Holiday Baking
Most of my creative time and energy during the holiday season goes into gift making, wrapping, and baking, and this year was no different. As a result, my sketchbook comes up short. So as the year closes out, I thought I’d devote a page to remembering the recipes I enjoyed making and consuming last week. I do wish I could share my sublime toasted hazelnut coffee cake with you as thanks for following my blog all year long. Alas, it is gone, so I send my favorite wooden spoons and a photo, along with my heartfelt thanks and best wishes for a Happy New Year.
Tips and Techniques– When time is short, or you just need put pen to paper, don’t overlook sketching common household objects. Spoons, silverware, toothbrushes, food, pens and paints, shoes– it’s all fair game. You’ll learn a lot about painting different textures when you choose different types of objects. I enjoyed capturing the patterns on these spoons– you can create wood texture in ink first or directly in watercolor or layer one on the other.
What’s your favorite household item to sketch?
Winter Flowers
Mop-topped goldenrod dance in the frozen field. I find them a fitting celebration of winter: stark and windswept, but still lively and lovely, especially when tinged with frost. I like walking out into the cold field and sketching a few right in place, feeling the same air and wind that chills and rattles their thin leaves. I also appreciate being able to take a few home to study and sketch without wind or gloves.
On this first day of winter, I wish you a season full of new discoveries, unexpected gifts, and wonder enough to share.
Along the Roadside: November
If you were to walk along the roadside here, you would see a landscape of tawny browns, russets, and grays, mixed with pale ochres and faded greens. But every now and then, a pop of red hangs on, waiting for wind or birds to snatch it away. It’s late November’s palette. I appreciate its bright surprises, glinting in the cold sun.
Tips and Techniques- Even when it’s cold, I often take my sketchbook with me when out for a walk. I stop to sketch what catches my attention and hope that a page will emerge from it. On days when I don’t bring my sketchbook, I still pay attention to what’s growing or dying along the roadside, so that I might come back around to it another day. I sketched this page with a Micron sepia 005 pen and added watercolor and text back at home. Wishing you many good walks!
Retreat
The sketches I’m posting today are from my weekend teaching at the Botanical Art & Nature Sketching Retreat at the Ashokan Center in New York’s Catskill Mountains earlier in November. Sixty-eight people from all over the country came for the weekend and it was an incredible convergence of artists. I was honored to teach alongside extraordinary botanical artists Wendy Hollender, Lara Call Gastinger, and GiacoMina Ferrillo, and to be in the company of so many warm, enthusiastic, and supportive people. Given my brother’s deteriorating health, I wasn’t sure whether to go but I’m so glad I did. Jim was in good hands with my extended family and the retreat gave me the opportunity to center myself before facing his loss.
A Note of Thanks…
I am so grateful for the outpouring of support extended by this community upon reading of my brother Jim’s death last week. Your kindness and condolences have been a much-needed comfort.
With much gratitude,
Jean
I’ll Look for You
Losing a brother is like losing part of yourself– part of your childhood, your growing up, your everyday life. You grieve for yourself and for the future without him, but also for those who lost a friend, a teacher, an uncle. My brother Jim died last Monday night of a progressive and fatal lung disease. His decline over the last few weeks was precipitous and heartbreaking. I’m grateful that we shared many intimate and honest moments together, including on his final day. When I told him how much I would miss him, he looked at me and said, “You never know, I might be gone and then be right back with you.” This poem and page came about because of that.
Thank you for your kind thoughts and condolences.
I’ll look for you
In the flock of robins high in the walnut trees,
And in the now dry and curled beech leaves,
In the cold north wind accompanying my walk,
And in the silent spaces across which we talk,
In glistening sun on frosted grass,
And moon shadows glimpsed through evening glass.
I’ll look for you…
Because, who knows,
You might be right here after all,
Beside me.
As you said,
Gone and then right back again.
I’ll look for you.
Leaves Down
We know it’s coming; sooner or later, the brilliant colors of autumn leaves will go from trees to ground. After slowly letting go little by little, a strong gust of wind came along last week and blew everything but the oaks down all at once. Suffice it to say, we have a lot of trees surrounding our house and we were blanketed overnight. Which explains this page and why I didn’t post it last weekend.
Tips, Techniques, and a Note…
After working most of the day last Sunday, I wandered around looking for a subject to sketch before sitting on the porch and realizing it was right under my feet in the pile of leaves that I’d swept off the roof earlier. It was a good reminder that starting where you are, as honest and as humble as that may be, is often the best way to begin.
I also wanted to note that I may not post as regularly in the coming weeks. I recently learned that one of my siblings has been diagnosed with a progressive and fatal lung condition and his health seems to be deteriorating quickly. It’s one of the heaviest and most difficult things my family and I have ever faced. I’d like to think that my sketchbook may be a place of solace, but we’ll see. I appreciate your support and understanding.
A bit of weaving
Grass and twigs, pine needles and spider webs, plant fibers and lichen, pen and paint. We weave our nests over hours and days, the birds and I. The birds, of course, are the first artists. I’m just picking it up where they left off, in awe of the fine details and beautiful forms they’ve created.
Tips and Techniques- Sketched with a Micron 005 sepia pen and painted with combinations of ultramarine blue, burnt sienna, raw sienna, and burnt umber. Nests from the collection of the New York State Museum.
The Pleasure of a Soft Pencil
Though I typically pick up a pen and watercolor when I have time for art, I just really felt like drawing this weekend. A soft pencil, smooth paper, and loose lines were just what I needed. I’ve got 30 bulbs to plant and though each one seems unique and interesting, these five will have to do. The spade is waiting.
Tips and Techniques- Sketched with a Staedtler Mars Lumograph 3B pencil on Canson Bristol 100lb paper.
Otherworldly Stars
I’m back in the basement collection of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography’s Benthic Invertebrate Collection this week. Not literally, alas, but channeling row upon row of jars filled with bottom-dwelling spineless creatures from the world’s oceans and drawing upon photos from my visit earlier this year. I’m not striving to bring these brittle stars and sea stars back to life on the page, but rather to highlight their beauty and understand their complexity. Even though they have been “living” in jars for fifty years or more, I like thinking about how they once dwelled in the ocean, and I am glad they will live on for many years to come for researchers, students, and artists.
Tips and Techniques– Don’t overlook the dead stuff! Drawing specimens is a great way to study living species, to understand underlying anatomy, and to draw creatures that are not moving. Most museums will allow you to sketch in pencil or pen, nature centers may have kits you can take home, and university collections are sometimes available to artists. If you want to join me and get in on the action, check out Collecting Nature, Exploring Museum Collections.
Indian Summer
Back in my own habitat this week, I enjoyed sitting and sketching in the field in the warmth of Indian summer sunshine. The goldenrod is in its glory, while other plants are fading. Still, I like showing flowers past peak and I find their curling petals and dried seedheads as worthy of sketching now as when they were in their prime.
Tips and Techniques– Consider not only what you want to convey with your subject, but also how you want your page to feel. After sketching this page using a sepia 005 Micron pen, and adding color and the title, I decided to add a loose wash of yellow in the background. That choice gives this page added warmth and offers a nod to the abundant goldenrod in the surrounding field. Had I chosen not to add yellow, or to use blue to mirror the sky, the page would look quite different, and much cooler.
Drawn In 