew on a placemat in a restaurant? That was once a favorite pasttime of mine, back in the Crayola days. As an illustration teacher, I keep telling students to draw all the time, but do I? Hardly. But my daughter, 11, is doing that. She adds a little drawing to the grocery list on the counter, to the cover of a catalog on the kitchen table, and draws on the edges of her homework. When we walked across the street from our Boston hotel recently, I brought along my sketchbook, not sure there would be paper placemats at Legal Seafood. The wall murals had Dick Dale...
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