Chicago Trip, Part Two: Art Institute of Chicago / Gustave Caillebotte

Chicago has an amazing (and ginormous) art museum named the Art Institute of Chicago. I've visited it before, but not for quite some time, and I forgot how big it is and how one can find something from any time for any mood and interest! We spent around 5 hours there, and apart from a quick lunch all this time was packed! 

But the highlight was the current exhibit of Gustave Caillebotte - one of my art heroes! To see so many works in one place, experience in person slight variations of color, be in the presence of expressive brushstrokes - this was a gift! I am fascinated with the way he worked with light, how he builds compositions. With conversations between bodies in his art, with integration of people into environments, and all of that with the simultaneously serious and playful feeling that comes from his works! He lived a short but very interesting life, left a large city to live in a suburb, and stopped trying to get into the Art Salon but continued painting. He was a gardener, worked on textile design, collected stamps, designed and built yachts, sailed them, and he supported other artists. What a life! 

Chicago Trip, Part One: The Bean.

I found a perfect place to sketch near the Cloud Gate, aka the Bean, in the Millennium Park in Chicago.  The Bean is a public art sculpture that I haven't had a chance to draw, and with only 24 hours of free time in the city, and the Chicago Art Institute opening at 11 am and located a few hundred feet from the Bean, it was an obvious plan :) I did 1/2 of the sketch while perched on a parapet, but then had to get down as a guard did not agree with my idea that sketching is a reason to break rules :)

I will be posting about my museum outing and class at the Chicago Urban Sketchers Seminar in separate posts.

An accidental Bouquet

I picked up a branch of sea lavender on my walk - someone broke it off and left it on the pavement. And then the wind overturned my petunia plant, and one branch snapped off. Between these two, I had a lovely flower arrangement on my kitchen table for some time - a perfect opportunity to test some materials :)

Sea Lavender

I am a big fan of Sea Lavender, also known as marsh rosemary or Limonium (it has nothing to do with lavender, rosemary, or lemons despite the names!). And since this is a very drought-resistant plant (and some are even native to California), I almost always can find one blooming near me. But right now, they are at their peak everywhere!

Nonagenarian Update: Big Birthday!

Our Nonagenarian turned 96! We celebrated with some ice cream, and she had some good laughs and asked many questions about our lives - are we still cooking at home? Does everyone have a job? Is everyone healthy? :) Her fig tree is in good shape, and jasmine is blooming right now. The bird feeder brings lots of visitors. And several onions are growing on the balcony next to a marigold and a rose. 

First Figs!

The very first fig was, possibly, a little underripe. With the second one, we waited too long - it started to get all wrinkly and mushy. But the third one was just right!

Watercolor and gouache and some pencils and pen and ink. 

Practicing My Workshop Before the Trip

This week I took my portable printmaking kit, which I will be using in the upcoming classes, to 2 different locations. 

First one was virtual travel - but I was allowed only things that were in my "workshop bag". I was drawing with the  Street View World Tour - hosted by Jenny Adam and Eleanor Doughty via Gage Academy. I had limited amount of time, so I did only one sketch while Sarah Bixler painted O'ahu, Hawaii in gouache - I wanted both to travel there in person and paint this in gouache!! But with the restrictions on that day, this is what I came up with:

And then I had the pleasure of being introduced to a new (for me) little lake by my friends.  With a shady path, some buildings against the mountains, lots of different greens to reflect in the water, and various birds to sketch, it felt like a mini adventure! This time, my kit went on location and got another workout!

Drawing shadows as a way to look.

One of my favorite ways to break the ice with people who claim that they can never draw anything resembling anything is to offer them to draw a shadow :) It is always better to start with something simple, but complex, like a palm with fingers or a flower. You will need a good source of light (be that a lamp or the sun) - which is a mood booster by itself :) And then you ask them to follow the contour of a shadow - it is a self-explanatory thing - and it does not take long. And then you have a page with a recognizable thing drawn just now! But even for people who do not need a pep-talk and for people who are good or even great at drawing, there is a lot of delight in tracing shadows, be that what you start with or add as a detail for a background. 

For me, shadow is such a different way of looking at an object - it magically opens up dimensions despite actually flattening a 3D object into a 2D view. You can spend some time finding the angle that matches your current whims and follow shadows within shadows if you want more complexity with multiple sources of light. I enjoy collecting shadows when I am in a museum looking at sculptures, and sometimes (for example, on a Ruth Asawa show), objects move, so you have moving shadows to draw! 

This agapanthus was fun to draw, but having that little shadow portrait made that page extra special for me - I understood some mistakes that I made after drawing the shadow too and it gave me more time with the flower - so I noticed more details and now am ready to go back and draw it again :)

On My Table: Beginning of July 2025

July is here, and this year it is a month of teaching and traveling for me. I am honored to be a part of a team of teachers at the Chicago Urban Sketchers Seminar this July 11-13. And I am super excited to join a whole bunch of amazing artists at Sketcher Fest Edmonds this year - July 19-20. As a result, everything on my work table right now is about the classes and trips. A bunch of printmaking tools and a handout, samples of my class tests, and a pile of sketchbooks that I am taking with me to Edmonds to share during the sketchbook fair and also to illustrate during my talk "Extreme Travel Sketching: What to Bring and How to Survive." I hope to have a photo reportage about these in August!