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.