Cay Denise

In a recent email from Wendy MacNaughton, she talked about visiting and shopping at La Maison du Pastel in Paris.  This is a great video about how their pastels are made...from centuries-old, handed-down equipment and processes!

The 'Grown-Ups Table' (or GUT as it is fondly called) is Wendy MacNaughton's brainchild on Substack.  As a practicing artist, she led her subscribers through January with daily themed art prompts that included great information about techniques, artists, and art genres among other topics.  It was a super experience and work too.  Part of participation involved reading others' posts and commenting on as many as you could.  With 700-1,000 posts per day, I'm sure some were missed, but I learned a ton from others.  I saw innovative interpretations of the prompts, learned about what people were intending with their work, and what memories they may have chosen to represent visually -- all sprinkled with some laughs along the way.  Thank you Wendy and the GUT community! Photos of some of my favorite work that I did (aside from the blind contour drawing posted in January) are below.  The materials I used throughout the month were colored pens and markers plus ...

Bay Area artist and illustrator, Wendy MacNaughton, mixes drawing, social work and storytelling into rich and fun exercises for children, through her 'Drawing Together' program, and for adults, through the Grown-ups Table (aka GUT) program.  She is a visual columnist for the New York Times and the California Sunday Magazine. To start 2024, Wendy has put together a daily lesson with prompt for each day of January for the GUT group (made up of many hundred to even possibly 1,000+ adult members).  Each lesson has a bit of narrative followed by an exercise to take a suggested 10 minutes.  Her intention -- to help members build an ongoing practice and deliver basic drawing knowledge.   For this month, I broke out an older sketchbook with a lot of blank pages of which many have been filled since January 1st.  I was especially tickled with a recent blind contour drawing (looking only at a source image while moving my pen over the paper in conjunction with my eyes movin...

This post's title is part of a larger quote by E.V. Lewis in which he comments on the value of being candid instead of deceptive.  I've taken a portion of his quote -- to literally mean 'show your hand'. Wendy MacNaughton is an artist, illustrator, visual columnist for the NYTimes, and an author.  She is also the Creator and Drawer-in-Chief of DrawTogether, a participatory drawing show for children, and Grown-Ups Table, lessons and a community for drawing-minded adults delivered via Substack subscription.  I've just recently signed up and have been able to access some older articles. In her Nov 5, 2022 piece about how to look at art as an artist, she profiles two inspiring artists one of which is Bisa Butler, an amazing fiber/quilt art designer and maker.   See Bisa Butler's Portfolio here     As part of the article, Wendy included a fun audio exercise of using torn paper to create a hand from your imagination (palm, fingers, fingernails).  I love fun ...

A New York Times Op-Art piece from October 16th announced a challenge for anyone to participate in. The purpose is about what you can learn from drawing a stranger.  Wendy MacNaughton is an artist  and graphic journalist.  She also is founder and lead of an art-making club (called 'DrawTogether') for kids as well as one for grown-ups.   In Wendy's challenge, she asks participants to draw the other person's image using 'blind contour'.  This is a technique when you put pen or pencil to paper, look straight at the subject's face, and draw the face without looking down at the paper or your pen.  What do you imagine happens?  Want to try it? Here is a link to the project toolkit that Wendy has put together if you'd like to participate. 'How to' Toolkit from Wendy Below is the article link announcing the challenge in the NYTimes.  Please note you may need a subscription in order to access it. Wendy McNaughton - NYTimes Art Challenge