My watercolor is of Raritan Avenue, between North Third and North Second Avenues. One of the stores is Jerusalem Pizza. The one on the end, by the big tree, used to be Charlie Brown’s, which went out of business. A new restaurant appears to be opening in its place. Here is a sketch I did prior to this watercolor.
A continuation of my Raritan Avenue studies – here is a photo on top of a drawing. I worked on adding watercolor to the drawing today. I plan to post the watercolor in the middle of this week.
This is same as above, converted to black and white. One can see the lamppost in the drawing doesn’t match with the photo – no matter, it matches in the “finished” watercolor.
Last night I did this sketch of a block of Raritan Avenue in Highland Park, New Jersey. Can anyone who has been to Highland Park guess which block it is (between which street and which street)? I hope to do more – this one has a lot of grays and blues, and I used some yellow straight from the tube which seems to pop. That’s OK for a sketch, but I want to work on more details.
If you have been to Route 27 also known as Raritan Avenue, you will know there are usually tons of cars. I used photos from a few hours before the 2009 Memorial Day Parade, when the street was clear of cars.
My friend Julie sent me her painting of her lemon tree to post on this blog. Julie, who lives in Hashmonaim, Israel, writes: “All of the fruit on our three citrus fruit trees are ripe. We also have an orange and a pomelo tree.”
This is one of the trees in her backyard. I took this photo in June 2008, when we visited her family.
See more of Julie’s art and photos on her new blog, Israel Inspirations Art.
Finally, after several months of not painting, I took out the watercolor paints yesterday. You can see some inspiration from this photograph of radishes, kale and nuts; the clementine on the left was in a different still life, and I decided that bit of orange would add to the painting.
There are the famous windows by Chagall at Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem. And then there are the Chagall-style windows that my daughter (above image) and other students at her school created and displayed at the recent art show. Many paintings were on display. One technique her art teacher uses is to learn about an artist, and then the students create works similar to those of that artist. Some of the paintings, for example, had the red, blue, yellow and white rectangles of Piet Mondrian.
For more images with red, visit Ruby Tuesday:
Purim, the Jewish holiday of costumes, festive food, hamantaschen and the Book of Esther, falls this year on March 20. We have begun preparing our annual oatmeal containers that we decorate, fill with edible treats and hand out to a few friends. My daughter created the scene above; I scanned it into the computer, and we plan to print it in a variety of sizes to paste unto the containers.
If you are celebrating, have you done anything to get ready? Any thoughts on the upcoming holiday? Questions?
A drawing by my daughter: what does this ballet dancer and Ancient Egypt have in common? Perhaps someone who knows ancient Egyptian history can help. Or maybe you are familiar with some midrashim related to parshat Shmot? (I’m not, but I gather that’s how my daughter got the idea).
What do you see?
Thursday’s Challenge this week is “TEXTURE” (Coarse, Smooth, Jagged, Sharp, Glossy, Shinny, Furry,…).
Next week is TREES (Saplings, Gnarly Trees, Snow Covered, Bonsai, Dead Tree, Shade Tree,…).
View more paintings by my late mother Elaine Wenger z”l