#sketchingthepandemicyear2021

[artbymeera]

#repurposed #SmithsonianEngagementCalendar2021Week of March 7-13 Week 11 #latepost #sketchingthepandemicyear2021 #repurposed #upcycle #sketchbook When I saw the photo of 'Poems of Phyllis Wheatley' I realized I had never read any of her poems and knew very little about her. So I went googling her and her poetry. This is probably the first time, my entry in the Smithsonian Engagement Calendar is not by chance but by design. I also found a drawing of her done 50 years after her death at the National Museum of African American History and Culture- I used that sketch as my reference wondering the whole time if it was really her! The Poems of Phyllis Wheatley is from 1909 and is displayed in the museum. "In 1773, Wheatley became the first African American to publish a volume of poetry, which she did while enslaved in Boston. A version of the poet's portrait by enslaved artist Scipio Morehead(active 1770s) is depicted on the cover of this 1909 edition of her poems." https://www.instagram.com/p/CgHx-ThrZGEQOuekb7AgFd_P3-THAc5Wgb-Wyg0/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[artbymeera]

Winter Lines watercolor by Meera Rao Smithsonian Engagement Calendar 2021 week 6 :January 31-February 6 2021 Week 6 photo in the Smithsonian Engagement Calendar 2021 was an untitled work by Avery Singer. ‘Pushing the limits of painting Avery builds compositions with 3-D modeling software and then uses computer-controlled, industrial-scale printers to airbrush them on to canvas.’ After checking the photograph, I went through my camera roll for the week zeroed in on a shot. When I looked up, outside my window was the same image: beautiful lines created by the winter branches of the trees. #latepost #repurposed #smithsonianengagementcalendar #watercolor #sketchingthepandemicyear2021 #sketchbook #artjournal https://www.instagram.com/p/Cb9-J2wrXCl_NPwzbYCa1aYgm61rhr3ENNOvb40/?utm_medium=tumblr

[artbymeera]

Wearing Pearls and Celebrating Kamala watercolor on Yupo On January 20th 2021, #verylatepost Kamala Harris became the first woman, first Indian American, first black and Asian American to be sworn in as the Vice President of the United States of America! I wore pearls, a bright blue top that day as I watched the ceremony on TV and celebrated the historic moment. Smithsonian Engagement Calendar 2021 week 4 Minnijean Brown-Trickey's graduation dress,1959 graces the opposite page in the #SmithsonianEngagementCalendar2021: "Minnijean Brown-Trickey (b1941)made history by simply going to school and claiming her right to belong. In 1957, four years after 'Brown v Board of Education', she and eight classmates integrated the all white Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. Bullied and eventually expelled, Brown graduated from Lincoln High School in New York city wearing this dress, which she designed. She later remembered 'I felt perfectly beautiful in it'." #sketchingthepandemicyear2021 #repurposed #sketchjournal #sketchbook #artjournal https://www.instagram.com/p/CaIMA1Ipf-EZ_u_QC6_ye0-T0lT-SDAT9cII5U0/?utm_medium=tumblr

[artbymeera]

New Year and the the theme continues: Happy New Year !! Wishing all a happy, healthy, creative year ahead! I am back at it again - sketching simultaneously in my 2021(retroactive) and 2022 Smithsonian Engagement Calendar as a continuation of my 2020 theme of ‘Sketching the Pandemic Year!’ I haven’t come up with any other project to keep me ‘engaged’ and had these two beautiful books on hand. So I continue to record something for each week while still mulling over other ideas ! This way I will have at least 106 sketches done this year :) “The ‘Dyber Amertrine’ photographed in the 2021 Smithsonian Engagement Calendar is a quartz variety mined in Anahi Mine, Bolivia, that is part amethyst and part citrine, accounting for the unique purple and yellow orange color combination seen in theses gems. Although faceted and carved by hand, the ‘Dyber Ametrine’ also represents the state-of-the-art cutting techniques used by gem artist Michael Dyber , including ‘Dyberotic Optic Dishes’ that create optical illusions.” The fading, drying hydrangea is from our garden photographed last December. It mirrored the colors and beauty of the ametrine and was the motivation for me to continue sketch-journaling in these Engagement calendars! heard on my daily walk last week using the Merlin Bird App from Cornell Ornithology Lab. Two days later I saw three of them again in the same area circling above. Using bird guides and my own blurry photographs I sketched it in watercolor. The explanation in the 2022 Smithsonian Engagement Calendar about the dove photographed on that page : ‘Artis Pablo Cano created this card for Helen Kohen, a noted art historian and critic, to thank her for a gift she had given him and to tell her how he was using it. The front of the card features a drawing of a dove and the back includes a sketch of a design for a telephone booth shaped like a women’s head.’ I guess now that page has a dove and hawk :) #sketchjournal #sketchingthepandemicyear2021 #sketchingthepandemicyear2022 #sketchingthepandemicyear #smithsoniumengagementcalendar #smithsonian #watercolor #hydrangia #cooper’s hawk https://www.instagram.com/p/CYVBLIbLtnmm849SXLHT-9fJTixhW-65XmSa6c0/?utm_medium=tumblr