Sketchbook update

This is an off-schedule blog post, but I just finished my sketch from this morning and I wanted to share it with you. This chica is calm, cool, and has her sh*t together. Just like the bird. Don't you feel that they have a connection?? Or are they two enemies about to square off for battle?

Journal page- Woke Up This Morning

I've been working on this sketch for several days now. It's all graphite and colored pencil and I love love love the softness of it. I tend to work slowly with colored pencils, going lightly and taking my time with the shading. It is a peaceful practice for me, if I let myself relax and take my time. I love how her "hair" turned out - there are nasturtiums growing everywhere here in San Francisco. I think they must reseed themselves and grow naturally, because I see them all over the place. They are so pretty, I thought they would look nice for hair. I did a sculpture a few years ago with a girl who had poppies for hair, and I've decided that I like that. Perhaps I will keep going with it.

I should also tell you that I couldn't decide what text to include on this one, so I actually posted her as a Work In Progress on Facebook, and I got some great feedback and ideas! It was all rolling around in my head, and then this morning I was flipping through my notebook, looking for quotes/relevant words/journal entries, and I found an entry that I wrote one morning upon waking. I had just had a very realistic dream about my mother (who passed away last year) and I described that dream, in all it's details, in this entry. As the tears filled my eyes, I knew that this was it. This was the meaning behind the drawing. So now you know. If you gave me feedback on Facebook, I didn't ignore your ideas, I just had to use this one.

My mood has changed from my last journal entry that was done in all bright blues, purples and fushia. I had so much fun working with those bold and lively colors! But now my mood has softened and I've turned thoughtful. I have some Beethoven playing and the house is quiet. Hope you like the journal page and I am wishing you a peaceful weekend.

Love, Kelly

Here you go, Birdie

HI again!
I'm back from our short trip to Napa, and we had a fabulous time. No cell phone, no internet, and no TV! We were staying at my hubby's cousin's house out in the middle of no where, and no, I didn't take pictures. Not much view to capture, just a lot of trees pretty tight against the house. I am not a talented photographer, and I wasn't sure that I could capture the landscape properly. My hubby's cousin is just awesome, and he and his wife are so generous about sharing their space with friends and family. It's all very relaxing; you read books, swim in the pool, take a walk down the driveway, paint each others' toenails. (There wasn't a man at the house that didn't have orange or purple toenails!) You barely shower while you are there, and no one gets real riled up about cleaning either. Just ignore those dead bugs in the corner. :) It makes for a wonderful, relaxing and peaceful weekend. So, so nice.

But, I seem to remember promising you guys another journal entry. It's not my favorite, but I'm not redoing it either. There are things about it that I like...but mostly, I love the memory that goes with the saying in the middle. It came from a day last week when we were sitting in Union Square, in the shade of a tree, watching our daughter feed the birds. She kept saying "'Ere you go, birdie", and so it burned into my brain. And I'm so glad it was. I hope to remember that day forever. Wonderful.

Journal Page

I've been working in my sketchbook for The Sketchbook Project and I've wanted to share a page with you. I've been playing with drawing girls' faces a bit and I always love my stamps. The other material I've found I love are the Caran D'Ache watercolor crayons - they are the best! I am so glad I brought those with me to San Francisco. They travel well, and are nice and clean to work with.

So, in this journal page, I was thinking big picture things: life and dreams. I like how her face turned out, but I do think it's interesting that most of my girls in my artwork look you in the eye. Maybe it's the whole "eyes are the window to the soul" thing??? The actual page has a much more buttery color to it, rather than a bluish tint on her face. The iPhone camera is pretty good, but there are some limitations to it, I guess.

In other news, I tried to go to a super cool gallery today (SculptureSite) and they weren't open. Darn! They are in the middle of moving their location and lots of things were in crates. I was still able to window-shop some of the pieces, but I was pretty disappointed. That was one place I REALLY wanted to go. So we went to the Merrell store to look for shoes instead. :) Check out the link for the gallery if you are curious...

Hope you are having a great week so far!

~Kelly

Visual Inspiration

So far this trip has been a huge source of visual stimulation and inspiration! I am completely absorbed by the trees, the plants and the scale of plant growth here. I've seen jade plants, which I've grown indoors all my life, as shrubs with trunks bigger around than the widest part of my arm! Bottlebrush trees at home are nice, small trees that the hummingbirds visit. Here the Bottlebrush trees are enormous, and litter the streets with their spent flowers. I can't see up into the top of the tree to see if there are hummingbirds there, but I have to imagine they are up there having a Thanksgiving feast!

Yesterday, I went for a run in the Presidio on what is called the Ecology Trail. Oh my. It was such a change from the rest of the park. I was running on trails, through the forest and the flora went from hilly grasslands to a dark forest. The forest was so amazing, I stopped just to look around. The trees were so tall and their canopy so complete, that almost no sunlight got in. There were no other plants growing on the floor of this forest, and no limbs on the trees except for the ones at the top, so it was this crazy space of vertical lines and darkness and quiet. I think I will be going back with my sketchbook just to spend a little time there. The funny part of the story is that I am currently reading a vampire book, and my imagination took over here. What a perfect place for a vampire... and so I ran on to get out of that place! Nothing like a little imagination to bring a scary book to life!

But anyway, this place is a wonderful source of inspiration and I can wait to get going on my sketchbook for the Sketchbook Project. If you didn't see that post, it was the last one I wrote before this.. I think that I will definitely be using some of this new imagery of plants in my sculptures when I get home and get back to working in clay. Which, by the way, my hands are really starting to miss after just one week!

The Sketchbook Project

I just signed up for the coolest thing: The Sketchbook Project. I found this through a couple of other blogs that I follow and I just thought it was the neatest group-based project I had heard of in a while. I always want to spend more time drawing/writing/journaling, and that is one of my goals while here in San Francisco. So they've already shipped my moleskin journal out to me, and I am already looking forward to using it! It will be tough to completely let go of it and send it in at the end of the project, but that is part of the point! To let go of your work and share it with others. It doesn't have to be a work of "art" - this would also be a great project for a mom/daughter team! (I would certainly do it with Marley if she were a bit older...) So I plan to use this journal as an experiment of new techniques, musings, and a visual record of my time here in SF.