Posts By Alex Zonis
Aunt Marie
Aunt Marie
Meet my Aunt Marie!
On that day of September 4th Aunt Marie was celebrating her 85th birthday. And we all were there helping her. What fun it was! And how tasty! Many wonderful returns to you, Aunt Marie!
Aunt Marie is from Italian branch of my family. This reminds me how at Dr. Goldberg’s outing there was a trivia discussion about what to eat where in Chicago. “Where do you go for the best hot dogs?” We didn’t know and were informed of a hot dog stand on a corner of Devon and Milwaukee. “Where do you go for the best pizza?” and a pizzeria downtown was named. “Where do you go for the best Italian?” That we knew. “You go to Aunt Marie’s!” my husband and I exclaimed in unison.
Dinners at Aunt Marie’s are epic. You start early, at about 2 in the afternoon, so that you can lie down and rest between changes. Really, after the appetizers (mushrooms stuffed with Italian sausage, breaded artichoke hearts, shrimp cocktail – to name a few) you don’t need any more food for 2 days. But then pasta with red sauce, meatballs and sausage is coming which is just too good to pass. And just when you think that you are done eating for the rest of your life, there is tiramisu and cake and fruit, and men are loosening their belts. After all these years I know not to wear tight jeans to Aunt Marie’s. Then we usually go for a walk to get our tummies settled, but upon return we find the rest of the family at coffee and chocolate and ice cream. And Aunt Marie with her usual question “Do you want to take some food home, my dear?”, this is when she usually wears the expression you see here. We always want to.
Aunt Marie, we love you!
#11 of 40. Graphite, Moleskine Cahier sketchbook
Leslie
Leslie
Meet Leslie!
Actually many of you know Leslie already! Leslie of Leslie Paints is an artist, an art teacher, an art blogger, and a friend of mine.
I keep thinking how the world is changing before my eyes. I remember times when people wrote letters to communicate, I remember having a pen-pal. I hear people still do the pen-pal thing now, but it has become a sort of creative anachronism. What people really do now is Internet. As do I. I met Leslie in blogosphere and we became friends. End of story. We never met in person, not yet, but I think of her more often, communicate with her more frequently, get more out of our connection than from a number of people I say Hello to in person in the hallway. Communities of Internet age… an interesting subject… I understand it is part of today’s Social Anthropology taught in schools.
If you haven’t met Leslie, go and check her work on her blog Leslie Paints. She is very good. Well, she is a professional. Which makes me very much unsure of myself posting this portrait. How does a novice make a portrait of a mentor… On top of being wonderfully talented Leslie is a generous, sharing, thoughtful person. And she is so beautiful! Which presents yet another challenge. Beauty is so exact and elusive, a millimeter off here or there and beauty is gone in a puff of eraser debris. I hope I did Leslie justice here.
For this portrait Leslie wore a Chicago shirt – in my honor. I truly appreciate the gesture, Leslie. So I had to acknowledge this thoughtfulness by showing the letters on the sketch. It took forever!!! Leslie sweetie, let’s have a plain shirt next time please… 😳
#10 of 40. Graphite, pastel (for letters), Moleskine Cahier sketchbook
Marcos
Marcos
Meet Marcos!
Actually that would be Dr. Marcos Modiano Esquenazi! What a spectacular name! I met Marcos at Dr. Goldberg’s outing. He is a second year resident at Rush Hospital in Chicago specializing in psychiatry. Marcos is a comedian, you can probably tell from his visage. I will not retell his jokes here because this, with exception of some artful nudity, is a family rated blog. But I did laugh until my cheeks hurt.
However I will quote another one of my daughter’s precious reactions: “Who is this?! Is he single?!”
Graphite, Moleskine Cahier sketchbook
Peter
Peter
Meet Peter!
I am continuing with the day of the outing at Dr. Goldberg’s. The first person we saw upon arrival was Peter. He was the Master of the Grill. Now, me and my husband, we are smart :D. We have over thirty years of education between the two of us :D. And if we learned anything really worthwhile through all these years and all these schools, it is who the most important person at an outing is. That’s the cook! So we stayed with Peter and tried to get into his good graces.
We learned that Peter has a Masters degree in Psychology, but decided that he likes feeding people better than mucking with their minds. Shows some good judgment! So 20 years ago he opened a meat and sausage store. He makes his own sausages and smokes and cures his own meats. For the outing Peter had for us freshly made Polish sausage and bratwursts grilled to perfection and lightly smoked chicken blackened on a grill. You should have been there…
Graphite, Moleskine Cahier sketchbook
In other important news…
Today, September 6, my little blog turns 1 year old. To be honest I am amazed that I kept on with it steadily for this long. I am also amazed with the wild statistics of it. As of this post
10599 times people viewed something on these pages!
655 comments were left!
93 different countries have visited and left their flag on my map!
52 times I made a piece of art and had something to say!
Also something that cannot be enumerated – my wonderful new friends whom I met in blogosphere during this year. Thank you all for your patience, kindness and friendship.
Happy Birthday, Pencil Scribbles!
Pencil Scribbles visitors
Dr. Goldberg
Dr. Goldberg
Meet Dr. Goldberg!
Dr. Arnold Goldberg is extremely distinguished. He is an MD. He is a Supervising and Training Analyst at the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis. He was a director of the said Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis for many years. He is a Professor of Psychiatry at Rush University Medical College, Chicago, IL. He is an author of Misunderstanding Freud, The Prisonhouse of Psychoanalysis, Being of Two Minds, Moral Stealth and author or editor of more than thirty other books and articles. He has more titles than you can shake a stick at … possibly too distinguished :D.
Here Dr. Goldberg hosts an outing for psychiatry residents he is currently teaching. My husband is in the program, and that’s how I got to be there. As many highly accomplished people Arnold is an easy and humble person, full of crackling self-depreciating jokes. At the outing he had us all in stitches with stories of his service in US Army. Captain Goldberg was a part the “Doctors Draft” and served as US Army psychiatrist in the late 50s, between the two wars.
I showed this portrait to my daughter, and here’s her reaction: “He is adorable! Too cute for words!” I couldn’t have said it better myself.
Graphite, Moleskine Cahier sketchbook
Jeff
Jeff
It was a beautiful Monday morning. The sky was blue, the air – cool, the lake – turquoise… It could as well be a dark and stormy night, because it was on that beautiful morning my husband’s laptop decided that it is time change careers… to that of a boat anchor. It was dead, it wouldn’t boot. We attempted resuscitation. Short of mouth-to-mouth we did everything we could. We actually persuaded it to boot up, but it was not convinced. It was thinking deeply and meaningfully about each key stroke and seriously considering checking out again. It was time for a computer doctor.
Enter Jeff. Jeff is an ER doctor in a computer clinic PC Solutions. Our nearly comatose laptop got admitted, assessed and diagnosed. It needed an organ transplant, a hard drive. Luckily a new hard drive was available without a waiting list, and Jeff skillfully performed the surgery. No recovery time, no heavy drugs – our laptop got a second life and is happily zooming along. Jeff is a hero!
Here Jeff is advising me that no further upgrades or parts would be needed, everything should be working fine.
Graphite, watercolor pencils, Moleskine Cahier sketchbook
Barb
Barb
Meet Barb!
Barb is a dear friend. She is beautiful, sincere, caring, intelligent, warm, generous, vivacious, hysterically funny, and has a gift of conversation like no-one else I know. Barb is also a psychic. I kid you not! Barb is a psychic entertainer extraordinaire. She and her company Barbara Meyers Psychic Entertainment are a feature on the Chicago party scene. Her stage name is Madame Zandra – imagine that! Barb will read your cards, your palm, and often just you, and will tell you how it is, no frills or sugar coating. Exceptional talent!
Barb’s portrait took me longer than planned two hours I am trying to limit my sketch portraits to. Perhaps I was worried about bad karma or Madame Zandra’s psychic wrath that I would call on my head if I don’t make her look beautiful. First I overdid the contrast, then I smoothed it over too much. I fretted over wrinkles, should I perhaps reduce them… I was wondering about lifting off a few pounds, so easy on paper… In the end I decided that Barb is gorgeous the way she is. Now let’s see if my ceiling will spring a leak in the next few days…
Graphite, Moleskine Cahier sketchbook.
Wilma
Wilma
Meet Wilma!
Wilma is a basset hound and a total sweetheart. Wilma is with Mike. Sometimes. They are not an immediate family, more like cousins. They visit. It’s complicated!
Wilma is amazingly talented. She can rotate her tail in a circular fashion when she is happy, which is most of the time when she is not sleeping. She also works as a vacuum cleaner wherever she goes, free of charge. You don’t have to worry about your food falling on a floor when Wilma is there, it will be vacuumed spic-and-span without you lifting a finger.
Wilma has a past. She is a hurricane Katrina rescue. She doesn’t like to talk about it, and we don’t know what her name was before she got separated from her previous family during the Katrina mess. We do know that she survived for a year on her own in Louisiana forest and swamp. When she was found she was completely feral. Her new human wanted to call her Katrina at first, but then thought the name would remind her of the unhappy past and called her Wilma (also a hurricane) instead. Brought back to civilization she took time to adjust, for a while she was stealing food and grabbing it from her human’s hands and plate, not believing that food is no longer a problem. But she got it after a while and now is more civilized and has better table manners than some humans I know. Still… she chooses to work as a vacuum cleaner when such is needed.
I am practicing my new cross-hatching technique for quick drawing, Wilma’s portrait took about 2.5 hours.
Graphite, Moleskine Cahier sketchbook
Mike
Mike
Meet Mike!
Mike is a dear friend, a wonderfully kind, intelligent and caring human being with a wicked and dry sense of humor. He is also a wonderful cook. This image is from our get together with a few other friends on Sunday, August 15th. For this day Mike brought a cheese-veggies-fruit platter to treat us all. We were very appreciative, it was all gone in minutes! I loved the double-cream brie with fresh plumbs!
The image is a quick sketch in graphite to try a new technique. Somehow I have it that sketchbook drawings ought to be quick. None of these 30…40…60… hours photorealistic drawings with meticulous layers. This is cross-hatching and done in 2 hours.
Graphite, Moleskine Cahier sketchbook
Day 2 of the Sketchbook Project 2011.
Meet Mike! Mike is a dear friend, a wonderfully kind, intelligent and caring human being with a wicked and dry sense of humor. He is also a wonderful cook. This image is from our get together with a few other friends on Sunday, August 15th. For this day Mike brought a cheese-veggies-fruit platter to treat us all. We were very appreciative, it was all gone in minutes! I loved the double-cream brie with fresh plumbs!
The image is a quick sketch in graphite to try a new technique. Somehow I have it that sketchbook drawings ought to be quick. None of these 30-40-60 hours photorealistic drawings with meticulous layers. This is cross-hatching and done in 2 hours.
Blue Angels
Blue Angels
The first day and the first sketch of The Sketchbook Project 2011 which is run by Art House Co-op, Brooklyn New York. A grand thank you to Carol King of Carol King: Painting, Drawing, Complaining who turned me on to this. This is going to be a lot of fun. And in the end my sketchbook is going on a tour and will be shown in several cities to be viewed by people. Is it possible to have more fun than this? Please don’t answer this, it was a rhetorical question.
I chose a theme “A day in the life”, my official bar-coded Moleskine sketchbook has arrived. And just as I began to panic about what my first sketch was going to be, the Chicago Air Show arrived and solved my problem. Here I have for you the Chicago darlings, our homeboys, US Navy fliers – the Blue Angels. Today, as every second weekend of August, they were doing a show on their FA18 Hornets, performing loops and dives over the Lake, flying at a “safe” 2 feet distance from each other after the unfortunate touch incident they had last year.
I also wanted to comment on the Moleskine Cahier sketchbook, the official sketchbook of the Sketchbook Project. The paper in the book is so thin that you can read a newspaper through it. While it is has a lovely buttery finish, the thinness rules out pretty much any wet media. Watercolor is out of the question, which is very disappointing. In fact a fellow artist, also a participant, tested a number of media on this paper and published results in her blog for our benefit – Moleskine Cahier test. I am going to have to get really creative with this paper.
Watercolor pencils (dry), Moleskine Cahier sketchbook