November 27, 2014

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone! I hope wherever you are you have some good food and someone you love.

As I've posted before, my family has been having ravioli for Thanksgiving (in addition to the traditional turkey, etc.) since before I was born. Even though we are all spread out now, many in our family try to continue the tradition. Mostly because it is delicious, but also it doesn't seem like Thanksgiving without ravioli.

So how to make ravioli? Get your big brother and your sister-in-law to do it all, like I do. That gravy? They made it. The filling? Ditto. But then there are many of us to help with the assembly of the ravioli. My nephew Joshua helps Richard roll out the dough, nephew Calvin and niece Somerset have been assembling ravioli since they were each about 6 or 7. We have friends who come over to help, some years to make us do it in the first place.

 This is pretty much the setup - roller in the corner; dough next to it; filling, flour, pasta cutters, forks, and paper towels in the center; and all of it on top of a plastic throw-away table cloth for easy clean-up.


The freshly made ravioli is put into pans with some corn meal sprinkled on them in layers between waxed paper, then put in the freezer. The sides can't touch! They will break when frozen. I usually inspect everyone's work to make sure it's right. We've had some attempts that yielded heartbreaking results when the ravioli weren't sealed right and they broke when boiled. So as long as everyone does what I say, the ravioli turns out fine.


After we make them, we cook some up for dinner as a reward for all of our hard work.

November 22, 2014

Lunchtime Sketch and Notes


November 21, 2014

Follow Friday: Melissa Dunn

Follow Melissa Dunn, and go see her show at L Ross Gallery. Here are all the reasons.

This is from Melissa's gallery talk a couple of weeks ago. Click image to make it bigger.

November 20, 2014

The Next Urban Sketchers Symposium














Speaking of the Symposium, I can't believe I never posted this picture! I did not go to the 2014 Symposium in Paraty, Brazil, (even though I worked on it) because we only had time for one major worldwide adventure this year. But look at what the lovely people of Urban Sketchers did for me! They sent me a goodie bag with a Moleskine sketchbook, pencils from Cretacolor, a Super5 pen, and wristbands from the Hong Kong Urban Sketchers. But that's not all! See the accordion book in the back? It is full of sketches by people who were at the Symposium! The sketchers there made them just for me in this little Laloran sketchbook. This is one nice group of people I've gotten myself involved with.

And now we have next year's Symposium to look forward to! It's going to be in Singapore in July and I'm so excited to be working on it again.

Starting a New Sketchbook

I started a new sketchbook recently, a Stillman & Birn that I got at the Urban Sketchers Symposium in Barcelona.

November 19, 2014

Studio Night Last Night: Painting

It's been a while since I've worked on big paintings. (These things ebb and flow, I tell myself. It all goes in cycles. Blah blah blah.) So tonight I squeezed out too much paint (can never remember exactly how much bigger big paintings are than tiny paintings), and dove in there, on a painting that's been in the early stages for a couple of months. So I've been looking at it like it is for a couple of months. Which is never good! Because now it's so hard to change it. But I'm working on it.

Those are tiny pieces of paper for future tiny paintings.

Early in the evening with a very neat palette.

 That elusive yellow.

It is not really this dark in my studio, but according to the camera in my phone it is.

Some progress.

November 18, 2014

Drive Drive Drive

Thus ends our adventure inside my vacation head. Thanks for stopping by.

November 17, 2014

Newfoundland Trifecta


November 16, 2014

Last Room in Rocky Harbour


November 15, 2014

The Giggles

(click on it to make it bigger)

November 14, 2014

Rain Adventures

(click to make it bigger)

November 13, 2014

Moose!

(click on it to make it bigger)

Cars and Quote

A quote from The Flamethrowers, our most recent bookclub book, and a line of cars I could not resist.

November 12, 2014

Studio Night Last Night: More Comics

Last night I finally finished my Inside My Vacation Head comics, which I started on our trip to Newfoundland this summer.

At first my plan was to finish them in ink, but I'm not ready for ink yet and it turns out I love making them in pencil! (For now, anyway.)

I call this one Newfies Messing With Us, because for a minute I really did think the nice people at the bed & breakfast sent us to a one room shack for dinner. Those Newfies - they'll mess with you!

I'm going to keep posting one a day. The rest should not require descriptions :)

(click the image to make it bigger)

November 11, 2014

Teaching

Last month I taught a sketchbook class at Flicker Street Studio. For some reason this class is harder for me than teaching painting. Paint does what it does, but sketching can be anything! My theory for painting goes like this: just paint. My theory for sketching is long and involved and includes all of the senses, and everything I've ever done and everyone I've ever known.

Okay, not really, but the first class does involve me doing a lot of talking about What Sketching Means to Me.




The second class is mostly me talking while we play with loads of sketching materials, and I tell them about all of the great sketchers I know of out there in the world and talk all about composition and depth and layers.





Class 3: sketch, sketch, sketch, sketch, sketch. And snacks!


November 10, 2014

Memphis Monday - Clark Tower

Because I can't help myself.

November 09, 2014

Supply Sunday - Mini Watercolor Tin























I like my sketching supplies to be as portable as possible, so I made a mini watercolor kit in an Altoids Smalls tin. Not only is it cute, it's very handy. I like using a Kuretake waterbrush pen with watercolor to make lines, mostly, so this works well for me.

I painted the inside of the tin with Rustoleum appliance touch-up paint, to keep it from rusting, and to have a white surface for mixing paint, if I ever feel like doing that.

I hot-glued the paint tins down and filled them with Winsor & Newton artists' water colors:
Permanent Alizarin Crimson
Cadmium Yellow
French Ultramarine
Viridian
Burnt Sienna

Between burnt sienna and viridian, I stuck down the yellow ochre that comes in the Winsor & Newton travel watercolor kits.

November 08, 2014

Bookclub Sketch and Prep

It's Saturday, so I am either reading my bookclub book or cleaning my house in preparation for hosting bookclub. We're reading The Flamethrowers by Rachel Kushner, which is great, though I'm not even close to finished. I have been reading it for two weeks and I'm juuust over halfway through it. So I hope the ladies don't mind if this house is dirty, because I need to get back to the book.

Here's a sketch from our last bookclub, during which we picked our next two books.

November 07, 2014

Follow Friday - This Old DIRTY House

This is the first time I've suggested that you follow a Twitter feed, and that you follow it just because it's funny. This Old DIRTY House is seriously funny stuff, and is put together by the funniest man I know.

Here's a sketch of my old dirty house:


Sketchwork Moved!

Please visit Sketchwork at  elizabethalley.com/sketchwork . After 12 years with Blogger, I am incorporating my blog into my website becaus...