Mural at the train station in Edison, New Jersey
We were picking up a friend last week, and I spotted this mural of a river. I call it the Edison Train Station Mural. I am guessing the river depicted is the Raritan River. See what happens when you bring your camera on small local trips? I never noticed the mural before. I decided to do a quick Google search, and guess what? The mural is by Katherine Hackl of Katherine Hackl Pottery & Tiles.
Elsewhere in the Blogosphere
Ilana-Davita has a weekly review, and in the weekly review she links to the recent JOFA journal. I open the journal (a pdf), and what do I find but a nice article about Eva Oles, z”l, of Highland Park who passed away earlier this year (I didn’t even know she had died until I was sitting shiva for my father – I was a little distracted). It is written by Roselyn Bell, whom I know as Rosie. Thank you, Rosie, for the sweet words.
We have gotten little snow this past winter – lots of threats and warnings, but no school has been cancelled due to snowstorms. I love photographing snow scenes, but New Jersey only gives me infrequent opportunities. I grew up in the Boston area, and they got much more snow this past winter. Anyone remember the blizzard of 1978?
The cardinals were content to visit our backyard once again and enjoy the bird feeder and branches.
This shot of the female cardinal shows a lot of her red – unlike her male partner, she is mostly brown, but when you get closer, you can see the pretty bits of red. I think it’s quite lovely.
One can see the reds of female cardinal here – love those streaks of red amongst the brown.
The male Northern Cardinal is perhaps responsible for getting more people to open up a field guide than any other bird. They’re a perfect combination of familiarity, conspicuousness, and style: a shade of red you can’t take your eyes off. Even the brown females sport a sharp crest and warm red accents. Cardinals don’t migrate and they don’t molt into a dull plumage, so they’re still breathtaking in winter’s snowy backyards. In summer, their sweet whistles are one of the first sounds of the morning.
I do find my cardinals tend to visit in the cold. I don’t see them in the summer.
I did this portrait of Jill with colored pencils and ink pen at the first meeting of our artist group. I set up a still-life for the group to sketch, but then I asked the group if it was OK if I drew one of the members. Jill said it was fine, and she also approved my posting this particular drawing on my blog. I did two others, but I felt this one looked more like her, although maybe a Jill Caporlingua who is twenty years younger. I left the spiral on the left of my sketchbook in the reproduction for the web to give the viewer the idea that this is a sketch and not a finished portrait.
I did the pen part of this drawing without looking at the paper; I just stared at Jill’s head and let my hand do the work on the paper. This is called “contour drawing.” It is a great way to learn how to draw.
In case any of you would like a drawing exercise, here’s one for our next artist group meeting: Draw (or paint) an everyday object. It can be depicted as realistically or as abstractly as the individual desires.
Suggestions: scissors, salt shaker, pillow, curtains, stapler, fork
I did a few sketches and then I did a painting of a salt shaker. I looked in Google Images – lots of other artists have also drawn salt shakers as a subject.
I hope you like onions. This post features onions. One onion is red. One onion is yellow. The scallions are green. The garlic clove in the photo is white (but it doesn’t appear in the art below).
I am showing the onions art in the reverse order that I did them. I am so happy with this watercolor. It is painted in a sketchbook of textured watercolor paper that Jill C. gave to me. I have a drawing of Jill that I did at our first artist group, and I will show in a separate post. I don’t want to take it out of the book, but it does mean I have to photograph the art instead of sticking it in my scanner, which is easier.
I did this drawing of the onions and scallions with an ink pen.
Red and yellow onion are drawn on paper with colored pencils. With colored pencils, it is good to work with different shades of a color and with different colors within an object to produce form, texture and light. I erased a bit to get the light to shine on the onions.
The theme for Thursday Challenge is SIGN (Commercial, Traffic, Funny,…), so I decided to highlight a favorite store in Highland Park, New Jersey. I have bought a fair amount of clothing for my daughter this year at this Covered Girl Clothing shop. Recently, we bought her a black skirt so she could dress as Mary Poppins for Purim. I have bought nothing for myself this past year, as my father died in October, and it is Jewish custom not to buy new clothes for one year after a parent dies, in memory of the parent. The owner is quite friendly; you can enjoy chats with her while you shop the dresses, skirts and blouses.
In an unrelated news (or perhaps it is related, as everything is connected, no?), we had the first meeting our newly-formed artist group today. A few of us got together at my home, talked about art, and sketched together. I’ll write more about that soon, in a separate post.
