Sketching back in Los Angeles...

August brings our hot weather, and I found some relaxing places to sketch, and visited some museum shows too...

At LACMA, I love sketching from a shady bench in the Rodin sculpture garden...really a throughway from the older part of the museum to the new.  Occasionally someone stops to have a picture taken with one of Rodin's heroic figures or the dramatic giant heads while mimicking the gesture.  There's just something I love about the heroic stoicism of these figures with visitors breezing by.  Sketching here in pencil, watercolor and gouache.

While there I saw the recent "50 for 50" show--featuring highlights from their collection acquired since the museum opened 50 years ago...the highlight for me was the room of 19th-early 20th c. French art with these sculptures by Carpeaux and Degas...lovely still models!











At the Getty Center, a favorite view looks out on the Sculpture Terrace from the cafe...with bronze sculptures by Aristide Maillol, Rene Magritte and Henry Moore.  I had come to see the exhibition of Renaissance artist Andrea del Sarto, and his beautiful red chalk drawings inspired the Getty in red (pencil and watercolor)...

I couldn't get enough of this great exhibition, and made some little studies on site with pencil, marker and ink on tan paper.  Why?  Well, I do this sometimes in an attempt to get perhaps a glimpse of what the Renaissance master was seeing...

As  I left at closing time in late afternoon, I paused on the steps to sketch the 8 foot "Boy with Frog" by  Charles Ray and Maillol's "Air" balancing below...

And on a warm Sunday at the South Pasadena Public Library, I sketched my old friend--the lovely Moreton Bay Fig tree with long late afternoon shadows...in pencil first (trying to train myself to take more photos of work in progress), then watercolor with a limited palette...

Back home sketching...

The best way to come home was of
course to get out and sketch some more!  Here are a few around the Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles...


A hazy summer afternoon on Los Feliz Blvd....


















Still in a traveling frame of mind, I visited the wonderful India Sweets & Spices store and vegetarian restaurant--a world of spices and other treats...

 Those Bollywood musicals are hypnotically addictive...















I love this place...their menu says they are the biggest Indian grocery store in Southern California...the beneficent face of Yogananda smiles from a picture behind the counter, and a grandmother sits and watches all that happens....

sketching my colorful lunch... 

More summer travels...to LACMA (sketching the monumental Rodin heads perched enigmatically on the staircase leaving the museum), and to the Getty Center...

Sketching at L.A.'s museums...

Some sketchbook sketches from some recent museum visits...

at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art during a recent Worldwide Sketchcrawl with the L.A. group...sketching in the courtyard, and the new installation--Michael Heizer's Levitated Mass--looking west and east...

 ...and across the street, "The Wall Project"--10 original Berlin Wall segments brought to Los Angeles by the Wende Museum to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the fall of the wall.  Several artists were invited to paint 5 of the segments:  Kent Twitchell, Thierry Noir, Farrah Karapetian and Marie Astrid Gonzalez.  I was very moved to realize I was seeing a portion of that Wall here in my home town.

Sketching the La Brea Tar Pits
in Hancock Park, next to the George C. Page Museum...

sketching art and life at the Getty Center...Rene Magritte's "Delusions of Grandeur" in 2 views...

 the huge floating maze that sits

at the center of the wonderfully eccentric garden designed by artist Robert Irwin...the fountain in the courtyard, and some earlier views of people eating and relaxing next to the marble-clad block walls...

Exotic Los Angeles Buildings

...is a subject I've only begun to explore!  As a Los Angeles native, I love the "anything goes" attitude that extends even to architecture...from very modern to numerous "revival" styles...and of course the truly exotic buildings...

Drawing downtown...two views of Gehry's Disney Concert Hall..I will tackle this fabulous building again!

I love the shapes and colors in Meier's Getty Center...

...and the slightly eccentric Japanese Gallery at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art by Bruce Goff...

The Hollyhock House was Frank Lloyd Wright's first building in Los Angeles, commissioned by Aline Barnsdall and built in 1921--now part of Barnsdall Park--is often referred to as "Mayan Revival".  He called it "California Romanza"...

...and the Self-Realization Fellowship with its lotus finials on  Sunset Blvd...

The spires of the Holy Transfiguration Russian Orthodox Church rise above a derelict super market...from Sunset Blvd.