Lily S. May–Life with Art
I've continued making contour drawings this past week. Most of these have been blind contour drawings. Blind because you don't look at the paper while drawing unless you wind up at the end of a contour or off the page. You follow the lines of your subject slowly with your eyes while your pencil or… Continue reading Ahab Mask
I've been making line drawings this week, most of them direct contour drawings or incorporating that style as part of the drawings. This drawing is of my workroom. I often call it the art room, though there's artwork by me and other artists throughout the rooms my husband and I live in. The Art Room,… Continue reading In the Art Room
In the evenings, I often sketch imaginary images in a variety of sketchbooks. Some of these images influence other work I do, some feel like extended doodles with no need to be anything other than themselves. Here are several recent images that I've made with felt pens. The divided image below did influence the scratchboard,… Continue reading From My Sketchbook
I was looking through some of my early prints the other week. Here's a linocut that I made in 1974. I was playfully inspired by the kapok trees I saw in the Caribbean when I visited my family there. I loved those trees, in particular a huge one whose buttress roots formed a sort of… Continue reading Kapoks Resting
This is another gouache painting that I made this week. I had no specific plan other than to irreverently remove the black ink layer from a small prepared scratchboard, apply gouache paint to the board and later scrape into the paint! It wasn't until after I saw the painting from afar that I realized it… Continue reading Fire!
I've been working on The Innocent Heart for around two weeks. I again deliberately let the piece develop as I worked as opposed to planning it ahead of time. It's a gouache painting layered with stamps I made. It has gone through massive changes. And not until earlier this week did I recognize the work… Continue reading The Innocent Heart
My most recent work is a departure from the scratchboard work I've been doing. I've been thinking of painting for several months and finally turned thoughts into action. I was fortunate to have supplies in good condition that I bought a few years ago--two gesso boards and tubes of paint. So, off I went into… Continue reading Colour
This is the latest work I've made, an abstract piece. The shapes remind me of an aerial view of islands or part of a map. It's a scratchboard drawing with pigment felt pens layered on top in places. Islands by Lily S. May, 2021, 5" x 7"
I'm working on another scratchboard drawing, learning from further mistakes. And I take walks every day, in the neighbourhoods and parks in the city. On Tuesday, I was walking on a street I love, admiring the gardens and trees, the birds, the houses I passed. I took a few photos on my phone as I… Continue reading Seeing
There were beautiful dogwood trees in flower in Toronto over the past few weeks. I love the shape of the petals and included them in a scratchboard drawing I made recently. Dogwood in Toronto, 2021 Although I’ve made several scratchboard drawings, I'm just learning about the medium. I'm not someone who usually takes courses in… Continue reading Dogwood–Learning
Arts of May 