October was a month of many drawing events going on all over Los Angeles. I sketched The Big Draw event at Grand Park in downtown Los Angeles hosted by Ryman Arts (all the turquoise t-shirts!). I learned a lot more about this great program. Ryman Arts offers free studio classes to talented high school students from all over Los Angeles, where many of the public schools unfortunately offer little access to art.
At Grand Park, long scrolls of paper are rolled out to create giant murals...
The Gallery Girls modeled in costume for some young artists...
Rolling up at the end...
The following week, The Big Draw met the Worldwide Sketchcrawl as the LA Sketchcrawl group met at City Hall in Pasadena...
I always wanted to draw the Robinson Memorial that sits across
from City Hall, and the Sketchcrawl was the perfect opportunity! Jackie and Mack Robinson were outstanding high school athletes in Pasadena, and both went on to stellar careers. Mack won the silver medal for the 200-meter dash in the 1936 Berlin Olympics, and Jackie Robinson famously broke the color barrier in major league baseball in 1947 with the Brooklyn Dodgers. Both of the brothers went on to be leaders in their communities. The positioning of the heads is interesting--Mack stayed in Pasadena, and his portrait faces City Hall, while Jackie faces east, towards Brooklyn, NY. The artists were Ralph Helmick, John Outterbridge and Stuart Schechter.
Every year I take students to draw at the L.A. Zoo, so like to spend some time before hand sketching there, and plan out the route in my head. Here are some of 2013's sketches...
Francois Langurs grooming, cassowary, echidna and koala...
...is an annual fall event at Descanso Gardens in La Canada...I went to a beautiful kimono show put on by the Los Angeles Kimono Club, and learned a few things about kimono dressing. Sensei Fumi Akutagawa, a master of many traditional Japanese arts introduced the show by saying "kimono dressing is a learned art". I sketched some of her students of all ages...boys and girls, Japanese and non-Japanese as they paraded across an outdoor stage under the oak trees, wishing I could capture more of the detail!
...and a few more studies in black and white...on the road to Santa Barbara...
When I last visited Echo Park, I was delighted to discover that the paddle boats have returned to the lake! These are not the funky old boats I remember from years ago, but sleek new shiny "rubber duck" yellow! They've made an instant hit, and the park is very busy on the weekends now...
More summer travels...to LACMA (sketching the monumental Rodin heads perched enigmatically on the staircase leaving the museum), and to the Getty Center...
