Mural at the train station in Edison, New Jersey
We were picking up a friend last week, and I spotted this mural of a river. I call it the Edison Train Station Mural. I am guessing the river depicted is the Raritan River. See what happens when you bring your camera on small local trips? I never noticed the mural before. I decided to do a quick Google search, and guess what? The mural is by Katherine Hackl of Katherine Hackl Pottery & Tiles.
Elsewhere in the Blogosphere
Ilana-Davita has a weekly review, and in the weekly review she links to the recent JOFA journal. I open the journal (a pdf), and what do I find but a nice article about Eva Oles, z”l, of Highland Park who passed away earlier this year (I didn’t even know she had died until I was sitting shiva for my father – I was a little distracted). It is written by Roselyn Bell, whom I know as Rosie. Thank you, Rosie, for the sweet words.
We have gotten little snow this past winter – lots of threats and warnings, but no school has been cancelled due to snowstorms. I love photographing snow scenes, but New Jersey only gives me infrequent opportunities. I grew up in the Boston area, and they got much more snow this past winter. Anyone remember the blizzard of 1978?
The cardinals were content to visit our backyard once again and enjoy the bird feeder and branches.
This shot of the female cardinal shows a lot of her red – unlike her male partner, she is mostly brown, but when you get closer, you can see the pretty bits of red. I think it’s quite lovely.
One can see the reds of female cardinal here – love those streaks of red amongst the brown.
The male Northern Cardinal is perhaps responsible for getting more people to open up a field guide than any other bird. They’re a perfect combination of familiarity, conspicuousness, and style: a shade of red you can’t take your eyes off. Even the brown females sport a sharp crest and warm red accents. Cardinals don’t migrate and they don’t molt into a dull plumage, so they’re still breathtaking in winter’s snowy backyards. In summer, their sweet whistles are one of the first sounds of the morning.
I do find my cardinals tend to visit in the cold. I don’t see them in the summer.
I did this portrait of Jill with colored pencils and ink pen at the first meeting of our artist group. I set up a still-life for the group to sketch, but then I asked the group if it was OK if I drew one of the members. Jill said it was fine, and she also approved my posting this particular drawing on my blog. I did two others, but I felt this one looked more like her, although maybe a Jill Caporlingua who is twenty years younger. I left the spiral on the left of my sketchbook in the reproduction for the web to give the viewer the idea that this is a sketch and not a finished portrait.
I did the pen part of this drawing without looking at the paper; I just stared at Jill’s head and let my hand do the work on the paper. This is called “contour drawing.” It is a great way to learn how to draw.
In case any of you would like a drawing exercise, here’s one for our next artist group meeting: Draw (or paint) an everyday object. It can be depicted as realistically or as abstractly as the individual desires.
Suggestions: scissors, salt shaker, pillow, curtains, stapler, fork
I did a few sketches and then I did a painting of a salt shaker. I looked in Google Images – lots of other artists have also drawn salt shakers as a subject.
I hope you like onions. This post features onions. One onion is red. One onion is yellow. The scallions are green. The garlic clove in the photo is white (but it doesn’t appear in the art below).
I am showing the onions art in the reverse order that I did them. I am so happy with this watercolor. It is painted in a sketchbook of textured watercolor paper that Jill C. gave to me. I have a drawing of Jill that I did at our first artist group, and I will show in a separate post. I don’t want to take it out of the book, but it does mean I have to photograph the art instead of sticking it in my scanner, which is easier.
I did this drawing of the onions and scallions with an ink pen.
Red and yellow onion are drawn on paper with colored pencils. With colored pencils, it is good to work with different shades of a color and with different colors within an object to produce form, texture and light. I erased a bit to get the light to shine on the onions.
The theme for Thursday Challenge is SIGN (Commercial, Traffic, Funny,…), so I decided to highlight a favorite store in Highland Park, New Jersey. I have bought a fair amount of clothing for my daughter this year at this Covered Girl Clothing shop. Recently, we bought her a black skirt so she could dress as Mary Poppins for Purim. I have bought nothing for myself this past year, as my father died in October, and it is Jewish custom not to buy new clothes for one year after a parent dies, in memory of the parent. The owner is quite friendly; you can enjoy chats with her while you shop the dresses, skirts and blouses.
In an unrelated news (or perhaps it is related, as everything is connected, no?), we had the first meeting our newly-formed artist group today. A few of us got together at my home, talked about art, and sketched together. I’ll write more about that soon, in a separate post.
I have been reading a lot of writers’ websites. I’ve noticed as they make their lists, I often say, yes, artists think that way as well. For example, A. K. Andrews asks, Can Your Computer Drain Your Creativity? One could certainly make this argument for writers or visual artists. In this post, I’ll explore what artists and writers share in common.
Here is my list:
If you don’t write, you won’t have good or bad writing. So write. If you don’t draw, you won’t have a good or bad drawing. So draw.
Creativity drives the work of both artist and writer. Artist’s block or writer’s block can hamper that creativity.
Artists and writers can both make use of blogs as platforms to show their work.
Inspirational exercises can stimulate both artists and writers.
A blog can be used as a platform to teach art or writing. An artist or a writer can thus demonstrate their skills.
Artists think in images. Writers think in words. Both tend to hyperfocus when at work.
An interviewer asked Hemingway, why did you rework the ending so many times? What was it that stumped you? He replied, “Getting the words right.” An artist in a similar fashion can rework a painting many times, especially one or two details.
What do you think – what do artists and writers share in common? How are they different?
Note on the drawing: I found the drawing of a young girl in a sketchbook – it must be from almost ten years ago, when my daughter was a toddler.
I got some nice shots of a female cardinal visiting in our backyard. You can even see her feathers.
This is a close-up detail of her feathers.
Hello, Mrs. Cardinal! What a fine bright red beak you have.
Is this the same female cardinal? She looks a little different than the one shown above.
Mr. Cardinal was a bit further off, hiding in the lower branches of a neighbor’s bush.
On a different topic, I put some scallion ends in water in my kitchen. Truthfully, I forgot about them; oh, my, I see they really have grown! I did change the water at least once. I think you are supposed to change the water every other day.
After much pondering and going back and forth and almost picking Rough Sketch, I went with Sketching Out as the new name of this blog. If Sketching Out reminds you a bit of the Joe Jackson song Stepping Out, so be it. If not, I hope it at least makes you think of sketches of art, sketches of books, recipes to try, food cooked up in a kitchen to be sketched into a watercolor or photographed on a plate of china, and photos of nature. I tossed out Rough Sketch because I didn’t care for the word Rough. I ruminated over A Sketch in Time for a few minutes, mostly because I realized the ‘S’ would bump me down in the alphabet instead of up to an ‘A’ (for a smart ‘A’ – see ‘A Mother in Israel’).
The font in the header is called Sketch Rockwell. It goes well with the new name, does it not? I can say that I may change the header once again, but I will probably instead concentrate on gathering new content. One idea for the blog in the future is to have guest posts of artists teaching some simple artistic technique. Long ago, Jill Caporlingua wrote a post on using Salt in Watercolor Painting. That is a great example of a post that would fit this blog. I also hope to continue artist interviews. As spring approaches, I plan to fill up posts with lovely photos of local nature. And whenever a Jewish holiday approaches, you can count on me to find some creative approach to preparing for or celebrating the hag (holiday). One of the topics I have written about in the past may come up again: a popular post is about How to Pay a Shiva Call: A Guide for Non-Jews. Difficult topics such as shiva, death and mourning may make the occasional appearance.
I will continue occasionally post about Highland Park, New Jersey, but the old name of Here in HP is now happily laid to rest. So long, old-fashioned name. Hello, new ideas, new energy, new focus, new readers (I hope), and your input, too.
If you have been reading this blog for a while, is there any category or topic in particular that I have posted about that appeals to you? Any ideas of what might fit this new title of Sketching Out?
