Beaver Lake Pre-Spring

First a couple of leftovers: this little girl was sitting across from me at Penn Station Tuesday.  She was sternly refusing to eat whatever it was that her very patient grandmother was attempting to spoon into her mouth.

Really boring drawing but it WAS 6:30 in the morning after a night in the top bunk on Amtrak.

Now for the lake! Luscious-smelling Japanese honeysuckle, caput mortuum red maple bloom, and three turtles swimming with heads up like periscopes.

A diving duck, two more turtles, and some plump catkins.

A guy on a board, which I really want to get, and yet another turtle, this one in nice silhouette and with reflection. 

All Caught Up

A couple of more masks from the Met on the left.

We were winding up our time in Maplewood on Sunday. Abby wanted a drawing of herself with her cute pigtails. Nate left the room before I could finish drawing him.

We spent Monday slogging ourselves and our luggage through two train stations, two trains, and a bus as we made our way north to New Hampshire. Some trip highlights: shoes of people watching the big train schedule board in Penn Station;  the view out the giant front window of the bus we were off-loaded onto at Springfield because the tracks had been flooded.  On the far right , bangers and mash that I ordered in Lebanon purely for the name. Delicious!

On the left are two pub guys that I drew while awaiting my bangers and mash. On the right are some of the xmas decorations that are always up, summer and winter, in the little cottage that we stay in, next to M and A's house.

I especially like the Father Xmas cast iron door stop in the upstairs bathroom. He has been on duty for the past six years or so at least.  M's hens are still laying a bit, and the eggs were so beautiful in an aluminum   bowl. Smoky, one of the two cats, grooming and staring.

Another great move of Smoky's,  and on the right, Barnaby plays one of his own piano compositions.

Luca drew this intriguing picture within a picture within a picture.  On the right are two drawings of a crochet hook that I whittled out of a twig so that I could finish Maya's scarf for her.

Tallis playing the piano, and below , a much better drawing of this handsome guy.

Another guest blogger, seven -year old Barnaby, drew this "ugly" cupid complete with a bow and sort of arrow with a face.

Saturday afternoon we all, including A's parents , in town from Plymouth, MA, went to hear Tallis play percussion with the Dartmouth Youth Ensemble. It was a great concert and such fun to sketch moving people in the semi-dark!

T was in the far back, but he had to stand (as well as run between various drums and other percussion things) the whole time , so he was easy to see.

A's mom is s champion knitter, and she knits period clothing for docents at Plimoth Plantation.  I loved this pair of mittens that she made. The pattern was based on a fragment of a child's mitten that was found in Scotland dating from the same time period as the settlement.

No sketchbook of mine is complete without its series of chickens. M's chickens were outside in the very cold weather all fluffed up and strutting, and they made me think of Mardi Gras Indians.

On our last day in NH, M, T, and I went out to a little frozen lake nearby and built two large cairns on the rocky shore of the boat and ice fishing hut launch.

The balancing of these relatively large and heavy rocks took lots of concentration. They stand on the shore like lighthouses. We hope they'll still bethere this  summer, rocky islands by that time. 

Catching Up 2

This series continues yesterday's drawings of Egyptian artifacts.  Why are odd little figures -- fertility figures, votives--so appealing?  Every culture seems to have them if you dig around for a while.  I can't get enough of them.

On the left is a spectacular figurative harp from the Mangbetu people, made of wood and hide.  On the right are artifacts from Nate and Abby's bedrooms-- a gold cloth pillow from Nate's gold phase and a plastic hedgehog from one of Abby's collections.

And here are some more or less goofy drawings of N and A, made while they were in constant motion.  Also a demo car bounce seismograph.

On Thursday Nate's other grandparents came up for the day. We four took him to a fine little museum in Morristown.  The delightful 4:1 ratio allowed me to spend a little time drawing alone.  Here are some eerie and enigmatic figurative and goose-like game pieces made of ceramic by a local artist. I wish I had had time to also draw the game board.

Nate and I found a room of Native American artifacts.  We drew together, and below are guest blogger Nate's drawings made while looking at the objects he most liked.

He wrote "amulets" above his drawing on the left. The drawing on the right is of a complex mask at the Met , to which we returned the next day.

On the left is a giant seed pod that Nate found in Mexico when his other grandparents took his whole family and cousins on a grand winter vacation.  On the rest of the double page are little tomb figures from the Met.  I am intrigued by these-- the two on the left are called shawabtys and are workmen for the afterlife.  The five on the right are viscera figures made of mud cores covered with wax and placed inside mummies for good luck.

On Friday E, P, and I brought Nate back to the Met. We focused on the Oceanic and Ancient Americas rooms as well as the Egyptian collections.  Nate's favorite room that day was the one with masks. Here he is drawing with his paper up against a glass case; below are two of his drawings.

Finally Catching Up: 1

We decided to take the sleeper train to NJ this time, assuming the winter weather might be less of an issue for the train than it is for a plane. These first drawings are, therefore pre-trip drawings, made in Greenville where we had to go in order to catch the train.  At the top we were in a restaurant near the station, and below at the station where we waited till 11:40 for the train.  Note the tiny attack dachshund in the lap of the woman in the wheel chair.

At Newark Penn station waiting for K to pick us up these birds were gathered in the top of a low juniper bush.  I had brought Abby some solid tempera paint sticks, and she asked me to draw her while she proceeded to fill almost every page of the sketchbook I had brought her.

On Tuesday P and I went to meet some friends at the Met and I had the extreme fun of drawing Egyptian artifacts, including a wooden paint pallette that had ancient Egyptian paints still in it.

More artifacts. Especially liked the roughly-modelled cow, which had a woven armature plastered over with clay. Very homemade looking.  Tomorrow: some themes begin to emerge!

At Screen Door: Dr. Who Angels, a Styrofoam Boxer, and Other Curiosities

This mannequin is a child, and it is wearing a harness and leash.  The tag shows a mark-down. Later someone put a hold on it. Odd.

A lovely wooden boat, a little rough, but marked down to $1500.  I would put it near a garden and fill it with  pillows for lolling about.

On the left is boxing guy who is about the size of a lawn jockey only he is made of styrofoam and has weird paint streaks on his face and naked torso.  The three concrete lawn Dr. Who -like angels on their plinths are not impressed.

Top Speed Constant Motion/Slow Implied Lumbering

C's dog Coco moves constantly, even when catching her breath between bouts of action.

So of course I was unable to resist drawing her as she scrabbled around on the floor on C's studio at crit group this morning.

By contrast are two in-process papier-mache dogs that M was working on.  These guys are full of implied motion, poised like classical statues, on the very edge of moving in lumbering papier-mache-dog style, this last ready to swing his heavy head.

Slow Motion

Sheep that look like ambulatory bales of hay-

These two walked slowly, bumping each other every few seconds.

Sheep slowly swiveling.