A few more Friday Nights...

Free Friday Night at the Norton Simon Museum is a great monthly event, and a wonderful sketching opportunity!  I nearly always want to sketch in the gardens, even as the days became shorter--a pleasure to sketch in the changing light.  Here are a few...

Mostly it's dry media here, since the Norton Simon frowns on the wet stuff...so, mostly I sketched with ink, pencil and some water-soluble media (adding just a discreet touch of the water brush now and then).

Almost night here...


























The gardens are home to some wonderful sculpture...interesting to see how visitors interact with them.  At left, Henry Moore and Maillol's large-scale "Mountain".  Below, Henry Moore...

  

 A glimpse through the window from the garden at Maillol's Three Graces gracing the lobby...

Sketching the fading light with water-soluble Inktense pencils on a fall evening...

This one...well, it was an experiment!  Sketching mostly by feel with a soft pencil on tan paper, and some white gouache added for the very last light...

Sketching on a Friday Night...

...at the Norton Simon Museum!  Over the summer I started joining the LA sketching Meetup group at the Pasadena museum's monthly Free Friday nights--what a great sketching opportunity, drawing the museum's collection and the lovely gardens on a warm summer evening.  Here are a few sketches...

A favorite gallery...with paintings by Toulouse-Lautrec and Degas...and the lovely "Little Fourteen-Year-Old Dancer" by Degas.  The interplay between live, moving bodies and sculpture is always so interesting to me.  Sketching here with pencil and brush marker--no liquid media in the Norton Simon!

A sketcher with Maillol's "Three Nymphes"...


















On another night, the garden is irresistible...visitors around the pond with Maillol's "Air"...









And "Mountain" by Maillol seems to command the garden with her presence...

 Sketchers with "Mountain" in August...

I'd been wanting to sketch this view of "Air"--protesting the invasion of 21st century freeway noise and signage into her garden paradise...


















In September, the days getting shorter means hurrying a bit to catch the fading light in the garden...here are some quick thumbnails...

Experimenting here with a new material (always fun!!)--a chunky water-soluble slab of "colored graphite" in ochre, pencil, and a bit of white gouache...