… reading.

Basilique du Sacré-Cœur. —Dominick

“My world before me is perfect.
There’s nowhere else I want to be,
Except laying underneath the stars
Hand in hand, you and me.”

by ShoeBowl

Don’t ask me what made me bring pastels on vacation to Germany with me (one guess how Germans reacted to the artist dragging the billowing chalk dust cloud wherever she went). This is a sketch i made in almost complete darkness in another one of Ludwig II’s lairs, this time of the golden boat floating in the pond of his artificial underground “opera grotto”. Apparently he liked to float in the boat while Wagner operas were being performed on the little stage surrounded by papermaché stalachtites. It was also one of the first indoor uses of electricity in the 1870ies or so. Needless to mention this part of Alpine castle Linderhof did not quite match the rest of the 19th Century Bavarian Baroque décor.

One of the wonderful things about living in NYC is that opportunities come up to attend musical and cultural events. This is from a concert I had the good fortune to hear at Carnegie Hall. I love drawing musicians and performers; they get lost in the moment and the music and are so totally engrossed…the body language is pure joy. This conductor’s hands never stopped moving, and the woman on the harpsichord expressed it all with her hair! Is that called a baroque beehive? Love it – Veronica

See more of these drawings on my blog.

Hy-dran-ge-a:  New Latin “water vessel” : HYDRO- +Greek angos, vessel, pitcher.

The hydrangea is my favorite flower and it’s in full bloom all over the city: in Central Park, in beautiful ceramic pots in front of high rises and in window boxes in front of old brownstones!  I don’t know why I love it so, I just do.  It seems so delicate and fragile and yet so strong.  It’s subtle colors are romantic and lovely: blue, pink,white, purple, whatever you like! (what color don’t they come in?) The changes in hues are extraordinary. The design of the individual flowers, so simple, yet the gathering of the many flowers, how complex and solid. Sometimes the full blossom reminds me of R. Buckminster Fuller’s geodesic domes.  They are that beautifully and exquisitely designed.  Bucky balls, I think they are called.  And the leaves, love the leaves: perfect symmetry. I will miss them.  And I will dutifully await their return in the coming year.

I guess I do know why I love the hydrangea after all.

I read that there are only two underwater Calderas on Earth. The one in China is under uninhabitable area, and the one in Greece lies below one of the biggest tourist attractions in the world, Santorini.

Underneath this boat on the bottom of that sea is a deep crater that stretches many miles wide that was created by the volcanic eruption that Santorini is so famous for. It has also been speculated that this was Atlantis. It’s a unique spot on the globe, and I’m so happy to have been there. And now that the cold weather is creeping in, I wish I was STILL THERE!

This is a watercolor painting I made about this time of the year in Central Park. The silhouette in the center is the angel of the Bethesda Fountain. Some trees are still green, but many have begun to turn intense and beautiful colors. It’s such a brief time to be happy before everything turns grey and white.

painting by Greg Betza

The exercise was a tough one; pick a word and illustrate with it in mind.        I selected the word dimension.

Curious, I looked it up. According to Webster the definition of dimension was a measure in a single line, as length, breadth, height, thickness, or circumference. I wondered what would happen if I applied that concept to drawing, and interpret it’s meaning to LINE, MARKS, GRAPHICS, FEELING, even THOUGHT?

The answer was incredible.

The joy was not in the goal, but the process.

No offense to the local pizza shops in my new home town, but I miss Nicks. Hands down the best pizza in New York City. No slices, but I never had a hard time polishing off 2/3 rds of a pie—and who doesn’t like a slice or two for breakfast the morning after? I pulled this drawing out, along with it’s companion for the day, from an afternoon visit last April (ok, that day it was hard to polish off a whole pie) when I  did a few Second Avenue Subway drawings. The women in the drawing where a little freaked by the commotion going on outside. —Dominick

“Courage is the discovery that you may not win, and trying when you know you can lose.” -Tom Krause

Eddie Peña