Carrasco Studio

Accent on the Negative (as in composition)

Everyone brought toys for this class still life, and the assignment limited the student to two toys drawn so part of them went off the sides of the paper.  I showed the class Harriet Shorr's book of paintings and we discussed how she would paint the negative space, the background, first.  This would establish interesting intervals between objects and the main hue interaction for her painted objects. 

Also, we discussed how this viewpoint had a high horizon line, which created a feeling of flat space and transformed the objects and background into an abstraction.  The class drew their objects with colored watercolor pencils, trying to use a complimentary color....ie., blue pencil to line out Raggedy Ann's orange hair.  Added a little zip to the work when the watercolor pencil would bleed into the painted areas.

Lay that paint down, Mary!

Arctic Daydreams

This is where I learned to memorize images and then go inside to draw them.  My ink would freeze, otherwise.

Bagheera

My friend Tania Seabeck mentioned on Facebook that there is a vegetarian spider named Bagheera kiplingi.  I was struck by the name....in the Jungle Book by Kipling, Bagheera, the panther,  is a close companion of the boy Mowgli. 

"We be of one blood, thee and I" says Bagheera to Mowgli.  For some reason,  the statement and it's old speech syntax gives me a frisson of pleasure and dread, much as certain passages of music puts  shivers up my spine.

Several years ago, I did this painting  of a great panther and his familiar (spirit companion? devotee) for a friend who felt an affinity for this animal. In the painting, the human and the panther both have blood red flower hearts  and the  boy dances toward the big reclining cat.

I think with any profound spiritual connection, one experiences an alliance of love and fear...and approaches shyly,  obliquely before such grace, such  power and beauty. A dance of terror and devotion.

A Stone, A Leaf, An Unfound Door: Drawing Class # 5, Perspective and Negative Space

                                              Interior by Vilhem Hammershoei  1905

...a stone, a leaf, an unfound door: of a stone, a leaf, a door.  And of all the forgotten faces.....O lost, and by the wind grieved, ghost, come back again.                                                                                                                                 Thomas Wolfe....Look Homeward Angel.

In my first semester of college, I was placed in a class where my job was To Read Books.  I was in bliss. I was so low in my math skills that I barely qualified for bonehead math, but I was able to sidle into a higher level English class where all I had to do was  read books and write about what I read.  One of these books was Thomas Wolfe's, "Look Homeward Angel", and it was perfect for an 18 year old in love with literature.  I would clutch the book under my arm to class, to dinner (if I could get away with it...formal dinners were expected even in the dorms at that time) and on my way back from the library in the evening.  My campus was snowbound and cold in the winter, and I would slip and fall, and the book would skitter across the ice and stop in a snowbank.  I loved the book, still have the tattered copy with me, and its forward has haunted me ever since.

That metaphor of the open door, opening upon door upon door..... An enfilade into more mysteries and experience. Like Thomas Wolfe's book, like art, like drawing, .... a journey far too prolix and more than a little mad.

1  Discuss Chapter 7....Pass out Temple Grande page on the conflict between verbal and visual information.

2.  Show Tony Ryder’s method of blocking in.... .Relationships    Basic unit...figure...often the length and width of the head.
 


3. Basic Unit.....review. pg. 126.. the correct Basic unit controls the rest of your drawing....Remember Tony Ryder......boat...vertical unit, for me, is easier....use the horizontal and vertical of paper format to check angles.  Draw angles of Hopper painting...each shape...start with largest and get smaller and smaller. 

Choose the main vertical as your basic unit.  What direction should you have in your format?  No shading, just contour ....can use ruler if you like.


5. Drawing a stepladder.  Hold up viewfinder so the stepladder touches at least three edges of the viewfinder.  Keep the viewfinder in the same position and close one eye.    Focus on negative spaces around stepladder....first draw negative spaces around viewfinder.  Check the angles and lengths with a basic unit and the verticals and horizontals of the paper format.  Then start on the interior negative spaces....again, check the angles and lengths.

Assignment...Draw the Ballerina....negative space.......shared edges between the positive and negative..  Double check angles and curves with horizontal and vertical edges of the paper.  Come up with your definition of art....Read chapter 8

.......And watch for negative and positive confusions.....

 

Monkey Men                                               MC Escher                                   

"....If the red slayer think he slays,

Of if the slain think he is slain,

They know not well the subtle ways

I keep,  and pass, and turn again."

                                                        Ralph Waldo Emerson, from Brahma                                                                                                              

Drawing Lesson 1 The Path of a Pencil through Space and Time

"In Brazilian rivers, there exists a fish which sees with a two lensed eye, a kind of bifocal adjustment that permits the creature to examine the upper world of sunlight and air, which with the lower half of the lens, he can survey the watery depths in which he lives"....Loren Eisley

 

I like the idea of this creature as a metaphor for an artist, a creator who looks intently at the world and sees both the surface and the depths.  

I have decided to include both the present......the searchers in my class, their drawings and their presence,  and entries of my drawings and quotes I have placed in my journals. I also include a summation of each drawing lesson. 

I have 35 journals I have kept over about that many years...my mother, an inveterate writer, gave me my first journal and told me to fill it. Thirty-five years later, the first journal is a mess....the bindings are gone and all the pages are loose.  But I am so glad I have it, since I have forgotten so much.  It is a record of my past.  Time unbound.

 

I lived in the Philippines for 16 years.  the journal starts there when I was 36 years old.

Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain....4/28/10

You will learn five basic skills...edges, spaces, relationships, light, whole....components to whole.  And format.......(show demonstration with rocks and frame.)

My hopes and expectations for the class....that you can learn to switch over to “see”mode. I hope you can make it to every class...it will have a great deal to do with your success.  Life happens, so I will put the lesson and the assignments on the blog....do access my blog after every class and do the assignments in a timely manner .  These assignments can’t be done at the last minute.  Like piano practice, put aside at least 20 minutes for each assignment in a quiet place...not to be disturbed, not in front of the TV.  One a day. Consider it meditation.

All drawing is the same...some is just more complex.  Anyone can learn to draw.  This class will not make you an artist: it will teach you a skill, quickly.  For example, you can be taught to ride a bike, but not to be a cyclist.
In this class I will teach you accuracy and segue, hopefully into more expressive drawing.

Discuss  Milton Glaser video.  Conscious looking..to understand the world. 

Draw and date in your sketchbook: ALWAYS SIGN AND DATE.

a. Your hand.......Draw quickly..
b. Your face (use mirror)
c. A person from memory.. Draw quickly....

Training the eye......Discuss and demo stereotypes, natural urge to hurry, to be “efficient), YOU HAVE NOTHING ELSE TO DO BUT FOCUS AND DRAW. Don’t be anxious  We all start somewhere..

1. Read page 89 -92 Blind Contour drawing of hand......turn away from paper(taped), use soft pencil,  DON’T LIFT POINT,  Go Super Slow! Don’t look at paper.  Find an edge and follow it SLOWLY with your eye and pencil at the same time.

2.  Memory drawing...hold a live flower in your hand (not a daisey, please!)  Choose a fairly complex flower..  LOOK INTENTLY. TWO MINUTES, close eyes and see it in your head..   Hide it  and do a line drawing...don’t lift pencil.  Stop, fish out the flower, look intently for another two minutes. Hide and finish drawing.

3. Do a “semi-Blind”contour drawing of your hand, looking down at your paper only to change direction of your pencil line.  SLOWLY.  Don’t lift the point.  15 minutes 

Assignment.  Chapter 2 and 3

Do a “semi” blind contour drawing of: 1.  a crumpled piece of typing paper.  2. a set of keys   3. a twig with a leaf or flower attached  4. a dandelion or an alley weed.  Spend at least 15 minutes drawing the object....Don’t try to draw all of these projects at the last minute. (Defeats the purpose! )

Remember, take the time, make the time, to do these drawings when you can close out the demands of the world.  Fall into your drawing and your subject. Become the dancer and the dance.

".....great footed blossomer, are you the leaf, the blossom or the bole? O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,  How can we know the dancer from the dance?"

  W.B. Yeats        

©Jennifer M. Carrasco 9/17/09  All blog entries on this site, visual or intellectual, are the property of Jennifer M. Carrasco (unless stated otherwise) and cannot be reproduced or used without her written permission.                            

Easter and Passover Greetings: Book of Carrasco

"Honor thy tulips, for they shall inherit your spring."

Book of Carrasco: Cruelest Month 68: Psalm 4-5

Shalom, bunnies and renewal and reflection. 

Sap is rising. Don't forget to take time to be silly.

Happy Easter/Passover.  Resurrexit Sicut Dixit, folks.

Anna Akhmatova Swimming

"......Anya had grown tall and graceful, with long, thick, straight dark hair and beautiful white hands. Her gray eyes looked out of an almost unnaturally pale face.  Swimming in the dark, still waters of the ponds of Tsarskoye Selo, she (seemed) like some mermaid or water nymph and Gumilyov was...entranced by this image.(Amanda Haight, Anna Akhmatova: A Poetic Pilgrimage" pg. 8)

Conversation Sandwich

This all started with a conversation I had with my friend Eric.  He dropped by to visit and we talked about a number of things. He is fun because he is so quick and well read and doesn't get nervous about leaping from subject to subject.

When he got up to leave, I laughed and said we discussed the world like we were skipping pebbles across the lake....hitting just the surface of ideas before we sink the concept. 

Later I wrote Eric and said that it would be interesting to build a conversation like an edifice.  Since he can think in a more linear and rational manner than I, he could build the foundation and basic architecture of the building, while I contributed flying buttresses, gargoyles and decorative borders.

Years ago I read Magister Ludi by Herman Hesse and I was intrigued by the book's concept of communication.  In the story, men got together to have dialogues where they consciously shaped conversations into beautiful structures that grew increasingly complex and dazzling.  I read the book more than 30 years ago, but as I remember, when the group became very old, they created  a conversation  so arcane and metaphysical that they became one with the dialogue....disappeared into it.

It got me thinking about visual metaphors for conversation.  They are endless....rivers, trees, a Dagwood sandwich, schools of fish. Different types of lines coming out of people's mouths like the drawings of Saul Steinberg.  (When I taught junior high, they thought it was hilarious to use lines all smudged and chaotic coming out of people's mouths..."talking dirty," of course.)

My friend Julian came by a few days later, and Phil got me out in a lawn chair in the sun so I could talk and soak up a few rays. Julian stayed for about an hour and we discussed a wide range of subjects. Later, I thought our discussion could be interpreted by images of birds.....sparrows for everyday thoughts, wrens for the cheerful, house finches for the melodic , western tanagers for the beautiful, crows for bawdy talk , gulls for soaring thoughts and honking of Canadian geese for debating.  No eagles in this diagram.  Too severe and judgmental.

Pontificating at the Book Fest

Here I sit, selling the Lotus and the Golden Pearl book at my stall, with my faithful toybox (a pushme-pullme Dr. Doolittle affair I designed and Phil built ) two dogs, two tails and rollers on one side underneath, teflon sliders on one side ( so the kids won't get in the box and careen down the stairs)  Snakes and snails and puppy dog tails.

A very enjoyable book fair, the BookFest in Seattle, and people seemed to like my Lotus and the Golden Pearl illustrations.  I have appointments and meetings lined up, and I learned so much about the book business.  I am so glad that Amanda Lorenzo (of the Runt Farm fame) and Ceci Miller (of the famous Ceci Books publishing company) invited me to share their space. Yay! a good time was held by all.

TransGender Chicken Ballet

 

"Corps de Pullet " ........from The CluckQuacker Suite, a card series by Jennifer Carrasco

OK, so this post isn't actually about Chicken Ballet....but it did get your attention, didn't it? Actually, it is an image from my card series, the 12 card "CluckQuacker Suite".

 This post is more about the Seattle BookFest and how I hope you will visit it and me and us (Ceci and Amanda) at the BookitiMookiti booth, #11, October 24-25, 10-6pm each day. Ceci and Amanda (of the immortal book series,  "Runt Farm" fame), and Ceci will have her  inventory of her company's Ceci Books (too varied and fabulous to mention by individual listing)

I'll be there in the booth with Libby Pink's book, Lotus and the Golden Pearl, illustrated by me, as well as other illustrations for cards and calendars I have done for clients in the past.  As you may know, small work (i.e. illustrations) are new waters for me.  Previously, my projects were more in the range of 30 by 40 feet ballrooms and 30 by 6 foot murals. 

Which sounds like boasting, but is not.  I know a lot of artists who do huge work and do a lot better than mine.  It's just what we visionaries do. For better or worse.  Beautiful illustrations are just as challenging as beautiful murals. Scale and what muscle sets you use are the issues.

So, I plan to be working, sporadically, on an illustration while I visit with book and art lovers,and you can look at my work, chat, go around to see all the BookFest wonders and maybe even circle back to buy a book or two at Booth 11 !

More information and directions are accessible at www.seattlebookfest.com. See you!

BucketsofBooks Carrasco

©Jennifer M. Carrasco 9/17/09  All blog entries on this site, visual or intellectual, are the property of Jennifer M. Carrasco (unless stated otherwise) and cannot be reproduced or used without her written permission.