Artomatic one week left

 Yesterday Keith and I went to see the Sketch-crawlers at Artomatic and visit the unseen galleries of art. We had fun but still didn't see it all. Here are a few highlights of things I enjoyed and photographed to share.

artist asked visitors to take a plastic soldier and photograph it and send him the shots... to add to his creation

Jeff Wilson  oil on copper plates of tornados

Christian Tribastone's display of cool drawings with white highlights

Keith admiring Jacqui Crocetta's work we both liked 

Todd Gardner's self portraits as various clowns were fun

Yelena Rodina has some sweet story book style paintings

The Saturday sketch crawlers of Washington DC Urban sketchers

International Sketch-crawl #34 Washington DC

studies of the various gourd hats

We went to the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery and American Art Galleries for our day of sketching. 14 Artists showed up and met in the great atrium where a lovely crowd was gathered for a veggie event that included the Indigenous Gourd Orchestra from the Richmond Virginia area. They proudly proclaimed that they grew and made all their gourd instruments. We set down to sketch them when they began to play. All the members of the orchestra had hats fashioned from gourds too! What a great bunch of music men they were and they had us all rocking to their tunes.

moving targets: the music was a lot of fun, drawing the music men was too  

Washington DC sketch crawlers showing their sketches to the camera woman 

Then we before we went upstairs to draw in the great Lincoln hall we posed for a group photo or two. The gourd guys came rushing over and wanted to get photos too since they noticed we were making sketches of them during their concert.  I guess they wanted to see what we were drawing before we vanished into the museum.

sketching with pencil for a change

this is where Lincoln's 2nd Inaugural Ball was held in 1865

artists sketching while enjoying the Naguchi seating 

From there the group went upstairs and drew in the great hall. Then to lunch and back for a little more sketching. Where I soon found I was running out of energy to draw and not feeling very good about my results decided it was time to head home on metro before it got dark and cold.

second floor sketch of hall where the "Puritan" bronze statue stands on a marble pedestal  

routine stuff

Quilt in the hoop looks interesting on the diagonal 

I like looking at the various fabrics side by side

bright color arrived in the studio yesterday 

I laid out tools to begin covering a new sketch book and completed that task today 

orange is here too 

I like the way the bowl of orange and yellow glows blue like a halo  

Panorama from the sketch-crawl I lead last Saturday on the Metropolitan Branch bicycle Trail 

Army Corps of Engineers plant along the side of the MBT

Power station for Trains along the MBT 

Coffee drinker reading spread sheets in the cafe this morning

metro rider reading a news paper 

return trip on metro during evening rush hour

August begins

It's already the 8th and I feel like it just started. This is such a hot summer it kind of makes me feel like winter when it's too severe to enjoy the weather but we manage to get out in spite of the high heat. I have been going out mornings to draw. Keith is doing his flower arrangements and I my sketches and other routines. I had an exciting experience this past week. Since I post my photos of my work on flickr.com the folks from around the world can look and comment or just mark a photo as a favorite with a red star. One person who's flickr.com profile moniker is "Life Under Quilts" starred on of my photos of a quilt block so I went to see what she does and was delighted by her work. She had a block I really liked and thought I remembered my friend Steven Stichter making while he was at Penland School of Crafts on a quilting intensive for two months years ago. It was one that caught my attention then and again on life under quilts many quilt photos. I took her name for it "ribbon block" and searched on Google to see if I could find out more about it or a pattern. Nothing like that block showed up. So I was telling Keith about it and he suggested I write and ask her how she did it directly which led to a very exciting response the next day.
She had done those blocks as a tutorial and had photos stored away that she had not used but since I asked she would post the whole thing on her blog the following day. See the post here: Life Under Quilts Blog Sure enough, she did and I was in business.
Cut, pin, sew, press, rotate...

cut, pin, sew, press, rotate...

cut, pin, sew, press, rotate... and in a couple hours I had one of my own. I finished it up and I felt so good. I have it on my big embroidery hoop right now doing simple hand stitch quilting on the first pieced pater block I ever made. It's kind of larger than I expected but I used wide ribbons since she didn't say what size to use.  I think I doubled the width of what she used. Next time I will try it thinner and maybe at angles instead of squared up. I like the sort of spiral thing that happens and the depth that can be seen in the space it creates. This is the block before it is quilted.

In the mean time one of the artists I met on the last International Sketch Crawl at Union Station asked me to make her a vellum and print paper sketch book in my Coptic stitch style. I went up to Pyramid Atlantic to cut the paper and some boards on Friday. Gretchen was not there but I saw that Jose the director was back from his summer vacation and Jake Muirhead the intaglio print studio director was getting prints cut before he takes off on his annual summer family vacation. He looked at my July garden sketch book and suggested that they would be nice intaglio prints and I told him I was thinking about that but the color was driving me this summer. Maybe you could hand color them he says, even though he doesn't like hand colored prints personally. Then right after he left there was an intern sitting with a stack of intaglio color prints done with line etching and aquatints. They were yellow and red ink and beautiful dahlias. She explained how they were done ant that they were part of the "print exchange" that one of the other leaders at Pyramid Atlantic was running. I have missed out on that but I have been busy in the garden and with my sketch crawl buddies and my own quilting extravaganza at home.
The book for artist Angela Newman is going to be very difficult to sew. These vellums are hard to handle because they slip and slide when you stack them. I got the covers ready and the paper/vellum. Now I just need a cool day's weather on the back porch to take up the challenge of wrestling them into the binding. I love her drawing style and she has a nice blog she posts on regularly her work while she is in DC before she takes off to Italy later this year to serve in the US Air Force! This is a link to her post from Union Station where she used Vellum as an overlay to make a drawing with extra depth. Very impressive take a look?
I will not make boring art

Angela's book covers ready to assemble and one section of the vellum folded

the finished covers ready to go in the press to dry

Soon Keith and I will be spending some time at the beautiful Chesapeake Bay in a little cottage. We are both trying to figure out how to take our work on the road, keep up our diet--exercise routines and manage doctor appointments while watering our garden from  out of town. Anyone want to babysit some bonsai and potted plants?

July come and gone

I was busy drawing and watering the garden and quilting new small squares in July. I filled every day with creativity beginning first thing in the mornings. One sketch a day, mostly garden drawings with watercolor over my water based ink sketches. They seemed to get better as the mornings progressed. What was really fun about the challenge was posting the pictures on face book every day and hearing lots of positive feedback and seeing the other artists posts too. I also belong to the international group of artists who do sketch crawls and there was one such event on July 23rd when it was 101ºF in DC and no one wanted to be outside to do anything. We decided the best and safest place to draw that Saturday was at Union Station the historic train station of the capitol. It has fantastic air conditioning so we never felt the heat until we were outside and there were lots of different foods to choose from and coffees and bathrooms. Perfect place to hang out for hours doing drawings. Lots of people, architecture, sculpture and shops. I also met a few delightful new artists who came for the first time. I think we all had a famously good time sharing our day drawing and talking and showing our drawings. My best was of a hat stand. I saw a hat I wanted two weeks earlier and did not buy it because I was so sweaty from a long exercise walk on the national mall. That day I didn't want to try it on with a dripping wet head and then decide it wasn't right for my head. It was sold when I returned with the sketch-crawlers but I asked if there would be more. "Maybe next month" was the answer... so I sat and drew the whole stand to focus my memory on the spot and I do plan to return.

4 of the artists who came to international Wash. DC group sketchcrawl #32

first sketch was a sculpture up high over head in the station

Quickly some kids waiting on something with luggage and the "texter" with his mobile

 We took a nice lunch break and shared a big table in the food court. Everyone ate what ever they wanted and then we shared some stories and our sketches. After lunch we went off for some more drawing hour and a half upstairs in the train station.

the amazing hat stand! 

 On my way home I kept sketching and got this tall woman tucked up in a metro seat by the window waiting for the train to pull out on our way north. Tourists from Indiana spoke up loudly next to me to point out to me that I was drawing and offered the news that they were the children of a professional artist in her 80s!

The girl with Express bag on Metro Red line train.

I worked on lots of sketches in our flower garden. A few were done in Manassas while I was out visiting my mother on her birthday and a couple towards the end of the month were of other subjects just to add some last minute variety. I was running out of pretty flowers to work from by the end of July the hottest July on record for DC. 

one of my favorites! Orange of course...

done in a rush before the Saturday all day sketch crawl 

Dan Vera gave me that great turquoise as a sample when I visited to share my sketches with him the day before! 

This daylily has an orange-yellow that has outfoxed me for a couple years in photos and watercolor. I think I finally have it right but the photo doesn't do it justice. 

Manassas has some nice day lilies in pots 

Mom's birthday roses were begging to be in the sketch book

Still life in mother's kitchen ready made. 

August I continue to draw each morning. I am still posting on facebook and my flickr.com if You want to follow along on the daily journey. Keith has begun a year long flower arrangement challenge on his website. He is making an ikebana arrangement each day and photographing it to show on his website. Keith Stanley dot com Amazing stuff he is doing! I am so excited to see him get busy and make his creations without so much stress and worry about getting it all perfect, it is anyway quite perfect but the point is he is sharing his work liberally this  year!