Real Estate & Sleep

 A new gadget 

Always looking

How many steps

How much sleep

Heart beat

Obsession! 

"In healthy adults, about 13 to 23 percent of your sleep is deep sleep. So if you sleep for 8 hours a night, that’s roughly 62 to 110 minutesTrusted Source of your sleep is deep sleep. So if you sleep for 8 hours a night, that’s roughly 62 to 110 minutes." Healthline.

What has that got to do with real estate? Nothing! Just been on my mind lately!

Also been thinking about real estate. Not the kind you buy, but the space you create on. Your substrate size. I would call myself a medium size painter. 5"x7" would probably be the smallest I would go. If I want smaller, say for cards, I have my trusty cutter. 

Last fall did an exercise on a full sheet of paper, roughly 27"x39" of a repetitive pattern with various pencils, graphite, charcoal, crayons, etc on newsprint. I chose the circle as my motif, loosely! Had it on my wall, mainly for inspiration, loved various sections. Masking tape isn't a good adhesive, and it kept falling off. Didn't want to chop it off, but I needed smaller real estate.

Then I viewed Helen Wells' video on one page sketchbook! 

Voila! 8 pages of smaller real estate, around 6.5"x10", that I can experiment with, fold in squares up, etc. In the photos you can see extra creases.

Full Sheet

Front

2-3

4-5

6-7

Back

Paper has tape stains, tears, etc, but I love it. Hope to start a new series of circle motifs . Click to enlarge files!

Trusted Source

 

Sharing a Visit

This pandemic has been a difficult, trying and frustrating time, but I find it is teaching us some valuable lessons. One such lesson is, don't take things for granted.  Before the pandemic, I would make weekly visits to my daughter and grand-sons.  It's a fairly simple drive, half an hour on the major highway to Jerusalem. I took these outings for granted. Tuesday morning was art workshop day, Wednesday visit Yael. When they were much younger my weekly visits were helpful because that was the day Yael had evening classes to teach and I had to make supper, see that they took their bathes, and read before bedtime. It was a sleepover when they were still living in Aminadav, outside of Jerusalem. Since their move to Neve Shalom two years ago, the visits are easier, I can drive, and Yael usually is at home, so we enjoy a coffee together while catching up. The kids don't "need my help" but my presence is important to them. 

This changed with Covid, lockdowns and visiting restrictions.

So when I can make a visit WOW what a treat!  Noam wasn't at home because his school allows him to take part in their boarding school, two weeks at school, two weeks at home, but I had an enjoyable visit with Uri, 11, and Yael. Maybe next week Uri will start school. It was good to get out of the house in the fresh air! 

  

View from the deck

They built the house around the tree!

Zoom homeschooling

Caught Uri in the middle of his class, later went out on the deck to paint. A lesson in intuitive painting!

My creation

Gouache + oil pastel 

Uri's drawing

Uri's painting with a view of the garden

Uri's painting closeup

Gouache

Not going to take these visits "for granted."

New Work

WIP

Cut Canvas 19.75 x 27.5 "

Graphite Mark Making

WIP

Cut Canvas 19.75 x 27.5 "

First layers using prompts

colored pencil oil pastels oils

Project Motherhood

“Motherhood is a choice you make everyday, to put someone else's happiness and well-being ahead of your own, to teach the hard lessons, to do the right thing even when you're not sure what the right thing is...and to forgive yourself, over and over again, for doing everything wrong.”   Donna Ball, At Home on Ladybug Farm

Last weekly workshop for the season. Crit on last project "motherhood" a subject that has been used for creativity since the beginning of human existence. After doing some basic research of how others dealt with this subject and collecting images from the Renaissance and more modern painters such as Chagall and Cecily Brown, statues and photographs as well, especially Dorothy Lange's famous photo journal of the migrant workers in the 30's I decided on two icon images. Matteo Giovanni Madona and Migrant Mother photograph by Dorothy Lange.

Matteo Giovanni

Dorothy Lange

Migrant Mother

Photo Montage 

In photoshop I was amazed by how the two faces merged together and I used this as my "inspiration"
A play of negative and positive. Went a bit over on the metallic gold!

Migrant Madonna

17.5" x 20.5"

Graphite and acrylic on heavy beige paper

What is more interesting was the discarded piece on the back that I am thinking of pulling out.

       Inspired by Cecily Brown and a bit of Chagall. Think it will be a good push and pull exercise!

Mothers WIP

20.5" x 17.5"

It's All About the Figure

The third week we started on the full figure! Mainly in black and white, lots of sketches, sketches, and more sketches! The name of the game is PRACTICE! Like everything else, we like to do! First I want to share some good reference links. The first Croquis Cafe, an endless site for everything to do with figure drawing. The second Royal Academy Life Drawing Class.

We got five stills to do gesture sketches in ink and watercolor pencil. I am slowly getting over my fear of INK. It's still intimidating, but the more I practice the better I feel. These are timed 10 minute sketches to keep from "noodling"!

12.5 x 9.5"

Ink

9.75 x 13.75

Ink

12.5 x 9.5"

Ink

15.75 x  13"

Ink

9.75 x 13.5

Ink

Next, we did some upsidedown drawing. This is a great exercise because it helps to eliminate the left brain telling us what we are drawing.  She gave us two examples from Egon Schiele.  Worked with graphite wash pencil and added some crayons as well. Adding water gives a painterly look. Loved doing these!

9 x 11.75

Watercolor graphite + Neocolor I crayons

9 x 11.75

Watercolor graphite 

Did two of these turning the paper!

Here some links for references. Egon Schiele work on Instagram, and a figure drawing board of Pauline's on Pinterest.

Finally a pastel painting of a figure.

9.75 x  13.75"

Pastel Pencils + Pastels

Tinted Paper

9.75 x  13.75"

Pastel Pencils + Pastels

Tinted Paper

Tomorrow we start putting it all together!

Collage January 30 x 30 2017

This time I wanted to make my collage using Photoshop. Sometimes life interferes and I didn't have the time and mental energy to cope. Missed the date to link to the challenge site but decided to post anyway.  After several tries, I made an action to resize by batch, brought them in a new doc and moved them around. Next one will be better.  Happy camper!! Have to renew my PS skills!!

Day 12 January 30 x 30 2017

Small graphite sketch on plain white paper. Just a bunch of circles! Added a touch crayons.

26 x 15 cm

Graphite Pencil + crayons

Plain Paper

Day 5 January 30 x 30 2017

Another on brown paper with crayons. Should go stronger with the crayons... hey it's just a small piece of paper, what's the problem!!! May tweak this!!!

26 x 18 cm

Brown Paper

Graphite Mechanical Pencil Crayons

Day 4 January 30 x 30 2017

Love working on gray paper, somehow the quite tone speaks to me. Graphite stick caught some of the textures from the corrugated board I was using to draw on. Still scratching with the mechanical pencil. Like the addition of color, although very timidly

I am still finding it hard to work in a void especially since I have so many stimuli.  I just have to open a new tab on the browser and up comes a gorgeous  HD image from Unsplash. 

26 x 18 cm

Brown Paper

Graphite Stick Mechanical Pencil Crayons

Day 3 January 30 x 30 2017

Here we are on Day 3 of the challenge. A small sketch done with graphite stick, mechanical pencil, smudging, and eraser eliminating. Very hard to erase graphite! Learning curve! The scan did pick up more smudges than seen with the eye!

21 x 15 cm

Sketch Book

Graphite Stick and Mechanical Pencil

Day 2 January 30 x 30 2017

Another cross motif. Still playing with graphite mechanical pencil 2B.  Such a wide variety of marks you can get from one pencil.

21 x 15

 Sketch Book

Mechanical Pencil

Day 1 January 30 x 30 2017

This is going to be a double challenge for me. First to paint/draw every day, and second to do this intuitively without and outside reference. Recently I signed up for an online e-course by Janie Davies which I hope will help loosen my art and move into new directions. I really don't know how these new directions will affect my art or that I will always continue in an abstract way.

Generally, my format will be paper varying sizes. Mediums will mostly be dry but with the option of using some mediums on the dry marks or acrylic paint. May do collage as well. We'll see where all this takes me.

To let myself go is a very scaring journey... I am trying to overcome my fear with excitement.

30 x 21 cm paper

graphite stick + mechanical pencil 2B

I was using a piece corrugated carton and like the texture that it made on the paper. Pencil smudging. 

Don't know why I keep coming back to the "cross" motif. 

Pages in My Sketchbook 2

Pages in My Sketchbook 2

Past week was not very productive.... but did a few... so here they are....

Double spread

15/3/15

20.5 x 27 cm handbook

Mechanical pencil

Lilly sleeping  Cloths and other stuff on the chair

Double spread

17/3/14

20.5 x 27 cm handbook

Graphite stick

Mish Mish posing on the bed