We watched a local parade today from a friend's yard. She holds a drop-in brunch/parade-watching morning in her yard on the route. It is great for families, kids table of breakfast outside, table for adults inside. This is the second time we've gone. I meet interesting people, watch the parade and the children and the excitement. It's great fun. I love parades and they always remind me of my Dad. Last year, we sat by the street in our lawn chairs, but this year, it was too hot! Our friend thoughtfully had a pop up canopy on the lawn from where we watched in shade along with a couple of nice families with overheated children. The yard has a hedge and gate so it's easy for toddlers to run around, not under the wheels of a float.
I did the drawing on site at the parade, moving people where I needed them for the design, including the little brothers in matching stripes lower left. I added watercolor back at home, from my head, then used a little colored pencil and a china white pencil for some accents. My first thought was to only color the flags, but I rejected that idea, because i had intentionally added a number of flags and it would have been spotty. I love painting crowds of people, the busyness, the color, the activity. There's always a lot going on. I am working on simplifying the shapes and looking at groups of people as masses rather than individuals.
I designed this sketch with everyone looking to the right, the biggest flag to the right and a little girl in Dad's arms pointing off the page to the direction the parade is coming from. Rather than leading the viewer's eye off the page, the design brings the viewer's eye there, and then carries it back into the page, where the two little boys are in the opposite corner, then around through the crowd. By the way, this is a parade painting without any parade. It tells the story through the crowd.
This is my two hundred sixty-eighth daily drawing. Again, thank you for looking and Happy 4th of July.
There's a small coffee shop on Monhegan by the dock, with great 12 over 12 windows that look out at the harbor and Manana. The Barnacle is a nice place to have a beverage, or an ice cream, or a cup of chowder, or a scone... you get the picture. The building is very old, so I have to duck under its cross beams which I would guess started at about 6 feet from the floor, but have settled a bit over the years. On a sunny day, people come and go, and can pick up a few postcards, some blueberry jam, and maybe a bottle of wine just before embarking on their Monhegan visit, or their ferry ride back across to the mainland. You can sit at the oil cloth-covered tables and pass some time on a sunny day. Each year, there are different little past times in baskets on the tables. One year it was Madlibs, another year we found Magnetic Poetry sets, and another year those little sliding puzzles that can drive you bonkers.
When the weather is foul here on the island, the few small shops, the library, and The Barnacle get crowded with damp, steaming island visitors looking for warmth and distraction. The two drawings above are from such a day when the Barnacle was packed! We were lucky to get a table, to play a little solitaire, open the sketch book and wait out the passing torrents. "Rainy Day at the Coffee Shop" is my take on this month's Girls Just Wanna Paint theme for June, "interiors". Check out the other entries on our blog.
As always, thanks for looking. You know I love your comments.
