Featured Artist Friday: Laura Frankstone

Francophile, painter, passionate drawer and travel sketcher



It is only fitting that my first featured, and one of my favorite, artist is Laura Frankstone. It is, afterall, how I discovered the world of blogging. While doing a search on another favorite artist, I came across Laura’s blog, Laurelines. At the time, I had never heard the term “blog”, but was enamored the minute I found Laurelines. I went back and read every post she had posted prior to that day. I fell in love with her loose, fluid style immediately.

That was almost three years ago. Since then I have been following Laura as she travels the world -- sketching and painting and telling the story as she goes. I love seeing the world through her eyes.



Her travel sketchbooks are a large part of her life. She is a painter and a passionate travel sketcher, but trained, at universities, in oils. She took up watercolors as a way to make exciting travel sketches.

In 2007 Laura's travel sketchbooks were exhibited at the Biennale du Carnet de Voyage at Clermont-Ferrand, France.

Laura said, in an interview on The Artful Parent, “About three years ago, I turned away from painting to devote myself to drawing, to keeping sketchbooks and travel journals. I was stuck in the studio and needed new energy. I also started my blog Laurelines at that point. I work best within rather narrow parameters, so that first year I set myself a plan to immerse myself in the study of color. I devoted six weeks to each color in the spectrum and kept daily sketchbooks dealing with those colors. The second year, my goal was to become completely fluent in drawing. I divided the year up into twelve themes and drew within those themes every day of each month. Part of my plan that year was to spend a whole month in Paris, sketching—and I did! Last year, I gave myself a more free-ranging set of goals, but I was no less assiduous."

Last year her central theme, both metaphorically and literally, was her search for water. She continues her focus on watery painting this year, with a month long trip planned to Brittany.

She is also illustrating a food lovers guide to her area,

has done some wedding sketching for a friend, and has many more exciting things to share with us this year.

As Twyla Tharp said, “You don’t get in the mood to create --- it’s discipline." Laura’s discipline is something I truly admire and respect about her as an artist. “I don’t believe in waiting for moments of inspiration. Inspiration comes as you work.”, says Laura. Insisting on discipline and orderliness in my own work, it is a quality I appreciate intensely.

I am indebted to Laura for the influence she has had on me unknowingly. Not only have I started my own blog, but she has inspired me to start painting and sketching again (after being mostly self-taught) and has me energized with the idea of wedding sketching, as something fun and exciting to offer to my wedding clients. Wanting more professional training, I have signed up for several watercolor classes over the next year and a half. Maybe I will be brave enough to post some of my work someday soon.

I commissioned Laura to paint the front window of my stationery shop. I am planning to meet her, for the first time, when she visits Asheville in August!

There are so many more favorite sketches and paintings than I can possibly begin to share with you here, so you must visit her at Laurelines to see more. I promise it will be worth the visit!! Please check out her 101 faces. Laura does the most soulful eyes I have ever seen.



Laura Frankstone has one of the most fascinating lives of anyone I know. I live vicariously through her and cannot wait to see where she will take us next!

Sneak Peek: Featured Artist Fridayand Real Wedding Weekend: Ellen & Alan

Check back next weekend for this beautiful Southern wedding...

Lowcountry Charm at its best! ...and the first, in my Featured Artist series that I will bring to you at least one Friday each month.

Parisian Countryside Wedding

This is one of the most fabulous weddings I have ever seen. Maria, at Ritzy Bee, posted this wedding last week and I am still in awe. Not only does it incorporate my favorite color scheme, green and white, (I am planting an all white garden and redecorating several rooms in our home in various shades of greens and whites) but I also adore the juxtaposition of rustic with refined and haute couture with whimsy. I love the use of the birch-bark, cabbage and fuzzy almonds, the elegance of porcelain doves, sweet peas, roses, lamb's ear and fern combined with the silver and crystal pieces that adorned the reception feasting table.

The bride’s stunning bouquet combined butterflies from Deyrolle, grouse feathers, orchids, ferns, mint, and peonies tied with antique ribbons.

The bride wore an amazing white plumed headpiece.

I am seeing feathery inspirations everywhere I look lately...as you can see in three of my last posts!

... and my favorite, the gorgeous calligraphed table cards, placed under glass cloches, by one of my favorite calligraphers, Bernard Maisner.

Go to Veranda to read all the details of this extraordinary wedding.

photos via Veranda

Father's Day Garden Tour

For the last ten years or more, my husband and I have attended the annual Father’s Day Garden Tour, sponsored by Asheville GreenWorks. Having no children of our own and both of our fathers deceased, it has become our tradition. The tour is always spectacular and proceeds support a great cause – plantings and community beautification. This year’s event included ten gardens in Biltmore Forest. Being, literally, in a forest, most of the gardens were shade gardens. Each one we strolled through was breathtaking.

This historic property, above, was one of the first homes built in Biltmore Forest in 1932.

The featured garden was that belonging to actress, Andie MacDowell. Her charming “storybook home” is surrounded by lush rose, vegetable, herb and water gardens.

My favorite was the wisteria canopy that covers a high porch.

These gardens gave me some great ideas to incorporate into my own garden scheme. I have already started hinting, to my husband, for a water garden for my birthday. We’ll see if he takes the bait.

Fabulously Feathery

"It is not only fine feathers that make fine birds." ~ Aesop

While browsing through magazines, for inspiration, for my traditional yet edgy wedding endeavor, I found the most fabulous feathery headpieces featured in Badgley Mischka's ads. While I know this is a little too edgy for this bride, I think they are amazing! I may have to use them as inspiration for a future window display in my shop…afterall; I have been purchasing many feathery things with my latest task!

Inspiration Board: Traditional with a Twist

I have to share with you the wedding project I am currently immersed in. It has been one of the most interesting commissions I have been asked to do. The bride’s style is proper but eccentric, traditional yet edgy, adventurous and relaxed. The pieces I am fashioning for her wedding invitation suite and reception pieces will be a juxtaposition of old-world tradition and a quirky modern twist. She told me to think Marie Antoinette, Great Gatsby, Hollywood Glam mixed with my own vintage style and old-world scripts. The couple loves the roaring twenties and the carefree decadence of the illustrated lifestyle this era depicts. It is the impetus behind the look and feel they want to create for their wedding. These elements will first be introduced in the invitations and carried through to the reception pieces. I will be designing two large art pieces, which will be displayed on easels at the reception. The hand-painted menu I will create will later be a piece of art they can hang in their home to treasure for years to come. The bride loves the aesthetics of the labels used on Santa Maria Novella Pharmacy’s products, in Florence (one of her favorite places), so I am using those as a springboard for my ideas for the border that will encompass the menu. I am also producing a seating chart, which will incorporate a mixture of abstract art with vintage script.

Later in the evening guests will be given masks and fans to liven the party.

After the festivities, the couple will leave in one of the antique cars from her grandfather’s collection.

This project has forced me to think outside the box of the traditional weddings I am accustomed to. I am up for the challenge and can’t wait to see it unfold.

I know it will be an unforgettable event. I hope to be there to capture it on paper. More to come on that later...

 

Photos for the Inspiration Board were provided by the bride, a few of my own

and others via Fanciful Designs , Paris Hotel Boutique and The Paris Apartment .

The last two photos via Coco + Kelley

Happy Birthday!

photo via French Blue

Happy Birthday to my special Mom!

XOXO