St. Paul Conservatory with MetroSketchers

Wow! Sketching at the St. Paul Conservatory this afternoon was absolutely amazing. This annual event marked the third anniversary of the Metrosketchers, as well as an up and coming spot on channel 11 news (next Sunday) and a wonderful afternoon with my dear friend Claire, and fellow lady-architect sketcher.

The afternoon was filled with a series of firsts.  For myself, that has been the most public and crowded place that I have openly sketched in.  For Claire, this was her first commission!  As I tend to sketch nature and spaces, Claire loves to sketch inspiring people.  After chatting with a mom with her baby daughter for a bit, she quickly offered to draw a sketch of the baby as practice. Check out this picture of them together:

And of course, us and our finished sketches!

 

And it goes without saying, a huge thanks to the dedication of Liz Carlson a Tim Jennan for all the time, dedication, and passion they put into this to bring us all together. 

Winter Weekends at Indeed Brewing

All of these long winter days has lead us to find and explore outlets that get us out of the apartment. With my husband looking at starting a brewery and my pending Architecture Registration Exams we've taken to a form of "hanging out" at local breweries.  More than just enjoying a handcrafted beverage, he gets to try any amount of any beer he wants (usually while chatting with other beer fanatics), whilst I, as a designated sober cab, get to enjoy the opportunity to sketch this trend. With all the new local breweries popping up it's quite a challenge to catch them all!

In architectural drawing there's a constant argument over how to represent people. Should they be shown "hyper-realistic," do they distract from the space, or add to it? Should they be shown as implied, such that the focus is on the building.  Every architect has their own (widely varying) opinion on this. Urban sketching by contrast focuses on drawing on site and capturing the moment as you see it.  In this case I hope I've captured a semblance of both - that is drawing on location and on the spot, but influenced by the desire to find this balance between architectural space and the people who inhabit it.

Audubon at the Bell Museum

 

Wow, after a few months of being holed up studying, having a weekend to actually do something fun was amazing.  Ever so conveniently for myself, this coincided with a Metro Sketchers gathering at the Bell Museum to sketch the second part of the Audubon exhibition. If you're familiar with nature illustration, then you're familiar with the work of John James Audubon, famous for his sketches of birds. Which brings me to an interesting observation of his work that I chose to draw - I omitted the birds. A crime?  I'll pass this one off as artistic license.  While I admire the work of Audubon greatly, in this piece I was more struck by the dramatic landscape then the large birds originally drawn in (one on top of each cliff).  The birds in flight were added later in order to help lead the eye through the rocks. 

Sunday's at Nina's Cafe

Nina's Café on Selby has easily become our café of choice for a Sunday morning "relax over coffee, but get something fun done," session. In my case, this often means spending some time with my sketchbook, and in Chris's case, this means working on his business plan for the brewery. Ok, it also often means ARE study time too... But seriously, we need to have some fun too:) In the winter we find ourselves here more often then not these days as we look to get out of the apartment.

And important lesson was learned on this morning is if we don't want to be sketched while we are working on the business plan, then we should sit at a table more a the perimeter of the space so Jodi can draw the architecture and other people instead (see sketch above).

Sometimes we don't get to stay for too long, just enough time to have a quick cup of coffee and be on our way.

Back to the very beginning, this was one of the first sketches I did this summer on one of our first business plan/sketching outings.

Minnesota Museum of American Art - with Metro Sketchers

 

For someone who just doesn't know that much about fiber arts, the Minnesota Museum of American Art has a great show going on entitled "Repetition and Ritual: New Sculpture in Fiber".  Maybe I've never really been drawn to fiber arts because it reminds me of a craft sport like "extreme quilting" that one would create. Nonetheless, take something like fabric and yarn and get out of the box by making it sculptural; allow it to hold its own weight and suddenly, ah-ha, this makes perfect architectural sense.

 

This piece by Emily Barletta drew me in because of the barnacle like connection to blood cells and vessels.  The inspiration of human biology gave her pieces all had a common thread  that tied them together (no pun intended). Upon reading her bio you would understand why - how could an artist go through major surgery and not have it influence her work?

 

Anyways, enough art rambling. Here is the original piece:



And with a few seconds to spare, I was able to get in one more quick sketch of another amazing piece:

And the original:

As always, be sure to check out the work of all the Metro Sketchers as featured on the blog and facebook page.

Monoprinting with Gelli Plates

This past gathering at the MCBA Visual Journal Collective I got the chance to try something  I've been wanting to try for quite a while - Monoprinting with Gelli Plates.  The process is quite similar to gelatin printing, except you don't have to cook your own gelatin mold, and instead use a gelatinous slab that can be reused. The main benefit of this process is that it is easy to do at home - no access to expensive equipment is required! Besides being quick, easy, and a bit whimsical, I would imagine that you could use this method to print on any solid surface as well as combine with other printing methods to create compelling images.  I haven't have a chance to play around with this more (yet) but wanted to share my first stab at it.

In the first print (on the left) I used the brayer mostly to push the paint around and then color shapers for the smaller marks.  The second print (on the right) was pulled using what was left on the gelli plate from the first print, with the addition of a bit more paint and a layering of stencils.

A huge thanks to Briana Goetzen with Orange Spiral Arts for sharing this with us.

Lakewood Cemetery with Metro Sketchers

Wow! Nothing like being able to sketch at a beautiful place on a gorgeous day... I think I could have spent all day in a happy state of blissfulness with my sketchbook and Joan Sorano's new Mausoleum at the Lakewood Cemetery.  Any opportunity for my inner (almost) architect self to come out is a good one:) Committing to sketch a section cut of this masterpiece felt as much an exercise in studying and understanding scale proportion as the usual light/shadow/composition challenges that urban sketching brings. Bit by bit, walking down the long hallway each little nook revealed itself as unique and compelling, yet still a part of the greater whole. This is what I hoped to capture - the subtle nuances and manipulations of space.

Again, given the opportunity I could have easily spent endless hours here.  Hopefully next time I'll venture above ground more, but until then, here are a few other photos of the site and building: