Sometimes you have been elsewhere than the blogosphere, and you want to convey some of what you have learned and seen, but you don’t always have a set tale or a method or a how-to or some other funky way of setting up the oh, so awesome post. So some of the places I have been: 1) skiing in Pennsylvania with my sons 2) strolling through Central Park in the cold snow with my husband and daughter 3) viewing the Chagall exhibit at the Jewish Museum 4) creating watercolor exercises like the wet on dry Gerber daisy flower above for the FB group One Watercolor a Day and 5) working away for various clients, including one project for anthropologists that started last June and may finally be close to becoming two new websites. I’m not going to say more about 5), because there is still more to be done, but maybe I can talk a bit about the other “subjects.”
On the topic of blogs, what is this blog about? I want to continue to share artwork; this blog can help propel me forward with creative ideas both for my traditional fine art and for illustration work that might be for client work. I would like to continue to share in Nature Notes, though I only participate when I have been photographing nature, and that has been slim pickings lately. Sometimes I talk about Highland Park – I’ve done Hurricane Sandy and some recent power outages (there were more tonight; friends on the South Side are not having fun). I used to do more recipes – my thinking in the future is maybe I will focus on teaching creative cooking. For example, how does one create a good soup? a tasty salad? Years ago I wanted to blog about how to get one’s children to eat healthy food. I still struggle with that, but my children probably do eat more vegetables than the average American, although only if placed directly in front of them in a manner that is appealing. I will sometimes post book reviews, but those take a lot of my energy and time, so expect those sparingly. There are Jewish topics, often of a creative nature like a piyut (liturgy poem), that I love to explore. In the past, I’ve interviewed artists and writers – maybe I’ll have the opportunity to more interviews. And with all of these topics, I love getting your feedback. If you share my enthusiasm for any of these topics, would love to hear so in a comment.
Getting back to my recent adventures, here is a favorite ski slope scene:
For this blog post, I’ve said enough. Will have to save more conveying in a future post! To finish off, here is the wet-on-wet version of the Gerber daisy flower I painted:
I joined a wonderful online Facebook group related to the book One Watercolor a Day by Veronica Lawlor. You share the exercises you do from the book in a closed group. At the right is the first exercise, sometimes known as Day 1. You were supposed to experiment with different colors and marks on a page, keeping a set palette with each watercolor. I did a lot of what is called wet on wet – you apply water, then a color, then another color – it’s not easy to control, but one sometimes gets lovely results.
So I was wondering when am I going to fit in doing a watercolor a day? Or even one watercolor a week? This past Sunday I learned if you have sunlight but no power, you can paint and paint and paint. At about noon on Saturday we (and thousands of other Edison and Highland Park residents) lost power (there was a damaging fire at a substation in Edison, New Jersey). We did not get out power back until 4 pm on Sunday (others got power back at varying times). It was a totally unexpected blackout. Those who had bought generators after miserable Hurricane Sandy were happy(satisfied?) to use them.
I learned (again) how much we depend on technology and power. Indeed, I had a pile of work I needed to do, but it all had to wait. Happy to have a little space and time to paint with watercolors.
There is also a Facebook group for the book One Drawing a Day (see my review called One Drawing Per Week). I’ll try that one later – one can only do so much.
Umbrellas, watercolor and gouache on paper by Leora Wenger, 2013
In continuation of a series of watercolors related to Raritan Avenue in Highland Park, here is my latest that I am calling: Umbrellas. I took at least ten photos of this watercolor painting in different light until I picked one that was closest to the image. It still had a little too much blue, so in Photoshop I slightly decreased the balance of blue. The idea of the painting was to emphasize the color of the umbrellas and the wetness of the day. The people are just busy.
The brighter less opaque colors in the watercolor on this page are done in gouache. I posted a detail of this painting last week on Google+. Go ahead and Plus One my watercolor Google+ posting, if you like.
I am continuing my work on house illustrations. Last week I showed you a sketch I had done of a Highland Park house. Above is my Illustrator version of an illustration of this home. I originally made all the windows black, and then I decided to switch the windows above to a blue gradient, so it looks like a sky reflection. The illustration is made of a collection of shapes placed in many layers in Illustrator.
One of the features of a good flat design illustration is eliminating details and only depicting what is most important to view. This process of what to include and what to leave out is not an easy one.
My long term plan is to depict at least three homes in this manner. Here is another house illustration – I sketched the above drawing by hand using pencil and then a ink pen (then I scanned it into the computer). If you know Highland Park, I welcome you to walk around and look at the homes to see if you can find these. But I won’t identify them directly.
I also plan to do some flat design bushes and trees as elements in between the homes. The lamppost in the top illustration makes a fine detail for this purpose as well. I’ve been collecting various illustrations in Pinterest so I can refer to those illustrations for ideas.
This morning I was playing around with the Live Trace tool in Illustrator, and I created the above line art drawing from the original sketch.
This process of creating a suburban street scene with houses and trees is taking longer than I anticipated.
The last time I started working on houses, roofs, and illustrated street scenes I got as far as this roof with second floor and then that was it for quite a while. I’m now tackling the projects of depicting a few houses in a row in a flat design illustration. So far, I photographed a few houses, searched for old photographs I had taken and decided it was easier to take new ones, did one or two pen illustrations from my house photographs, and started an illustration of one house in Adobe Illustrator.
I also pinned a fair number of house illustrations to Pinterest. I noticed the successful illustrations follow less is more … a few accents in color can go a long way.
After I do a few houses, I plan to work on illustrated trees, bushes and other elements you might find in an old-fashioned borough like Highland Park. I’m hoping I can find a way to do clouds that don’t look like everyone else’s clouds. Stay tuned for more houses, roofs, illustrations and my artistic endeavors in those areas.
Umbrellas of Raritan Avenue, watercolor by Leora Wenger, 2013
I have mixed feelings about my art work lately; it takes me a long time to do a painting, then I don’t care for my execution of the painting. But I am attracted to my original idea of Umbrellas on Raritan Avenue. So today in my art group I started a drawing for another painting, this time with a close up detail of the umbrellas:
My photos come out darker than the original, and despite playing a bit in Photoshop, it’s still too dark. But I like this composition. I won’t give up – maybe at some point I’ll say, yeah, that’s where I was aiming.
Here I am, posting rain imagery on a day that it snowed. Ah, well, snow is another subject to tackle.
Boy talks to Fisherman by Raritan River, watercolor painting by Leora Wenger 2013
I finished this watercolor painting of a boy talking to a man fishing at the Raritan River two weeks ago at the same time I completed the Highland Park Traffic watercolor. This watercolor belongs to a series of art projects that I have done on this theme. I’m going to replicate some older art river/fisherman projects on this post (so you don’t have to click back to look).
Here’s the drawing of the boy and man:
And here’s a colored pencil sketch of the scene:
Finally, this is a Raritan River watercolor I did last summer, of a similar scene by the Raritan River:
I have some ideas for a next watercolor: maybe a combination of an Israeli flag with jacaranda blooms, mabye an illustration of a therapists since I am working on websites for therapists, maybe another Highland Park scene – we shall see.
I started this watercolor Highland Park Traffic several months ago when we first started our artist group. After a month or two of getting frustrated with the details, I put it aside. I finally decided to finish it yesterday and ignore the details that weren’t clear. So if it looks like the cars are swimming in a river of purple watercolor paint, so be it.
The scene is Raritan Avenue in Highland Park, New Jersey. And often it does look there is a sea of cars swimming on the avenue. Our little borough’s downtown has an old-fashioned look. There are also numerous senior citizens that live in the town. When I took a photo several months ago, I unknowingly captured an older woman with a cane. She reminded me a bit of my father, who walked with a cane in the last months of his life.
I am trying to decide whether to continue with watercolor or delve back into the more time-consuming oil painting. With oils, it is easier to rework parts of the painting. With watercolor, other than careful lifting, it is quite difficult to make changes once one has laid down the heavier colors. And unless you use gouache, there is no white paint, so it is important to leave the whitest whites blank paper.
Question for you: what pops out at you in this painting?
My daughter is taking an art class in fashion. So she was excited when I volunteered to share some of her drawings in a post:
A few questions came up regarding the class. It seems that her art teacher used words to which she was unaccustomed to talk about the human body (the main word in question is b-*-*-b-s). It sounds like her teacher even pointed to that part of the human body while using this language. To give a little background, my daughter and her friends attend a modern Orthodox Jewish day school. So they are unaccustomed to hearing such language in the classroom. One friend felt it was OK to talk that way; another said it would be OK for a science teacher to talk about those parts of the body. I pointed out that sometimes the science teacher talks about the science or anatomy but doesn’t bring up the feelings that the words might elicit.
In addition, my daughter told me she was careful to draw dresses that are what is called tznuah – modest. My daughter wears short-sleeved shirts, as I do, but not sleeveless. We also wear skirts that reach close to our knees. In school, she has to wear quarter-sleeves or longer and skirts below the knee or longer. She sometimes wears pants, but she is not allowed to do so in school. As opposed to feeling trapped by these rules, as some girls do, I think they make her feel safe. The one drawing on this post that is sleeveless she explained to me is a bathing suit. In her most recent dance school she was required to wear a dress that had hardly any top at all, so it made her feel naked. She was very unhappy about that outfit.
A Discussion on Fashion and Modesty
With the view that people have different cultural norms, and certainly anyone reading this post may have a different viewpoint, upbringing and outlook from my daughter, myself, her art teacher or her science teacher, I have a few questions for you.
Have you ever given much thought to how you dress?
Would you be comfortable with the use of the word b-*-*-b-s in the classroom?
Feel free to discuss in the comments anything I have mentioned. The point is to understand someone else’s point of view.
Tell Us Your Favorite Fashion Design
On a lighter note, you could comment on your favorite outfit on this post.
Today is a fast day on the Jewish calendar: Shiva Assur B’Tammuz (the 17th Day of the Month of Tammuz). I have been planning to post some nature notes of jacandra tree blooms and other nature in the Galil, but that will wait until next week. Above is a photo I took when I was in Jerusalem last month. The photo (near the main bus station) shows an example of the mix of architecture in Jerusalem, although if you really want to see the old, old of Jerusalem, visit my post on the City of David. Other posts on Jerusalem: Jerusalem Day and Jerusalem in Ruins.
What happened on the 17th of Tammuz? According to this Chabad article, there were five tragic events on this day, but I will mention this one:
The walls of Jerusalem were breached by the Romans, in 69 CE, after a lengthy siege. (Three weeks later, after the Jews put up a valiant struggle, the Romans destroyed the second Holy Temple on the 9th of Av.)
I’m going to re-post my watercolor from 2011 – you can learn more about its significance on the post Fox in Ruins.
