Freshman Graham Class

Freshman and Sophomores have their dance block in the morning, so I showed up at LaGuardia at 8am to paint Tadej's Freshman Graham class.

Mr Munroe was the musician which is always amazing because he sings.

Look up Andy Munroe on Spotify.

It's a magical atmosphere, perfect for paint!

My friend's daughter is a Freshman so I got to see her dance.

Ms Debbie from Manhattan Youth Ballet- Deborah Wingert- was also there to observe..

It was the right morning to be at LaGuardia!

Today I experimented with full gouache- no pastel today.

And Inktense pencil for small details, it's a real time saver.

Except that.... I'm getting faster.  I'm not trying to, it just happened.

I finished in the same time as yesterday- 10 minutes to spare, that's a long time!

(Yes I look at the time on my phone throughout, I need to know my halfway point.)

The difference MIGHT be that I snapped a quick photo pf the pose, so I didn't have to do live figure sketching. And at this point I know the rooms really well.  Because of that I focused on overlapping figures.  Arranging the figures takes some thinking. I could have added kids standing around in the back but... no time for that.

5x7 gouache

Tadej was wearing a shirt that says SHIFT.

He used it in his class as an answer to a question.

(Ms Foote talked about marshmallow floors yesterday.)

There are roses in front of the school.

I'm going to miss LaGuardia SO MUCH!!

Daya going there for high school has truly been one of the biggest blessings of my (our?) life.

Her teachers- particularly dance- are the most amazing people.  Like you don't even know that type of amazing until you encounter it.

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Mr Steffa (I misspelled his name in the text) teaches gym and is a dean of... idk, something.

He also oversees kids entering the building sometimes, I see him at the entrance a lot.

He and Daya are good pals.

She started bugging him before she even got accepted into the school.

Mr Steffa ALWAYS wears shorts.

It can be -3 outside and he'll be wearing shorts and a LaGuardia hoodie.

When we went for the initial open house, before auditions happened, he was outside managing the very, VERY long line. He asked if anyone had any questions.  Daya yelled out "DO YOU ALWAYS WEAR SHORTS?"

Answer: Yes.

Then Daya got in the school and they have been pals ever since.

I saw Mr Steffa when I volunteered for audition callbacks, and we had a good chat.

Today I also saw him and he gave me a hug and congrats on Juilliard.

He said he had been looking for me all week!

I asked did Daya tell you or avoid you?

He said she avoided him but he staked her out and made her announce aloud in the lobby that she got into JUILLIARD.

I sent Daya a text about Ms Debbie, because she was still at home, probably making breakfast.

Daya did come by to say hello when the class ended.

She said--- you woke up very early just to come to school for Freshman observation and now you are just going home?

I said yes I wanted to paint.

Daya's not one to talk though, she's crashing the Junior Graham class on Thursdays while the rest of her group who isn't in rehearsal does..... she doesn't know, something not dance... but she wants to dance so she goes to class with the Juniors.

Unfortunately I did not get to show Mr Steppa Daya's text because when I left he was teaching.

Next time I see him I'm gonna dig up this picture and show him and we'll have a good laugh.

Limón Class

Today is the LAST DAY of parent observation!! The last LaGuardia class with Daya I get to attend!

I am not the only sad parent.

Today I went all dusty, all pastel- pans and nupastel.

No Gouache.

I am still deciding which workflow I like better.

5x7, there is clear gesso over the grey- toned background.

I am still not sure whether I prefer the gouache with some pastel, or all pastel.

Maybe the answer is that I don’t have to decide, i can do whatever suits my mood.

Looking at everything all together there aren’t hugely vast differences in the color.

Today I used pans for the underpainting and went over it with Nupastel.

It’s a little scratchy to work like this- this is a downside because I don’t like to make noise and potentially bother others around me. The pans are slightly cumbersome but it’s not terrible, not enough to say don’t travel with them.

I have 2 travel panpastel palettes I keep filled… and i didn’t have my yellow ochre pan which I would have really liked.

I finished this painting EARLY… really shocking.  Usually I’m going until the last minute of the class.

Today I had about 10 minutes of class left.

Tomorrow I am meeting my friend who has a Freshman, and I’m going to paint during Freshman dance observation.

What’s wrong with this sign?

This morning I woke up at stupid o’clock to go into the office at oh-god-thirty to attend a meeting in person.

It’s very early, in case you were wondering.

I don’t know if it’s because I was not awake yet, but there is something wrong with this sign.

Would they make such an error? Is the MTA time-travelling?

According to this link I guess they started October 2022.

I can’t recall having seen this sign posted before today.

In any case, it’s a very confusing thing for someone to process at 6:15am.

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In other news, I guess the price of eggs is coming down, because a couple weeks ago Costco was selling the 5 dozen packs for $18.99. (Way back when the 5 dozen used to be about $8.)

Thank goodness!!

Crashing Class to Paint

The journey to LaGuardia High School takes 35-40 minutes.

I gave it an hour to account for any train weirdness.

4 stops later, when I was switching to the E/F, everything was at a standstill.

Not good.

Unauthorized person on the tracks.

That takes a while.

Like a LONG while.

So I switched over to the 7, and that had signal problems.

I was SO UPSET, I did NOT want to miss parent observation!!

I was late but did see most of the Horton class.

But I couldn’t paint, there was no time. Even losing 15 minutes is too much.

So I enjoyed watching Daya’s Horton class, and then she had rehearsal.

Some of the other kids went to ms Foote’s class, so I decided to go there, too, and paint.

I love Ms Foote.

She didn’t mind at all that I went in to paint, and she also thinks I should come back after Daya is gone to paint.

Here is the painting, 5x7 mostly gouache with some pastel…

I was thinking about the size of the figures on the page, it’s zoomed out a little too… but the main thing I did differently was snap a picture of the pose I wanted..

I think I’ll do this from now on when I am allowed to take photos; sometimes I’m not allowed.

This panel was gray-toned but no clear gesso, and i can’t decide if I prefer a smoother surface or not

But it worked out really well and is a good strategy, as much as I don’t like using any kind of photo reference for these things.

Here are some pics of Daya.

Painting Problems

It's parent observation week for the LaGuardia Dance department! 

The LAST ONE for me, I'm so sad!

Although......... maybe they will let me come to paint???

They totally would if I asked, they are very friendly to it.

I like painting dance classes for many reasons-but it sure is a lot of problems to solve.

It's exactly like expenses: one goes away and three more appear.

It's such a difficult environment because of the time and also there is no composition. In that way it is more difficult than plein air.

So today I got to watch one class, so I had an hour and half.

I know how to budget the time now.

The first half of the class is barre.  That's the time I have to paint the room.

Then the barres go away and it's time for floorwork.

That's when I have to get a pose in my sketchbook while the dancers are doing combinations and decide on the figure arrangement.

I am at a point where I need to learn the ballet positions. It would make this part of the process about 70% easier. So that's my next step, and I hope I get to do this again...... I hope this isn't my last week of dance class painting....

5x7 gouache and pastel

I gray-toned an illustration board and gave it a coat of clear gesso, for the pastel.

Once I started laying in the pastel, I switched back to gouache., mostly.  The painting is about 80% gouache.

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I have a kind-of onging problem, difficulty if you will, and today I realized it has to do with scale.

In all my dance class paintings, the room itself is about the same size. I pick a section that I think has good floor-to-wall proportion. It also greatly depends on where I am sitting.

But the size of the figures relative to the room- from my vantage point are quite large.  This is a difficulty when placing several figures in nice size to the page together. In the picture above, look at how large Daya is compared to the room, because she is close. At viewpoint size in my painting, her feet would be near the bottom of the page and her head almost to the top.

Today I shrunk them a little.

I think it kind of works because it pretends I am sitting farther back than I actually am.

But I have to guess the height of the dancers relative to the room.

This is something I need to play around with and is a point of deviation from reality.

I think as long as I am conscious of the eye-level perspective I can work it out, at least in a good-enough way.

Tomorrow and Thursday I am going back and I'll try something slightly more zoomed out AND even smaller figures as if I was farther back.  It's a real composition challenge that has been bothering me for a while now.

Back for Part 2 and Mothers Day

Today I decided to go back and finish the boar.

I only needed an hour or so more to finish.

It is Mothers Day today and Daya came in my room and said she wanted to talk but it wouldn't take long.

And she told me she wanted to say she loves and appreciates me as a mom and she said thank you for everything. And that even though she's not demonstrative she wanted to tell me. And she gave me a hug!

It was so wonderful to hear her say that.

Really, that was so perfect and completely made my day.

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My friend Palma and I were texting early this morning and I told her about finishing the boar and she looked him up.

The Bowery Boys have a page on him, and Sutton Place.

8x10 oil, yes the sky is different today than it was yesterday but I stayed with the original light.

Very Colonial building at Sutton Place.

Start time 12:07, finished at 1:23.

My estimate of needing about an hour or so was correct.....

And also another painter came over to talk to me for several minutes.

She wanted to see my Times Square paintings.

She does watercolor, and her paintings are beautiful.

People ask me sometimes why do I time my paintings.

I time-track all of my paintings, even studio ones.

Back at Pratt we were taught to do that in Illustration.

It was useful for many reasons, including billable hours, but also because you should know about how long it will take you to do something. It's also useful for planning your time.

Figure drawing also makes you conscious of time.

(I miss figure drawing, I need to find a good local group.  Drawing America is still the best but it's now $30/session and I'm priced out.)

Anyhow, I time my paintings and I know I can generally do an 8x10 in 3 or 3 1/2 hours. sometimes less depending. More if it is complex like Juilliard or Times Square. I do not try and constrain the time, I am just aware of it and it's pretty spot-on consistent.

Although the Porcellino Statue painting did take me a little longer than I initially thought.

A Plein Air First!

May is such a nice time for painting.

It's so nice out today......and I was slow getting out the door, because of 2 phone calls but I wasn't exactly in a rush so t was all good.

It's time for me to discover some new painting spots.

Central Park will always be amazing, but I'm finding myself wanting to avoid it lately.

I can't take the nasty pot smoke that is ubiquitous.  Yes, it is illegal to smoke in any park here, and i don't smell cigarettes, but the weed is everywhere and no one enforces the no-smoking law.

I really love fresh air and I really hate pot smoke so, sadly, unless it is really early in the morning, I'm staying out of Central Park for a while. This is not bad because there is so much of the city to explore.

And locals are better than tourists- they always ask permission to take photos, and locals just have a different general vibe which is easier to take.  Last week at Juilliard was WONDERFUL as far as interacting with people. 

I like New Yorkers. 

So anyhow my criteria for today included:

*Pretty close to home

*Somewhere new

*Local non-touristy park

I pulled up Google Maps and had a look around.

And I found Sutton Place, where I have never been.  It is as east as you can go on 57th street.

There is a boar statue there which is odd, and the bridge and water behind it.

So there I went.

I was dragging today.... just being slow. Or maybe this is just a very complex painting.

Actually it really is.

The perspective has to be correct, and there is a lot going on.

The bridge in the background would have been cool the the view was better from the other side.

1pm start.....

15 mins for the drawing

2:19.....my view got bombed.

This was Not Good.

I didn't know what to do.

I have actually never had a person plonk down blocking my view and..... stay.

This lovely man had a book and was enjoying a nice afternoon reading outside.

He wasn't going anywhere for a long time. (And although I was there longer than he was, it wasn't by much.  He left around 3:30 or so.)

....

I got my nerve up and went over to him.... very, very nicely I asked if he might be amicable to moving because he was right in my view.

He was SO NICE about it, said he didn't want to be in the way but only wanted to be out of the sun.

Which I totally get.

He did move and I'm glad I asked.

I also told him it was the first time in 14 years painting all over NYC I ever asked someone to move... and that's true. I of course thanked him profusely, it really was nice of him to move for my sake.

4pm came around, I was three hours in and...out of time!

Tonight Daya asked me to go with her to the Juilliard Choreography honors performance.

Of course I wanted to go, and I was thrilled she wanted me to go with her!

But that meant I had to go home and scrub off all the bug spray and change and leave again hopefully on time. I admitted time-defeat, packed up and left.

The Juilliard show was at 7:30 and we were right on time.

It was excellent and we got home very late.

The Most Helpful Cat

This week has been uneventful.

Just normal days.

The days that happen between life events and changes.

I happen to really like normal days because they are nice and stable, and this daily life is what the bulk of life is, anyhow. I like the non-drama.

Work is busy enough but not overwhelming, my apartment is clean (I even cleaned out my linen closet yesterday!), and I COMPLETELY re-started the series Carey and I are doing together. So that will be some work but that's ok. I do need to get some studio work out at some point.

The next few weeks will be wacky and busy, so I'm enjoying the uneventful-ness this week.

I am deliberately practicing enjoying the time and appreciating the moment and environment, and my peaceful apartment.

Isis is so helpful when I am trying to work.