Hands

On Saturday I went to draw hands with Urban Sketchers NYC.
My friend Jin has a fountain pen which is nice and fast- a good one... it is a Moonman M2 and is around $20.
So, if you need a good fountain pen for drawing, that's a good one... I of course got one and I like it very much.

We all met in the atrium of the IBM building, and I need to go back there, what a great place to paint!

It was nice seeing some people I met at the portrait party again.  We all drew each others' hands for 4 hours.

Apparently there is a recurring doll meetup n the atrium.

Gouache and Friday Rehearsal

I ran out of time on this one!
Another step in my learning.....

Gouache & Puffers & T-Rex

My amazing friend Drusilla invented the BEST WORD EVER today: 

Pufferfishish.

So instead of painting the dance studio at dance, I painted puffers in my sketchbook.

I did a little experimenting with materials combinations.

Near the end of class, one of the other moms came over to chat. She works at the Museum of Natural History, and today her new exhibit opened.  So for the party, she wore a T-Rex inner ear.  It is larger than life, and she thinks it is too big but I think it is the coolest thing ever.

She was so nice to let me try it on!

So then I was explaining how pufferfishish came about, and how Dru and I like weird animals and we call them our pets, she pulled up a video of peacock spiders doing the most ridiculous mating dance.

I love these wonderfully weird encounters. 

Gouache and Audition

Yesterday Daya had an audition at Manhattan Youth ballet for their summer program.

She has muscles.

I painted while waiting, about an hour and 15 mins.
The time went by so fast.

Afterward, a woman came up to me and said she had been watching the whole time- she couldn't believe I just pulled a whole art studio out of my bag like it was nothing (it is no big deal), and she loved my painting and just thought the whole thing was so cool.

Maybe one day she will start painting, too.

Ten Years.

I have had this travel watercolor set for 10 YEARS.

Only today did I discover that bottom tray slides out.

Gouache and Moleskine

I got a new Moleskine sketchbook, the watercolor one. 
James Gurney uses these.
It's different from my gray drawing paper, and I like it.

I would like to fill or mostly-fill the book this month.

Friday Night

Saturday

Gouache and Snow

Mini-snowstorm.
Not really even a snowstorm, just a little snow.

Me at Three

Three #1
A photo album page I found at my aunt's house, I was probably around 3.

I suppose some things have not changed much.

Three #2
As I posted earlier, i have had to say goodbye to my beautiful home on the 15th floor where I have been for 10 years.

I am now on the third floor.

The first day back from vacation was my first day on the third floor, and I kid you not, as I walked in the door to work I heard the word TEMPORARY very strongly in my head, like my guides were really telling me don't freak out.

So I did not freak out. I thought, TEMPORARY.

That third floor desk and me?  NOPE.
The third floor and me?  NOPE.

This is not going to work, not at all.
My new desk is a box that is less than half the size of my old desk.
The floor is a dungeon- and also, toxic.

I had to get facilities to remove the spotlight above my desk that was shining right into my eyes.
But the air down there is really bad, there is no ventilation and all the fragrances everyone wears hang heavy in the air.  I am suffocating at my desk, even with my fan on. So I have been working on the third floor not at my desk because I can't breathe, and working from home.

There are only 5 of us including my manager.  Two people on my team never work at their desks because there is literally not enough physical room, so they are in the video studio all day.  My manager is all over everywhere.  The other person..... well, he's either not alive or a zen master, my manager votes for not alive.

As a good faith measure I have ordered an air purifier to show I'm at least making an effort but I want to go to the 21st floor.  I would technically still be with my (wider) team up there, and I'm not tied to the video studio like the rest of my (immediate) team is.  We should be on 21 but aren't because of the video studio. (That's also why we stayed on 15 for so long.)  My manager is being very cool about the whole thing and has already inquired about a desk on 21 for me.

Because I cannot stay on 3.  No freaking way.

Saturday Night Sketching at the Met

Daya had a summer audition today, and afterward I sent her home and met my friend Jin at the Met for some Saturday night sketching.

We stopped first at the Temple of Dendur.

My sketchbook/gouache set really does travel anywhere.  I am starting to think, though, that I should be working on white watercolor paper instead of grey drawing paper.

I also did 2 sculpture sketches which are not shown here.

The grey paper is perhaps better for drawing, and I used my graphitint pencils.

Tomorrow I'll pick up a moleskine watercolor sketchbook.

Charleston

We got back from Charleston Friday. I had not been in about 10 years.

Daya and I were ready to leave by Wednesday, but only because we missed the freedom of home and the cats.

The weather was terrible for the most part, but I got 2 paintings done plus one sketch on the airplane.

My aunt and I get along but as it goes with family, one has to have a certain tolerance.
Those things I needed to leave are still there.  The emotional hyper-sensitivity over nothing, the heavy oppressive old-generation religion.... I'm done with those.

Short visits are ok.  I went on the condition that there would be nothing to do with my mother (who is 5 minutes away), and she respected that.  My aunt makes good cocktails and knows how to laugh.  She gave me pictures, which I have never had.  I got the rain lamp working again.

I don't mind going back at some point but I have a three day maximum.
It is good to be home.


Airplane sketch

6x8 oil

6x8 oil

New Life Skill

I have acquired a new Life Skill.

I now know the ordering/paying process at Katz's.
Although it is famous, and a NYC legend since 1888, I have never been in there.

Since I don't eat meat, and that is what they do, this makes sense.

But I am flying to Charleston and my aunt wants a pound of corned beef because apparently it is hit or miss down there. So if I'm going to bring corned beef, it will be the best corned beef that I know about, since I won't know personally.

So, Katz's.  Might as well bring the most famous corned beef.

The place is crowded by people (like me) who don't know how to go through the order process.
It is complex enough that there are even articles and youtube videos on how to do it.

You get a ticket first thing.  Then you find a line at the counter, there are several, and you just have to figure it out.  Then you tell them what you want and they will offer you a sample.  (I politely declined).

They cut the meat right there, pack it up or make a sandwich, and hand-write the price on your ticket.  Then you go back up front to pay but if you are using a card you have to go all the way back to another unspecified counter where they use a calculator to do the tax by hand.

That's for an order to go, I don't know how to sit down and eat, that process is different.

They have TONS of people working there, it is a well-oiled assembly line process that looks very chaotic but works well, mostly because they have so many people working there.

It has always been family run, and the current owner is 27 years old.

Daya finds it baffling that there are so many airline restrictions on liquids but a pound of meat is ok.

I hope my aunt likes this very expensive pound of meat that I think smells terrible.

My cats, however, went insane like I have never seen them when I brought it home.

Goodbye Desk

We have to move floors.
I am going from 15 to...... 3.
To a much smaller desk... still by the window but the view stinks.

I have been on the 15th floor for 10 years.
This desk has been my desk twice, and this is where I sat when Daya was in preschool.
Then I moved for a few years to another awesome desk and came back to this same spot.

Change.
This or something better, as my yoga teacher says.
(My new desk is definitely NOT better but I am determined to be positive about the whole thing.)

Goodbye, view! :( 

I will REALLY miss you.

The whole video studio is being dismantled and moved, too.
Here is the camera, moved aside to clear out other stuff.

*********
My team is one of the last to move off the floor.
So it's empty.
Eerily empty.

I'm always the first one in, and the only one on the floor.

I find myself in the most bizarre circumstance of working in a huge tower on a huge floor in the center of the world and I'm all alone.  It's empty because no one else sits here- which is a very different feeling than being alone in the office on a quiet day but others still sit there and will come back.

No one is coming back to 15.

This is a really, really weird experience.
How do I find myself in these situations?

Gouache and Carey

It's good to have a friend who is more than happy to talk about all the finer details of things no one else cares about.  Like gouache, for example, and portable sketching.

Carey and I have such good momentum together; we inspire each other.
And we both painted yesterday... she painted in the afternoon, then later I painted at dance, and she painted again with me at dance from her studio.  And I am happy Carey painted because her work is just so. good.  and it is lovely to see.  So it was lovely to be painting with Carey, and I LOVE the energy of painting in the dance studio.  It is a late class and no one is there but me.  The energy is so good... everyone is working and doing their thing, and there is nice music and it really is a wonderful atmosphere.  I don't know why I only started just now.  I'm so slow it is baffling.

Literally every single thing in my cigar box gouache kit has been sitting  collecting (pastel) dust in my studio for YEARS.  I wish it didn't take me so long to come to combinations that work.

*****
I am enjoying these gouache studies because they are making me handle situations I don't normally.
And practice in one area naturally flows to another.

So, for example when I had all my values blocked in, the girl who cleans the studio in the evenings shut off all the lights in the private lesson room.  Which is what I was painting.

Now, honestly, I could have asked her to leave them on, or I could have just turned them on again myself.  But I didn't.  Mostly because it didn't matter all that much to me. This is why we have visual memory.  I had been looking at it long enough, and I had enough blocked in that I could go with it. Besides, when I am out plein airing, my entire light structure changes constantly and despite several attempts at asking nicely, the sun does not listen to me and the clouds do not stay still.

Compared to plein air, sitting indoors painting is luxury! It is much easier. There is a restroom, temperature control, NO WIND, no bugs, etc.  Though I really miss plein airing and can't wait to get out again.

Gouache and Competition

Competition was all day Saturday, and it was a good time.
Daya competed 4 dances and was fabulous.

I brought my cigar box and painted.
It was constantly interrupted waiting, but I didn't mind. It gave my layers time to dry!
There was so much visual chaos, and resolving it was a challenge.

Message

I saw this while walking down the stairs at the 34th St subway.
There is something about it that I like.... the good message in the contrast of the environment.

Dance Blathering

A post in which I blather on yet more about boring dance stuff but there are pictures and a video this time.

1. Ailey refunded us.  They are very nice and I want Daya to go back next year.

2. SAI.  Summer Arts Institute.  NYC DOE offers a REALLY GREAT 5 week summer intensive for the arts, including dance... it's like a gifted program for the arts.  Actually it's kind of like the Governor's Honors program I attended one summer when I was in high school for art. 4 kids from the studio went last year and loved it.

It is free.
5 weeks of all-day dance wonderfulness FOR FREE.
It isn't for beginners, it is for students who are accomplished in their art form.
We already submitted the application and the audition is end of next month.
Also, it is FREE.

3. Steps.  I refuse to pay for 2 3-week sessions of Steps because it is stupid-expensive but one session is ok, I guess, if Daya doesn't go to SAI.  Audition is in a couple of weeks.

4.  Ballet Acedemy East:  It would be AWESOME if Daya got into SAI and BAE because... she can do BOTH.  The schedules don't overlap.  So that's 7 weeks of summer dance taken care of, she just has to get into both programs.

5. We couldn't audition for SAB again this year even though I paid for an audition because it was on the Philly weekend.  That would have been nice but she can audition for that again next year too.

As part of the audition process for a few of these programs, we have to submit pictures.
Here they are!

ALSO AND THIS IS IMPORTANT  this past Tuesday right before Jazz I was in the studio with Daya and she tried to teach me how to do some kind of turn, which I did... and she said, "Actually that was pretty good!"

I did a good spinny-turn!! I will brag about this forever.

Gouache and Stupid

Gouache
I'm still painting the dance studio in my sketchbook.  Here are 2 more, one from last night and one from Monday.  They are each about an hour.  I'm learning and seeing what works and what doesn't.

My Mirror Selfie!

Stupid
So I mentioned I wrote Ailey to ask about the audition and i registered Daya anyhow.
Well a few days later- on Saturday at the portrait party, actually, they emailed me back... and said no!

I didn't tell Daya.

Daya still doesn't know.

But I'm pretty upset, because nowhere on their website does it say you can't do 2 auditions, and I was allowed- under the same login- to register AND PAY for the second audition.  (These things are not free.)

I asked Ms Victoria what to do.  She said we probably shouldn't do the audition, but she took the effort to write a note for me to copy and paste, asking about a refund or credit for the non-refundable audition fee that in a separate email they are saying I'm not allowed to do even though their website seems to think it is ok. And- there is nothing saying you can't....

I'm waiting to hear back.  Again.
I'm upset because I shouldn't be allowed to pay for something they are telling me I'm not allowed to do.  I do still think emailing them was the right thing to do since Daya is in their system as already auditioning this year and it might look pretty obnoxious to just have her show up again with no context.  But it doesn't matter, what's done is done.  I left a voicemail yesterday.

I hate being upset and having to wait.  It's very stupid that they wouldn't just let her audition again, what harm does it do?  Sheesh.

Portrait Party

Today was the Urban Sketchers NYC portrait Party!

It was very fun.  The group overall is extremely friendly, and I would like to hang out with them more.  The party was fun.  My drawings aren't great, but I had a great time, I learned some new things, and it was wonderful practice. There was some really fantastic work, and I loved seeing how people approached each 10 minute portrait.

One of the participants wrote a wonderful article about his experience.
It is definitely worth a read.

My drawings are the second row.  I'm not posting close-ups!

My group with our portrait grid

It is February!

This sums it all up.