EDM#3 A Bag

The first thing I do when we get to San Diego is to go to Michaels and stock up on art supplies. Of course I NEED them to sketch during our travels, and you know, better safe than sorry, I buy everything in sight. Luckily I like children's art supplies, felt tips, crayons, etc. so not too expensive. But, of course, very bulky. 

When the time came to go back to England, we realised that all those markers did not fit in our suitcases and had to rush to Ross to buy an extra bag. We found this pink bag, and I filled it with my cheap art supplies and other bits and pieces.

In the days in which British Airways was British Airways and American Airlines was American Airlines, you could bring two suitcases each. Now that American Airlines is British Airways and vice versa, things have become very murky re how much luggage you can bring. So when we checked in, a smiling lady said: 'That will be $60'. 'For what?' 'For the extra bag'. I didn't have the heart to dispose of the bag and all of those art supplies, so I paid. And there you are, the most expensive children's markers in the world. So, I learnt my lesson: less might not be more but it's definitely cheaper.

EDM#7 A Jar

 

The EDM I chose yesterday was: draw a jar from the kitchen. So I chose this one. I love going to continental food stores to buy strange looking bread in plastic bags, little sachets of powder soup, and spices. I used to go there looking for flavours from my youth, Italian biscuits I might have eaten for breakfast back home. I learnt very soon that it didn't work. Those biscuits, that wine, not even the focaccia bought before boarding the plane, would taste the same. The surroundings, the air, the history, morph those tastes into something different, with no memory. I wonder if all the people living in a foreign country feel slightly displaced. If an old Jamaican granny goes to the same food store to buy Tex's Family Chicken Seasoning because she misses the flavours from her youth. I wonder if this jar really is Caribbean or especially produced for continental food stores for all the people like me trying desperately to remember.

EDM #10 Draw your hand

 

Inspired by Danny Gregory, who is re-doing all the EDM challenges (328!), I decided to have a go, but unlike him who has a dedicated sketchbook for them and meticulously started with #1, I am drawing in a lot of different sketchbooks and choosing the challenges I fancy in no particular order. 

I thought it would be nice to blog about them, as for every picture there are little things worth mentioning. This is my hand. As you can see, it has two wedding rings. The one below is my wedding ring, a silver Navajo artifact. My husband's ring was lost in the Pacific ocean off the coast of Hawaii two days after our wedding. The second is a gold ring and a family heirloom. It bears the date 12 October 1846. My grandmother's aunt, Romilda Pantaleoni, was a famous opera singer (Verdi wrote the Desdemona for her), and was born in 1847. It is very likely that this was her mother's wedding ring. As Romilda was my hero when I was dreaming of becoming a singer, many years ago I decided to wear her mom's ring. The eerie thing is that it is exactly the same size and shape of my own wedding ring.

The magic of tools

One of the things that fascinate me the most about art making are the tools, not only in the sense of the way they look, smell and feel, or the marks they make, but also their history, where they come from, what meaning they hold. Two pencils have been sitting on my desk lately, begging to be used, and perhaps to be used together. The first is a beautiful Faber-Castell E-Motion. We gave it to our dad on his 80th birthday. He was going blind and had Parkinson. He never used it. The second is a Prismacolor Ebony, perhaps one of the darkest pencils you can find. I dreamt of buying that pencil for three years. I could not find them in the UK and had to wait until I could go back to the States. One of the most exciting things when I land in the US is going to Michaels, and I was very happy to see that they had the pencil I had been dreaming of for such a long time. A bit of sad history and a token of happy history were sitting side by side on my desk, and tonight I decided to see if they could blend together into... life. Into my life. So here's a self portrait, inspired by a self portrait photo I took while we were driving across New Mexico and Arizona. My hair was a mess from taking my hat on and off. The silly expression is that of total bliss.

London Sketch Crawl

Yesterday, a gorgeous sunny and breezy day, I went to Let's Draw London!, a sketch crawl organised by Urban Sketchers London. I didn't count how many we were, but it was quite a big group. We met at Temple and wondered off with our sketchbooks to then meet again later and show each other our drawings.
Although I've always dreamt of being an artist, I didn't start doing any art until the end of 2008. These past four years have been an exciting, scary, frustrating and elating journey. I spent hours on flickr looking at other people's work, I bought tons of books and art supplies, I enjoyed working with collages, mixed media, biros, paint, canvas, found paper, anything with which I could create images. But drawing on location is a truly magical experience, and to become an Urban Sketchers correspondent one day would be a fantastic achievement. I realise how lucky I am that I have discovered a new passion that will keep me busy for the second (and third and fourth) part of my life.

This man was sleeping on a bench oblivious to all the sketchers gathered in Gough Square

Janey and me

Sketching at animal parks is a lot of fun, not only because you can really observe the animals, but also because the animals are likely to observe you. They are used to people mimicking them and taking flash photography, but they are not so used to see a human scribbling on a piece of paper and watching them without direct eye contact. Meerkat sentries take a keen interest in your sketching and so do parrots, but obviously apes and monkeys even more so.
I had the opportunity to visit San Diego Zoo recently and I was sketching away while one of the orangutans came to the glass pane to show off to the audience. I thought it was very funny. She was showing her teeth to the ohhh and ahhh of an amused audience. So I started sketching her and she seemed to observe me with such an intensity, that I turned the sketch around to show her. She came closer to take a look and then seemed to ask me for my pen. I felt very sad that I could not hand her my pen through the glass and she looked sad too, but perhaps it's just the way orangutans look. I kept on showing her my pen moving on the paper making marks, and she kept on watching me and the drawing forming on the paper. Then she came up really close, two inches from my face and stared me right in the eye. It was not a threatening stare, and in fact it looked like she was entering my soul, exploring what was past my eyes, into my very being. I did the same to her, wondering what kind of magical bonding moment was happening between us. I was deeply touched.
Later I found out that her name is Janey and that she is an artist in her own right. She paints, draws and wears makeup. What a bizarre fantastic experience.

The Mighty Blendy Pens

Sometimes I go shopping for art supplies with my friend and fellow artist Diana. I have tons of art supplies already, but I NEED to have more. To impress Diana, I decided to show some kind of restraint last time we went to Cass Art and did not buy a big box of Blendy Pens. I had some old ones at home already, and, really, I didn't need them. Or did I? Actually the Blendy Pens were that one elusive tool that would have magically guided my hand into creating the most amazing art EVER. I had to have them. As simple as that. So I bought them online for £2 more than they cost at Cass. When they finally arrived in the post I discovered that they were bigger than the ones I had already, and I much preferred the smaller ones. I started to wonder as to whether the Cass ones were big or small. Should I go back to Cass and get them? Two boxes of Blendy Pens - isn't that a bit too much? Do I "deserve" them? Of course, if I showed myself worthy of them. But how? The idea of a Blendy Pen pilgrimage started taking shape in my head: I am going to walk to Cass! 5.5 miles!!! The next day I set off at 9am with a small rucksack and a bottle of water and walked, walked, walked. The funny thing about this pilgrimage was that I walked by two places where I used to live ages ago, and so it also became a memory lane kind of walk. I walked by shops, gardens, dogs, cats and lots of joggers (were they all running to Cass?). An altogether fantastic and dreamy experience. 2 hours later I arrived in Cass, ran downstairs and grabbed the Blendy Pens box, only to discover that it was identical to the one I had bought online. So I bought something else (well, I had to, after all that!) and took the bus home.
As a present for Diana's birthday I made this sketch of a vintage car from a photo I took in Julian, AZ, and coloured it with... the mighty Blendy Pens!