Day 3 of the 5 Day Art Challenge: Painted Ceramic Plates

I accepted the Facebook 5 Day Art Challenge nomination from my friend and artist Audrey Hawkins. Here's my Day 3: painted ceramic plates. I sent these plates to Moscow recently, to our family's close friends. Hi, my dear Moscow friends, if you're reading this :)

Day 2: Facebook's 5 Day Art Challenge.

I accepted the Facebook 5 Day Art Challenge nomination from my friend and artist Audrey Hawkins. Here's my Day 2: Swans, thumbnails.

Day 1: Facebook's 5 Day Art Challenge.

I accepted the Facebook 5 Day Art Challenge nomination from my friend and artist Audrey Hawkins. Here's my Day 1:  drawings of Indian dance performance by Nrityagram Dance Ensemble, seen at the MET a couple of weeks ago. Odissi is one of the oldest dance traditions in the world. The dancers were performing invocations of the Mother Goddess with her “elephantine gait, compassionate gaze and benevolence”. Accompanied by poetry reading, many beautiful metaphors came to life through the interpretive dance of two graceful, barefoot dancers.

Life Drawing, Part 3

This is the 3rd and final installment of the figure drawing series from Dalvero Academy's winter 2015 session (here's Part 1 and Part 2). I find this David Hockney quote most appropriate: "Drawing is rather like playing chess: your mind races ahead of the moves that you eventually make." So true. Let's just add that this "game" has to end. I look forward to the next life drawing class: there's always so much more to do and to explore!

Life Drawing, Part 2

Drawing is not the same as form; it is a way of seeing form. ~Edgar Degas

 

Happy New Year! Life Drawing, Part 1

I'm starting the year right, with 3 full days of life drawing at Dalvero Academy. 

"It is only by drawing often, drawing everything, drawing incessantly, that one fine day you discover to your surprise that you have rendered something in its true character." -Camille Pissarro (1831 - 1903)

Back to Vienna

"Ver Sacrum" Stamps with the Secession Building

The Secession Building. Ver Sacrum = Sacred Spring.

Vienna, in all its gilded Art Nouveau glory, is elegant and grand. The Secession building, which looks like a giant jewelry box to me, houses the Beethoven Freeze by Klimt. Since my hotel was nearby, I'd go by this white shimmering building every day and wave "hi" to it.

The Secession Building.

The Secession Building.

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Vienna's most influential architect and "artist of buildings", modernist visionary Otto Wagner, has several landmarks in the city. This is his Karlsplatz subway station. The apple green color on every station was meant to signal a subway entrance. Back then the subway system was an innovation that people were just getting familiarized with. Wagner designed the very first entrances in Vienna, and he believed they should be beautiful.

Karlsplatz Station, designed by Otto Wagner.

Karlsplatz Station, designed by Otto Wagner.

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Upper Belvedere is guarded by 12 fabulous sphinxes, and it houses Klimt's most famous painting, The Kiss. Yes, it's everything you expect it to be from up close and more! Unforgettable.

One of the 12 Sphinxes of Belvedere.

Belvedere Gardens

Belvedere Gardens with a Sphinx

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Street Cafe and Waiters.

Volksgarden.

Volksgarden.

Volksgarden.

View of Vienna from the Albertina Museum Terrace. Full Moon in Twilight Hour.