Laurelines

First sketches, Brittany

The getting here was way more eventful than I'd have liked, but the being here has been heavenly. I, who usually get up around 5 am, have slept until 8:30! Okay, just once, but still. That says a lot about how peaceful it is here.  I'm way out in rural, inland Brittany, about an hour and a quarter from the north and south coasts. I'm not listening to or watching television, or the radio, or anything, except the quiet world around me. At night, there are many unfamiliar sounds: the rustling of the house, the wails and muffled cries of nocturnal animals. After the first night, I packed away the murder mysteries I'd brought from home to read here. Now I sleep much better ;D.

Here are my first sketches. 

I spent a perfect golden afternoon today in Moncontour with talented and graceful poet and photographer/blogger Lucy and her dashing and witty husband, Tom (thanks again for a lovely lunch, you two). Tomorrow Casey comes for a visit. Her husband Michel follows on Friday. Casey and I will be driving to various coastal spots and sketching madly. A bientot! 

Leaving on a jet plane

There must be a zillion blog posts with this title, but perhaps you won't mind one more. Yes, I'm en route to Paris, via American Airlines # 44 today, and then to Rennes, Brittany, via TGV 5214 tomorrow morning, and then, via rental car, to Josselin, tomorrow afternoon. And then to that peaceful house in the Breton countryside where I hope to spend some solitary, paint-filled, and restorative days. In early October, my husband and two dear friends will join me.

To say that I feel scattered, at this point, is to understate the situation. Let us fervently hope that the various Laureline parts arrive at their final destination, tout ensemble, tomorrow. Let us pray that my mother continues her slow recovery and that all will be well for everyone (including you!) over the next days and weeks.

Here are two travel sketches from past adventures of mine, just for fun. Sketches from Brittany  are next on the agenda! See you soon!

If these walls could talk...

they'd probably say 'eat your vegetables.'  This past Saturday, my husband and I, after a long day of caring for my mother, went out to eat at a nifty tapas restaurant in Charlotte.  The food was terrific and very authentic---actually, it was even better than several of the meals we had in Barcelona last fall.
The decor, however, induced great feelings of guilt.

I am still hoping to leave for Brittany this Friday. Hoping, planning. We will see what happens.

Paris of the Piedmont

The small mill town that lives cheek by jowl with my hometown calls itself, with all due irony, the' Paris of the Piedmont.'  For a few years, the town even held a Fête de la Musique, as French towns do, each summer. Now, there aren't many Parisian vestiges, ironic or not, to be found here---except one. It's Carrboro's own version of the Wallace fountains you see tucked here and there, in Parisian quartiers. Here it is, with a sketch I made in 2006 of a Wallace fountain in Saint-Germain des Près.

One of these fountains has understated elegance and a sense of proportion---it's the fountain version of the Little Black Dress. The other one, trying to be all uptown and stylish, has loaded itself down with frills and furbelows.  It's the fountain version of Dolly Parton.  The world is, thank heavens, big enough for both.

If all goes well, I will be in Paris and then Brittany in less than two weeks. I'm packing lightly, knowing I may have to turn around and come home fast, if my mother takes a turn for the worse. Right now, her big health issues are resolved. Pain management is coming along nicely. She has family members and home help with her 7 days a week. Until I leave, I'll be driving back and forth to her hometown, as I have since early August. It's so wonderful seeing her recover, even if slowly, from her traumatic fall .

A pause before September

I'm taking a few days off  to devote to the ongoing health matters of my mother and to tie up loose ends on one illustration project (and, egads, to start another, new one. So much for saying no.)  I am still moving forward with my plans to leave for Brittany on September 18th, knowing full well that this trip, like my workshop in Orlando, may be cut short. At this hour, on this day, it still looks doable.

I've chosen, randomly, some sketches and paintings from the past few years to give you something to look at here in my little corner of cyberspace. Why these? No reason, really---they just caught my eye as I scrolled through my archives. Remember the man with a constant cigarette, who tended a news kiosk on Ave de la Motte-Piquet, that October I spent in Paris? The boat docked in a Seattle harbor?  My daughter's face from my 100 Faces series?  Probably you do not- but for me, they are one-way tickets on the fast train to the past. See you in a few days.

A lick and a promise, and some peeks

Gosh, this 2009 of mine has had no end of hindrances and hurdles. I haven't felt my world to be this out of control since I experienced my first labor pains with my daughter Kate, years ago in Scotland. But this is life---and I'll take it just the way it is. The good news is my elderly mother seems, again, to be improving and we are taking her out of the rehab center and returning her home tomorrow! She's in great spirits and will be well cared for at home. Please keep all good thoughts speeding her way.

I actually grabbed a couple of ten minute interludes in the studio the past few days, in between trips to Mother's hometown. These involved the use of paintbrushes and the beginning, at long last, of koi paintings! Yay!! 

So, here's the lick and the promise: some quick peeks at what is going on in the studio and an overview, literally, of latest foody sketches for the book. 

Hope your life is going along swimmingly.

Dipping my toes in reportage illustration...

...before I had to leave, very prematurely, due to my mother's illness. See post below. Can't wait to take this up again in a January workshop!

Ronnie and Margaret emphasized making thumbnail sketches, making rapid gestural/ contour drawings of people in motion, using different kinds of marks in one drawing, using the six sides of the box inherent in pictorial space, putting in lots of detail in each reportage illustration ----I was beginning to get the hang of this method, I think, but just beginning. These sketches are too big to be scanned, so excuse the poor reproduction caused by digitally photographing them.

  . At bottom is the biggest and the last sketch I did. It's about 11 x 14 and though the scale of the people is way off (I didn't take the time to calibrate relative sizes, working quickly as I was), I think I was beginning to get what Ronnie and Margaret were saying about drawing crowds and conveying the gestalt of a busy scene. I'm going to work on this on my own and then, as I say, sign up for their January workshop.

Duty called.

My beloved elderly mother's condition has become precarious. We don't know if this is a short-term situation, or if the recent set of events will prove to be the beginning of permanent disability on her part. I had to leave my reportage illustration workshop yesterday, after just two days, to fly back and help my brother take care of her.
I'd looked forward with greatest anticipation to this workshop since last winter, but when duty phones, you take the call.
I'm leaving early tomorrow to drive to her hometown and the nursing home she's just been installed in. I'll be back and forth for a while, until (and if) her condition stabilizes.
So, here's a sketch from my first morning, pre-workshop, in Orlando.

This weekend I'll post some of what I did at the workshop. It was as stimulating and intense as I'd hoped it would be. There's another workshop offered this January, half in Brooklyn, half in Connecticut, which I plan now to attend. I will not let this goal go unmet!

My reportage illustration adventure starts Sunday!

And, yes, this is a *painting of seaweed, and, no, my adventure won't be happening underwater, though it will probably feel like it. Orlando in August---need I say more?

I mentioned a while back that I'll be taking a reportage illustration workshop offered by Veronica Lawlor and Margaret Hurst, fellow Urban Sketchers correspondents, via their Dalvero Academy. Ronnie calls it 'drawing bootcamp,'--ten eight-hour+ days spent drawing on site at Disney World (!!!!). I fell in love with their powerful and immediate way of drawing energy, space, movement and I wanted to learn that technique to see what would become of it, Laurelined! Well, the time has come. I leave Sunday the 9th, return August 20th. I 'll have my computer and digital camera, so I should be able to post some journal pages while there.

So now, I'm trying to figure out what art supplies to take. I hope I have time to make a post on that subject before I go.

I'm really excited! And I'm also really appreciative of all of your wonderfully warm comments of congratulations on my work appearing in Artful Blogging (see post below.)  Thank you, thank you, thank you, lovely people!

* I don't think I've posted this seaweed sketch before. I made it in 2007, in Charleston, SC.

Stay cool, everybody!

Laurelines in Artful Blogging, Autumn 2009!

I've been wanting to tell you about this for months, but I've waited until it was an actual fait accompli. Last year, I happened upon a copy of Artful Blogging; Visually Inspiring Online Journals at my bookstore and was very impressed with the beauty of its design and content. It's a Somerset Studio publication and these are known for their extremely high quality. I thought, *sniff, sniff* that someday I'd like to be in it. But no, that wouldn't happen. There seemed to be more expressly inspirational blogs in it, like Andrea Scher's Superhero Journal (also featured in the autumn issue) or heavily photographic blogs focusing on craft, design, or lifestyle, such as Carol's Garden, also in this issue. Carola was an early blogging acquaintance, so it is fun to see her in this context with me!

Laurelines isn't an illustrated journal, per se. It isn't a lifestyle blog, though it is a repository of images from my art and  life. It's not about crafts.  So, I was thrilled and surprised last April when Christen Olivarez, editor, wrote and asked if I'd like to be in it! I said, yes, yes I will, yes. In writing the essay to accompany my images, I thought about exactly what Laurelines, now in our fifth year, IS as a blog. Excerpts follow:

Line by line we write paragraphs, pages, books. Line by line we make drawings, sketchy or highly polished. Line by line we trace in paint the geometry and calligraphy of the visual world.

As a person who both writes and paints, I live by lines, and in my blog, Laurelines, that is evident.

A blog is a story that unfolds in real time. It is not subject to the rules of fiction writing, or of non-fiction writing for that matter, but if you do it right, there's a continuity that is discernible---a storyline that hangs together whether you spend a month drawing in Paris, as I did in 2006, or whether you're documenting the birth of your daughter's first child, as I also did, last fall.

[The text continues with a discussion of my yearly art plans, my way of self-directing, my themes.]

You can see that my path may be linear, but it goes places. It may be directed, but it curves and meanders, just as my drawn line does.  My way is not everyone's.  But for me, guidelines of my own making give me focus and focusing frees me... . In life as in blogging, if we're conscious and we persevere, if we're receptive and patient, we'll be following, and also creating, our own story, line by line.

The autumn issue hits the newsstands August 1 and, though I say it who shouldn't, it's smashing! Check it out!