Villa Rufolo, Lucey Bowen, 2012

Mid-Morning Break

A quick break from drawing from photographs.  These roses were on their last legs , so I clipped them and brought them inside for posterity!

Asian Food

Singapore's fabulous food, from a photo by Ian Lloyd in Gourmet, 1993

Sir David Chang's China Club in Hong Kong, from a photograph by Ian Lloyd in Gourmet, 1992.

Drawing Singaporean food makes me hungry, but this was a quick study.   The China Club, with its dark interior and plethora of chairs was tricky, but fun as I remembered our meal there.

More Blue and White, in the Artist's Garden

Calico for Molly, May, 2012, Lucey Bowen with ArtRage

Reflections

Drawn from my photograph, to illustrate Gourmet, 1991, article on Jaipur, reviewed in my kitchen tis of thee blog.

     I've not posted paintings in a couple of weeks.  I've been working on my series of doors from India.  My plan is to print them as miniatures, matted with a border made up of the photograph from which they were drawn.  They will be decorated with jewels and metal, and will be for sale!  Etsy, here I come.

Does in a museum count as drawn from life?

At the new Islamic Galleries in NYC Metropolitan Museum

So I've been working on a series of doorways from South India and North India, and in New York drew this fabulous wooden archway. When I was finished, discovered that the other side is even more beautiful!

Quick Illustration

I am not neglecting to ArtRage everyday, I'm just not posting them!
This was a quickly drawn illustration for my blog.  An interesting problem is that I can't seem to get a good line going with my handwriting.  I'm going to think about some techniques that might produce interesting letters. For example, a plastic template over the screen could serve, and produce some neat penciled in letters.

Blue and White for Molly and Mom

     Blue and White china deserves a blog of its own.  It starts when the Chinese are able to obtain minerals from Persia.  It's imitated in Vietnam and Thailand, and in Holland and England. It's imported and exported.
     Some years ago, a pattern called Calico was manufactured. Calico combined blue and white with the fabric pattern which originated in Calcutta, India.  My mother loved the pattern and for several years her daughters gave her platters and special pieces in it. Molly loves it too!  These pieces are Chinese and Japanese that I've collected over the years from thrift shops and the like.

Porches

From photographs of my sister's home in Ithaca.  I think she wants to make stationary with them; I'll take suggestions for tweaks!

Blue and White and not blue at all

Here's a pair in just a few colors, done to illustrate shopping for blue and white earthenware in Hong Kong, above, and porcelain in Bangkok, below.

Oh! ArtRage! ArtRage!

Steaming Along

After Gourmet's Photograph for Nina Simond's "Steaming the Chinese Way,"  Lucey Bowen 2012

Working from Gourmet's photographs from their test kitchens is inspiring, but love looking at the wonderful sketches from the old style restaurant reviews, which for the longest time were not accompanied by photographs.

A Mixed Media Experiment

Last night, I played around with putting down blue and gold paint on a rough plaster ground to approximate the faux finish I cerated with acrylic in the entry of the house.  Today I sketched in the coat rack with pen in white, and then tried to fill with paint can a reddish woody color.  Interestingly, the surface absorbs it differentially!  I tried paint brushing on the "woody" color and found the result too even.  I undid it and went back in with pen in brown.  The result is crude, but captures the intensity of the blue hall and the bright sunlight visible in the  hall tree mirror!

Early Morning Reading Chair

Often I paint from this chair, this morning I painted it.

To balance out that April first light, here's some mid-afternoon sun.

More from Gourmet Photos

Gourmet Cover, 1984

Having fun reversing the process for my kitchen tis of thee.

From A Photograph

Gourmet Magazine used to use drawings in all of its restaurant reviews, but gorgeous photographs of the dishes produced by its recipes.  Here, I turned this upside down, making a drawing of the dishes from Gourmet's photograph!  

See my blog entries tracing Gourmet's coverage of Asia and Asian food, starting in 1979:  my kitchen tis of thee.

Friday Morning

I'm trying to be conscious of how much time is involved so that I can plan to spend more, but without getting too overworked.  This was less than an hour.

White Tara

Not very complicated, really.

Window onto April

Nothing fancy here.

Memory, the Mother of Inspiration

This is a piece made up of 16 ArtRage pieces, arranged in the form of a mandala, the Tibetan Buddhist way of constructing a universe, a sacred space.  Hidden Hollow, a house on a mountain in northwest Connecticut is my sacred space.

Watering Can

Simplicity to the maximum.  These are objects I'll be dealing with more this spring!

Drawn Format and Colored Line

Another view of my friend Cleo's terrace. It is a secret garden in a very dense urban area of San Francisco.  Some people have the ability to turn their home into an oasis in the midst of the city, and Cleo is one of them!

Almost Late for Friday Class

Sunlight this morning captured my attention.

The Bay in Sunshine

I am comfortable with what I'm able to do with my quirky line and paint-can fill.

Although I will continue this series, from my windows, and from my garden, I'll start to push myself to explore more of the possibilities of the other tools.

Sunshine, at last

 

From inside, before swimming; one outside, after swimming. Starting to work light, shade, and shadow.

Geometry of the Garden

What is more colorless than the bare ground in early spring? Nice to think about the plants that will fill out the geometry of the Ithaca garden, and be visible from the back door and the patio!

San Francisco, Clearing

This is the first time I've attempted place the awesome view of San Francisco Bay as part of the picture. Crayon, pen, fill.

Grey Outside, Color Within

I'm in love with the way line and color-fill can create accidental patterns on the paper.


But what happens when oil is on canvas and lines are drawn with crayon, and color-fill is added?


The oil areas take on a three dimensional quality that is starkly obvious in contrast to the color-fill and crayon.  Hmmm.

Friday Sunrise Horses

     Catching up a bit! Realized that adding layers of same color enriches!

Not Quite Chinese Calligraphy Brush

I've been playing around trying to get the effect of a Chinese calligraphy brush.  It's proving a little tricky.  Using the pen tool with a taper, but curling the stroke back on itself works for some of the strokes, but not very well. On the other hand using a high rotation gets the turning effect at corners.  These are supposed to be the characters for meat and pig.  My teachers would raise their hands in dismay, but at least I'm back at calligraphy!

The Buddha in My Sister's Backyard

My sister messaged me a photograph, and using it as inspiration for composition, I created this for he,r using pen, paint-can and watercolor brush set very tight.  Lot's of credit goes to the gardener who created this scene some years back, although Pier 1 did supply me with the Buddha; he's gilded glass, and of Southeast Asian style.

Simple Sunday of pen and fill

Had to get going on this quickly, because I had to swim, and I must, must, must spend the rest of the day packing up materials to submit to the Old Limerick Journal in Ireland.  If I get that done, writing another blog-post on the Orienting of Me thru Gourmet Magazine.  Speaking of Gourmet, I'm starting with the era in which they did pen drawings to illustrate their restaurant reviews, not photos.

So this was superfast.  I can see that the next few months are going to be all about exploring Bonnard by painting what I see from my windows as the California spring and summer come gliding in.  P.S. I've started encorporating my initials, MLB, in the pen work, a la Hirschfeld's famous LISA in the New Yorker.  Can you find them?

A Lazy, Rainy Saturday

Can't think of a better day to be on the French Riviera, and Bonnard takes me there.  This was an exercise in studying how he does his sun-lit colors, and the contrast between shaded interior and bright garden seen through the open window.  The oil paint, oil brush and palette knife of ArtRage sometimes trick me into thinking I have to watch out for wet paint. I do note that I got a bit carried away with blending, and sometimes it looks more like Munch than Bonnard.  It was wonderful to take a break, simply by closing the iPad cover.

Drawn Last Night, Color Added Today

One of the neat things about ArtRage on the iPad is that clean-up and prep are just a cover snap away. I can continue work on the trolley, after lunch, anytime, anywhere.  Yet it still feels spontaneous, gestural.  And unfinished.  I need to think about what it means to go back to something for a more finished look.

Inspiration

End-of-day.  Sitting in chair, feet up on ottoman.  Draw what you see.  My grandmother's plate, a gift from her ex-pat son.  Daffodils, single yellow ones. A little like the double jonquil in a jelly jar of years gone by.

Yesterday and Today

This is a simple experiment with a new idea in mind: ArtRage and the iPad make it possible to be interrupted, to put down the brush or paint and pick it up again.  And this would lead to more ambitious projects, things beyond quick sketches and quick fill.  I'm not sure I'll go there right away, but the seed has been planted.

Suddenly I knew it was italic!

Not much of a painting today, but a lot of learning sent from New Zealand.

I couldn't figure out what aspect and rotation, two of the options on the pen tool were meant to do.

The pen tool icon, you see, looks like a Pilot fine point.  Turns out it can also be the virtual equivalent of an Osmiroid pen! I will need more time fine tuning the settings and my stylus, but this looks like it will be great fun.

Visible Mistakes

This morning I decided I had to branch out and try a new tool, to wit, the pencil on really rough paper. I knew it would act a bit like a pencil, a bit like pastel, and so it did.  It begs for more elaboration, and mixing of media.

I got lazy with the filling of window-view of orange tree...and the wall beneath.  I see now in the thumbnail that I've chosen poorly for that color; I will play with said choice.

Here's a question for whoever is watching: When should I start to sign these?

Weekend Studio

Another iteration of painting what is right in front of me.  Still testing the tools and still puzzled by some of the settings!

After Matisse's Red Studio

Experimenting with what it takes to get the effects Matisse achieved in his almost mono-chromatic paintings of his studios.  It requires a lot of practice because you have to know each of the images you include, so that you can render them with Picasso-like efficiency of strokes.  That The rich color sense is a gift I my not have.  Still, some improvement in my second try, above.

Tools in Use, Useful Tools

Okay, so not everyday will be a day for lots of color and texture. Today I was at the Asian Art Museum, shadowing an experienced docent giving a tour of the Gods, Demons and Avatars of Southeast Asia.  I stayed on afterwards in the galleries.  One of the reasons why I love to draw is that it forces you to look long and hard at what you see.  Pretty soon I was drawing the kurtimukka, the gargoyle like monster above the doorway on the little of the right of these terra cotta temple models.  This is a motif that travelled from India all over the archipelago and mainland Thailand, Cambodia, Burma, Laos and Vietnam.  I had just never noticed it before.

Making art is about looking! I'm grateful for sight!

Finding My Groove

   
     I hate Daylight Savings Time, because I like light early in the morning.  It is raining here, expected to continue for a week.  We need the rain but it makes it even darker in the morning.  However, the silhouetted pine tree, black against the   cloudy sky reminded me to get painting, to capture that view.  The pen tool, slim with no taper, and now using my Nomad stylus, the short end, allowed for expressive line.  The paint can fill tool did the rest.  I quickly discovered that without sufficient coffee I wasn't closing off shapes, and the undo arrow is my new best friend forever.

Exploration Day

Turns out that the technical pen is the way to achieve one of my favorite Chinese painting brush strokes.  By setting "taper" to the max, I can put down bamboo- leaf-shaped strokes, which are awfully useful.  This is going to be my one and only painting for the day, as there's grocery shopping and checking footnotes for Irish article to be done!