Sketching the Pandemic Year 2020 Week 28

Sketching the Pandemic Year 2020 week 28 July5-11

Although not considered true lilies, Calla lilies are beautiful. We get to enjoy the yellow and pink blooms  only for a few days. Before long, the plants - leaves and blooms end up as tasty meals for the shiny Japanese beetles, caterpillars and other creatures! Seems like these bugs create their own art work of lacey design on the leaves and flowers as they raid and devour the plants. I was moaning over the tattered plants even as I took a photo of the hole ridden flower - seeing a different kind of beauty in its altered state.  Later, it occurred to me that the  bug eaten flower was the perfect subject for the week’s sketch :) 

The China white Porcelain with the cobalt under colorless glaze Ming dynasty vase pictured in the Smithsonian Engagement Calendar 2020 dates back to 1400. :  ‘Here the motifs of lotus and grain stalks form a visual pun : the Chinese words for lotus and grain are homophones for the words for peace and year, respectively. Thus the imagery on this bottle expresses a wish for “peace year after year” 

For the calla lillies though it’s ‘piece year after year’ :( 

 

Sketching the Pandemic Year 2020 : Week 27

Sketching the Pandemic Year 2020 Week 27 June 28-July 4

I was out with the Water Quality Testing team - of course,  masked, social distancing.  I missed the car pooling from site to site, exchanging news and laughs as now we drove separately in our own vehicles. We went down from testing seven sites to just four to accommodate quarantine regulations. But being out in the nature, by waterside was just the thing I needed during sheltering at home. When I saw this boat, I knew what I wanted to sketch for the week. It is serendipity when it paired so well with the photo in the Smithsonian Engagement Calendar 2020. Sonya Pencheva’s ‘Human-tower builders(castellers)’  was taken on the National Mall in 2018. 

Anchored by Meera Rao