Merry Christmas

An old sketch - for the season.

An Illustrated Life

An Illustrated Life by Danny Gregory arrived day before yesterday from Amazon. Fascinating and inspirational. I recommend it if you need a push to pick up your sketch book and get to work (fun). Love being able to peek into so many artist's books and see their work and read their words. 

Tangerini

During spring break me and hubby and boy went to Washington DC. Very cool. lots to see of course.

One day I had an afternoon to explore one of the museums part of it was the Kogood Courtyard a splendid space with a waffle-y rippling ceiling of glass. Alice Tangerini, botanical illustrator from the National Museum of Natural History, conducted a sketching session focusing on the plant specimens in the Courtyard. She showed some of her work, real detailed, accurate and beautiful botanical illustrations.

Dave and Sam joined me and we all sat and sketched together. We have never done that and it was really cool. Sam and I make art sometimes but Dave is mostly a woodworker.

Here is one of my sketches from that day. Also I love her name, Alice Tangerini, seems sort of exotic but wholesome and orange.

A few scans from my "I draw pictures all day" sketchbook. Sadly, I don't draw pictures all day, or even every day. But here are a few pages I like. 

The colorful one is a sketch I did in the car on the way to Austin  last year for Christmas. The square is a design for a table I painted for my sister's (one of 6 sisters) kids. For their Christmas present. I thought it came out kinda groovy. 

Family Portrait

It reallly is hard to grow up with such cool toys around. An evening with Sam tinkering with Legos resulted in this family portrait. Yes, it is me with the pink ruffly pantaloons and a flower in my hair. The similarity to real life is scary.

Old bird prints

Picked up some bird pics at a booth at Round Top fair last spring and still they are not framed. But they are cool.