Days 572 and 573 Dinner at a Pub - Coaster Art

It's nice to draw in a pub; lots of activity, people, interesting decor and interesting overlap of foreground to background, and often a view out the window with backlighting.  I carry some blank coasters with me, and draw on them, adding watercolor later.  The texture is interesting and super absorbent... coaster's job.  We ate at McGreevy's in Boston the other night, great food and a fun pub atmosphere.  The Red Sox game was cancelled as the skies opened up just after the game's starting time.... soggy fans poured in.  The onslaught got the kitchen confused and our food was delayed.  We didn't care.  It gave me more time to draw, and to enjoy dinner with my husband and daughter. The first two drawings were made while sitting in the pub, and the third from a photo I took out front as we left. 

These are my five hundred seventy-second and third daily drawings.  Thank you for your continued interest.    

Day 206 "Walk Light" 9 x 12 pen & ink

I grabbed this image of people walking across the street at Boylston and St. Cecelia Streets.  I love the bustle of people coming and going, sometimes alone, sometimes with friends, with the backdrop of interesting buildings.  This is my two hundred sixth drawing.  Thank you for your continued interest.

Architectural Grouping

This afternoon, the Girls Just Wanna Paint hung a group show at the South Shore Natural Science Center in Norwell.  We each hung 5 paintings.  I brought several more, so I could decide as I looked at the space.  Ultimately I chose all architectural paintings. Seeing them together is a nice reminder that I love painting buildings.  I like their shapes against the sky, with crisp edges, and the way those edges fade into their surroundings as the eye descends.  I love the shapes that coalesce into a visual of the structure... very exciting to me.  

"Berkeley and Boylston" oil 12 x 12

This month, Girls Just Wanna Paint explored the limited palette often used by Swedish painter Anders Zorn (1860 - 1920).  The Zorn palette is limited to yellow ochre, black, white, and cadmium red deep.  I have always told my students that if the values are accurate, then the painting will hold.  It was interesting using a warm red and a cool yellow with the black and white.  I almost never have black on my palette, so it was disconcerting at first to make gray with black, a technique I usually avoid. However, I never left the gray as only black and white, but altered it each time with a little of the cad red, or a little of the yellow.  The "battleship" gray possible with just black and white doesn't ring true to me, regardless of the palette I am using.  Every gray out there is influenced by its surroundings, even on a battleship. This is a painting of Berkeley Street from the intersection at Boylston in Boston, looking down at the Church of the Covenant, which creates a beautiful silhouette against the sky. 
  

You can see my block in for the painting and some iterative photos here.  It was a fascinating exercise, and very interesting to make cools out of black with yellow ochre, which makes an interesting olive green.  I'm going to do some more experimenting with this palette. You can see the rest of our paintings here. 

As always I love your comments.  What do you think?

"Breakfast on Boylston" watercolor and ink 9 x 10

I added some color to "Breakfast on Boylston", from my memory of the day sitting in the coffee shop window.  I make make another adjustment or two.  Spring is beginning to emerge from this long, gray, snowy winter.  We were in the city the other night with friends for dinner, and the air is perfect, that New England air, where light jacket will do.  Gone is the hunched and bent posture of the of winter, looking at the ground for safe footing, clutching hat to head and hand to neck against the piercing wind.  We are beginning to look up, as the woman on the left above... her pace is slower, smiling in conversation.   Looking forward to more city days...

Thanks for looking. 

"Breakfast on Boylston" pen & ink 9 x 10

 Today was "deliver daughter back to college after her spring break" day in Boston.  I spent the morning in a Boylston St coffee shop with a  bag of schoolwork and my sketchbook. I enjoy people watching, and sketching Boston architecture.  People were out and about, many hustling off to the T to get to the St. Patrick's Day parade, and the rest enjoying the recently reclaimed-from-snow sidewalks.  What an enjoyable morning!

Thanks for looking.