Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site

Busts by Alan Colby at Saint-Gaudens
Originally uploaded by LHFeinberg

A beautiful day at Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site. I have been working on eyes, noses and lips in my drawing class with Jeanne Lachance. It was interesting to see all the statues today and look at the faces. There were many artists there today demonstrating various methods of art, gilding (gold leaf), blow torch fire organ, bas relief (modeling clay), pastel, sculpting with wood, stone & clay. We had a great time watching everybody.

The busts were inside and will be on display through October 31, 2009.

See more photos at this link: www.flickr.com/photos/40061738@N02/sets/72157622336789679/

Joe and I took a slower drive home through state roads and enjoyed all the autumn leaves too.

Rosh Hashanah, 5770

the leaves are touched by gold this day,

the birthday of the world

5770 years ago God created it

skies, waters, planet earth and us

was God lonely, the angels and seraphim

not enough company?

perhaps God had that strong maternal drive

I felt so many times myself

that drive to create life

yet we pray, “our father, our king”

hard to change to gender neutral terminology

although the imagery works for me

seeing the divine with both masculine

and feminine characteristics

looking back at the old year

looking forward to the new

feeling purpose in my life

bringing people together

listening to others in hard places

where I have been before

I can empathize but I know

the healing only begins

with decisions and actions

one summer morning we hiked on hilly trails

and found ourselves on a ledge above a ridge

looking down at hawks soaring on thermals

a moment of awe at the sight

looking ahead the drive to create is strong

finding joy in my art with pencils,

pens and paint or an occasional poem

I am filled with wonder at all I see

from a red-bodied dragonfly to the

cardinals singing fortissimo and

the chirpy chipmunks on my deck

may this be a good year,

a sweet year for all

L’Shanah Tovah

5770

view of Mount Monadnock from Pisgah State Park, August 2009

copyright 2009 Linda H. Feinberg

Misty Morning

Unretouched photos from my early morning walk to Dorrs Pond (Livingston Park) nearby (Manchester, NH). I think this is the last day of summer, first day of fall. The sun has come out now and it's a beautiful day.

Early work

I have been installing drivers and software today on my new computer. Getting some error messages that some of my old software has known "compatibility" issues with Vista. I may have to buy updated programs.

Meanwhile, I installed my scanner and scanned in an old piece to test it out. This is one of my very first colored pencil drawings. I still like it. Maybe I'll make a small card out of it. Looking at it I can see how my drawing skills have improved. A good thing too, after all those lessons!

Artist of the Month (Belmont Street)

Finally won something! For the first time I entered the voting at the Manchester Artists Association meeting. My painting, Belmont Street, that I posted in May, will be displayed for a few weeks at the Lazy Boy Gallery (http://www.la-z-boy.com) in Manchester .

Japanese Masa Paper

Just playing with art supplies. The process is quite interesting and takes several days. First you wet the paper and crinkle it, then I painted the reverse (non-shiny) side and let it dry. The colors did not come through enough so I repeated the process on the shiny side and let it dry. Then the dry paper gets pasted onto cold press watercolor paper (it is too thin by itself) as a backer. I actually used some old experimental sheets (recycling!) that I no longer needed. Their colors did not show through. The Japanese paper is sufficiently opaque.

I used Chinese watercolor pigments (Marie's) and Chinese brushes. After the paper was dry, I thought about what I wanted to put on it. I decided on the blossoms first. After a couple of weeks, I tackled the other paper and decided to use Chinese ink for a landscape. The inspiration for the first was a photo I took of crabapple blossoms in the spring; for the second a photo I took while hiking in Alta, Utah. My paintings were very loose representations. I was not trying to be too technical, just having fun!

Mount Willard

Great views from Mount Willard in Crawford Notch State Park (NH). Some of the trees are starting to turn red & gold already. The temperature was comfortable, very few bugs. It took about 1 hour and 20 minutes to go to the top and 1 hour to come down. We spent some time having lunch and enjoying the view. This is a popular hike and not too difficult. Well worth the sweat to go up.

The road below is Route 302 (in the middle), the other line on the right is a railroad line. This view is looking east toward the Presidential Range & possibly Chocorua. Mount Washington is not in this picture, but we could see it when we walked around the top. I didn't get a good picture of that one.

Fall Art Classes

Fall art classes start again soon at E.W. Poore. I will be studying drawing again with Jeanne Lachance. There are many others, reasonably priced and not overly long for those of us with short attention spans! Here is a link: http://www.ewpoore.com/