Sketchbook Revival

 I am once again participating in Sketchbook Revival, developed by Karen Abend. It runs from March 20 - April 1, with 2 new sessions released each day. There are 25+ workshop sessions and each is led by a different artist using everything from drawing and painting, to collage and mixed media, to sketching and printing. The lessons help us loosen up, develop our imaginations, practice our observation skills, express our emotions, etc, while also learning about color.

Before the workshops began there was a special lesson about creating our own sketchbooks with removable signatures. I've made a few signatures but I haven't created my cover to bind them. I won't do that until I decide how many of the lessons I actually complete. The sessions are available until April 20. Today is already March 31 and I have barely made a dent in the sessions.

The first session led by Jeanne Oliver is called "Creating in the In-Between." Essentially you are using any spare time in your day to do a gesture sketch quickly in pencil and go back to finish it in color.

 
Mike Lowry's session was on "Doodle Blobs."

Koosje Koene's session was "From Blob to Colorful Drawing." Color was put down with watercolors and shaded with colored pencil.

Helen Wells had us "Exploring Abstract Shapes and Color."

Julie Fei-Fan Falzer had us use gelli plate prints in tones of one color to make a
"Custom Color Collage Grid."

Like I said, I am quite a bit behind. I've watched a few more sessions but I haven't done my piece for the lesson. It is hard to fit these in with everything else that I'm busy doing. But I will do my best to at least do a few more. I will do another post when I have a few more done.

The Art of Making Paint

 Last week at the South Bay Art Association's General Membership Meeting we were treated to a demo by SBAA artist, Christie Jones of Swell Anchor Studio. Christie makes her own paint and sells it. Her handmade paints are created with natural pigments and non-toxic materials. She showed us how she mixes the pigments with a honey-based binder. The entire of blending the mixture takes about an hour, but the binder takes a long time too. It is really labor intensive. Christie makes small batches of paint. To create her sets for sale she uses oyster and clam shells that she collects from local restaurants to hold the paints. For each of her sales she donates oysters to the Long Island waters. This year she donated 2,500 oysters which filter 125,000 gallons of water a day!

After watching her shortened paint making process all the members who were interested had creative time to use the newly made paint that she distributed in small shells as well as a number of other colors that she had in baskets. I'm sure you can guess that my small painting had something to do with the ocean. lol The paint couldn't get any fresher than this! Thank you, Christie!

Smith Point Beach

Spring had already arrived and I hadn't made it down to the beach yet, so I headed over to Smith Point Beach to do a small painting/sketch. The dunes were calling. The new sketchbook for the sketchbook project I'm doing is an Arteza brand. The paper is pretty nice and I like the square format.

 

St. Isidore

 When I was out in Riverhead recently I went into downtown Riverhead to a Polish deli to buy kielbasa. Riverhead has a large Polish population and hosts a Polish Fair every summer. On the way in I passed St. Isidore Catholic Church which I know is a Polish parish. I figured I would stop and sketch it.

Portrait Party 2023

 Even though portraits aren't urban sketching the NYC Urban Sketchers had a Portrait Party on Sunday. There were about 70 people and we broke up into 5 different groups. We formed a circle for each group and took turns posing for everyone in our group. The time allotted for each portrait is 10 minutes so you need to come prepared with a strategy of what you are going to draw with and how you are going to meet the time limit. I've taken part before and it is a lot of fun...but exhausting. Here are the portraits that I did. I worked with a pencil, a Tombow marker (brown), a permanent black ink brush pen, and watercolors.

Here is my group in our circle.

 working. I think we were sketching Leslie, our leader at the time.

At the end of the session each group created a grid of their portraits. Each of us had a number so person #1 lined their sketches in the top row in numerical order. Then the next person does the same. Each row across is one person's work. Each column going down included all the sketches of that person. It always amazes me how many different styles there are when we put them together. The empty spaces are for the person who was posing each time.

We did a group photo at the end.

Looking Out

 I tucked myself in a small town parking down by the water in Sayville to paint this.

Bay Shore Buildings

In Bay Shore the other day I came across a view looking toward the canal. I liked how the buildings were tucked behind each other.