Lettering Practice and Art Museum

I finished one practice alphabet from Joanne Sharpe's volume 3 Lettering video.

I used either Winsor & Newton Watercolor markers or Generals Watercolor Pencils plus a water pen to color the letters.

Today my art quilt group went to the North Carolina Museum of Art to view the special exhibits of M.C. Escher and the DaVinci Codex.  

The Escher blew my mind, but I felt somewhat dizzy/seasick viewing room after room of optical illusions and impossible perspectives.  The woodcuts and ink drawings impressed me most.  You were not allowed to take photographs in this exhibit, but here is one from the NCMA webpage.

Bond of Union, M.C. Escher

With the price of the special Escher exhibit (free for NCMA members), you also got to view the DaVinci Codex Leicester.  These are hand-written pages from his journal, full of sketches and theories about "how stuff works" that illustrate how far ahead of his time he was.

Of course, you can't read the writing unless you can read Italian in mirror image.

As quilters, you might be interested in a unique rendering of DaVinci's iconic Mona Lisa, on display nearby.

Mona is not only upside down, she is made of spools of thread.

There is a clear acrylic orb on a stand in front of the display, and if you look through it, the image rights itself.  It is supposed to show how peripheral vision works.

Tonight Charlie and I are going to the Durham Performing Arts Center, or DPAC, to see The Book of Mormon.  I feel like a real culture vulture today!  We were supposed to see this show in February of 2014, but we had an ice storm which prevented us from driving to Durham.  I opted to get tickets the next time the show was performed at DPAC.  We did not get season tickets this year due to Charlie's illness/treatment, so it will be fun to go to see a theatre show again.  The Broadway South series at DPAC is remarkable, and well worth the short trip from Raleigh.

More Lettering Practice

I downloaded Volume 3 of Joanne Sharpe's Lettering videos from Interweave.  This time the topic is decorated alphabets.  The inspiration comes from historical illuminated letters such as those often seen in ornate Bibles.

Here is some of my practice work.

Here is one from the Volume 2 video.  I used watercolor to add color and dimension to the bubbles or pebbles.

This morning we woke up in the mountains to a surprise snowfall.  There was about an inch and a half of accumulation. 

The u-shaped road is our driveway, a true switchback road on a hill.

It runs right next to this pond.  It was a little scary going down the drive and over the bridge to cross the creek, but we made it!

We had a wonderful three weeks at the cabin, and it did our souls good after a difficult year.

Today is our youngest granddaughter Charlotte's third birthday.   We sang Happy Birthday by Face Time on our i-Phones.  Saturday will be her party.

Sure do love this little monkey!  Here we are with some of cousin Lily's plastic hair extensions.  It is fun having girls in the family after being a Boy Mom for so long.

Fun With Lettering

I knew I would have some "sitting-around time" in Sarasota last week, so I downloaded two Joanne Sharpe videos from Interweave to play with.  I had brought along a small journal, some watercolor pencils, an Aquarelle water pen, a small watercolor palette, and a few black markers

Volume 1 deals with the elements of art.  Here are my attempts to work on the lessons.

Volume 2 deals with making coloring-book style letters that can be colored in with crayons, markers, pencils, paints, or whatever you like.

I like the floral doodles of my letter A.

The B is for Beach is probably my favorite.

 Butterflies used to form a letter C.

I have another one started but not colored yet.  It was fun to have something new, quick and not too hard to work on while playing the waiting game in Florida.