Jerry and Jewel in Drawing Land
When "regular" customers walked through the door of CandP Coffee to get a cuppa, they encountered 12 women, absolutely silent, holding a tulip in one hand and drawing with the other. It was like an avant-garde dance, or an art installation, which I guess it was.
Here's some vignettes of the scene.
Jill and her Flower
Sarah becoming a Tulip
I was castigating myself for not doing much in the area of drawing, but looking over my files, I realized I do quite a bit in planning for murals. The above is a photo of a partially finished mural for Tommy Bahama retail/restaurant on the wall of my studio.
I research and start with this.....
It's pedestrian....but useful. This drawing is a scale sketch (usually 2 inches to a foot) I do on tissue after incorporating elements suggested by the design team and research I have done after our first meeting. The mural was for a Tommy Bahama retail and restaurant store in Myrtle Beach, SC, and the designers wanted a Carribean landscape with a border of architectural elements typical of the houses in that region.
The designers gave me a motif, the pineapple, to incorporate in the border.
I used that and the stepped roofs and lattice work of the Caribbean, and sketched the figures separately so I could slip them around under the tissue landscape for the right placement.
After approval of the drawing, I did a quick rendering, and we were good to go! (I added the geese later because I needed some white shapes to carry the eye across the painting.)
My regret with the projects with Tommy Bahama is that I rarely get photos of the finished work on site. It's always waiting for the deposit and then painting madly and shipping it off before the deadline.
My point here is that drawing can be useful as well as esthetic. It helps explain things to others and perhaps more importantly, to yourself. It can help you plan, to sort things out.
It also shows us the correlations... Dame Edith Sitwell...”knots on sea grass are like the knobs on the legs of sandpipers.....Are these not correspondences by which we speak with angels?”
Drawing Lesson 3......Blind and almost blind contour drawing....you'll need a real tulip or daffodil for this exercise. The last exercise has to be done in class if you missed it.
3. Pure contour drawing.......pg. 90.......Daffodil. Hold it in your hand...turn away from the paper and spend 15 minutes slowly drawing it...follow the lines, from line to line slowly with your eyes...(Most of you have gone far too fast with your hand exercise), Don’t turn around, record only what you see AT THE SAME MOMENT. You don’t have to hurry. A record of Deep Perceptions and empathy. You almost become that flower. Don’t worry about time.
4. Partial Blind contour. Turn the daffodil and do a partial blind contour, looking down at the paper only to change direction.
5. This exercise trains you in pure looking, and introduces you to the first concept of drawing, the perception of edges......where two things meet (space and the outer edge of the daffodil, the inner lines where one petal meets another or a vein goes down the center.
6.Hide daffodil and draw it from memory. No shading, just line. You’ll remember it...that’s why I often bring a sketch book on my travels or when I go to museums. Mona Lisa story
7 Do Page 97....drawing on a picture plane of your hand. (follow instructions)
8. Assignment. Read chapter 6. 1.Draw a semi-blind contour drawing of a set of keys 2 Memorize this bamboo fragment...look at it carefully for 2 minutes, close your eyes and see it. Look carefully for two more minutes. Put it away. Draw it in contour without looking at it.
Most of what I could call my drawings are rolled up and filed away. I don't have a lot digitized. However, this could qualify as a drawing, I guess. Susan Allemand gave me some of her fresco material from her business, Out of this World Finishes, and I did a drawing on her plaster material which I applied to canvas...a 6' by 4 'painting on a standard stretcher, of Apollo sitting on a couch with flip flops on, and a beer belly. and a remote in his hand.
I don't think it was what she expected. However, being Susan, she laughed and put it up for her opening. I think it is still floating around in Kirkland somewhere.
So, I need to buckle down and draw along with you people. As I can state, ad nauseum, one doesn't acquire new visions and skills without PRACTICE.
Here's the second Drawing Lesson....but as you can tell, if you miss the class, you miss the handouts. I suggest, if you missed the second class to do the exercises in Chapter 4....there are similar assignments there.
2. Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain 4/7/09
Hand out Watteau drawing and show interior contour on face drawing. Tape up Watteau on your fridge or somewhere you will see it every day. Think of bracelets on IPod ads.
1 Look at drawings....ask about process...have students explain to those who missed 1st lesson.
Ask about reading...remember that it’s not that cut and dried...there are a lot of functions that either side of the brain can handle. What side controls the right hand? The left? Look a bit at the chart.
2. Faces and vases (Handout.) 1. R handed people---copy left profile, Left handed people--copy right profile . 2. Draw horizontal line at top and bottom 3. Now, redraw, naming parts...ie, forehead, nose, etc. 4 Go to other side and start to draw other profile, naming the parts.
Do you notice the confusion? (too much verbal left brain info) If you were able to do it, you brought up your right brain.. spacial, relational, comparative. (In many tasks, both R and L mode are needed)
3. Try drawing this upside down. (L brain rejects reading it.) Do you find it easier to draw?
4. Draw scarey lady by Saul Steinberg ( fold paper first in quarters.) Don’t name and go from line to line to line....just shapes. Note how the lines and shapes fit into each quarter. Don’t turn it over!
L mode gives up! It should be easier
5. Try profiles of Ricky and Lucy upside down.
Assignment. Skim through chapter 4 ( We did most of it today) and read chapter 5.
1. Draw my chicken drawing and Koch drawing upside down. (Don’t cheat!)2. Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain 4/7/09
April Fool! And you thought it was spring. I am shuffling around in the house in my Great Aunt Min's mink throw (an inheritance), my boatlike warmest slippers and a cup of Cand P latte in hand (courtesy of Phil). All I need is a Camel hanging out the side of my mouth and the TV blaring in the background. A 21st century Grapes of Wrath Woman.
Well, enough. Here's the first Drawing Lesson of our Drawing with the Right Side of the Brain. I must say I am so delighted with all of you.....many returning students and new. It certainly takes the edge off this cold spring.
Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain....3/31/09
1. Intro...why take the class? (students) Why am I teaching it?( I saw the need...difference between knowing and seeing ...show chart. Left( logical, sequential) and right (intuitive, spacial)PARALLEL.... All drawing is the same....some is just more complex.
FIVE BASIC SKILLS...edges, spaces, relationships, light, whole....components to whole.
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.
If, after the first class, you think that you will have a hard time attending each class or doing the assignments, let me know and we can pro rate your fee and you can take the class another time. If you are late or still want to attend sporadically, I certainly won't give you a hard time...believe me, I am always glad to see a friend!
I want you to succeed in something that’s really important to me. I’ve kept the fee very low...it’s my gift to a community of friends. In return, my real compensation is your success and pleasure.
Draw and date in your sketchbook: ALWAYS SIGN AND DATE. THIS IS ONLY FOR REFERENCE LATER ON.
a. Your hand.......
b. Your face (use mirror)
c. A person from memory
Training the eye......Discuss and demo stereotypes, natural urge to hurry, to be “efficient), BUT DURING THIS TIME YOU HAVE NOTHING ELSE TO DO BUT FOCUS AND DRAW. Don’t be anxious We all start somewhere..
1. Blind Contour drawing of hand......turn from paper(taped), use soft pencil, DON’T LIFT POINT, Go Super Slow! Don’t look at paper.
3. Do a “semi-Blind”contour drawing of your hand, looking down only to change direction.. Don’t lift the point. SHARE with us! Don't be embarassed....this kind of drawing always makes your hand look like one of the Creature from the Black Lagoon.
The point is to SLOW DOWN and really OBSERVE.
Assignment. Chapter 2 and 3
Do a “semi” blind contour drawing of: 1. a crumpled piece of typing paper. 2. a twig, a popcorn or a pine cone
My mother always told me if I was expecting a guest and my house was in chaos to open the windows and put out fresh flowers.
Well, Patricia came up to stay overnight, and since most of my basement was stored higgle piggle in my living room, I did just that. And, when my new poetry magazine arrived, the colors and image went so well with the flowers that I left it out as part of the arrangement.
Which slides into what I have been thinking about ever since I read a comment some guy put after a poem (not her poem...some other writer) a friend of mine put on her blog. Here's the quote.
"Too bad that the people who write these kinds of poems are the ones
furthest away from living the message withing (sic) them. Then again, maybe
that's part of their appeal?"
The arrogance (and ignorance) of this statement really annoyed me. Obviously, the guy made a judgement about something he knows nothing about. He doesn't know anything about the lives of the poets....Byron swimming the Hellespont, John Donne and his mistresses, Shakespeare in the tumult of an Elizabethan London or poor despairing Sylvia Plath with her head in the oven.
Perhaps giving him just the tiniest benefit of the doubt, he had been forced to endure some of those academic readings where poets read their work with high fluting voices and rising inflections on every phrase. I must admit those readings are crazy making.
However, this guy has no idea about the lives of these poets, bad readings or not.
Good poets don't live in ivory towers. First of all, they must be good observers and most of all, they must have a passionate need to process what they observe and experience in their lives. It certainly isn't for the money.
Poems can be about something as mundane as the worn finish on kitchen cabinets or a chicken next to a red wheelbarrow, or it can be about Lucifer coming through the realms of hell to visit earth. Milton was blind and filled with religious fervour....it was his life to "see" these things. William Carlos Williams was a doctor who felt very deeply the plight and suffering of an old lady patient as she lay dying on her bed. He experinced the joy of eating a plum from the fridge just as much as the bleakness of the landscape in his Paterson, New Jersey.
Poetry can be as raw and urgent as Picasso's Guernica or the primary colors of a spring bouquet or the harsh March wind. It can be subtle as one of Basho's meditations on a frog jumping into water, or a poem by Rumi about the love of God.
My point is that these poet's lives and their art are of one piece.
Discounting the gassy exhalations of people who rhyme stanzas with abstractions of "love!" "patriotism!" "mother", etc etc. (they are not poets), a true poet writes about what he feels deeply and cares enough to craft into art. As with many of the arts in this pragmatic country, poetry guarantees little in the realm of financial security and fame, but I believe reading and making poetry can help make whole what seems random and meaningless in the lives of individuals in our society.
When I worked with a poetry group, I came to this realization when the group kept asking me the fatal question...."just what and why is your choice of word, this phrase, your stance on an event?" Where did this observation come from. How well do you understand it?"
I find myself caught up by these questions ever since. It changed my life.
As I related in previous posts, my friend and I went out to Lake Ozette in early February, and we tromped around in a lot of snow. The owner of the Lost Resort, Rob Snyder, saw my snow watercolors and wondered if we could make an arrangement to have me do some summer scenes for his new website. Sounded like a good idea.
Tonight I had a little time and imagined the same boardwalk to the ocean in the summer....with the deer whose footprints in the snow led us to Cape Alva last February actually standing there in the late afternoon sun, right before we came down to the ocean. A doe, alert and still, watching us, her body and the trees behind her surrounded by a nimbus of light from the sun sinking in the west.
I'd like to go out and do some more work in May. Maybe this time I'll see my cougar. At a healthy distance.
Here's a big rustling bouquet of flowers for your imagination. I like the sound of a big bouquet as much as the scent and color. (Have you ever noticed how daffodil stems squeak when you gather a bunch?)
Anyhow, I finished this small mural, about 2 'by 1 and 1/2 ', on canvas for a client last night. The color is a little off since I snapped the picture Very Late at Night by studio light, so the peach and coral are dimmed, but it turned out to my satisfaction.
Here are my steps, if anyone is interested. Several people have chided me for giving away my "secrets" for free, but actually, there is no true recipe for this kind of work.
Every painter's body talks differently, and in all of my teaching, I have been delighted and surprised by the different takes my students produce from the same assignment.
"Vive la difference!," I say. ( I like to throw in French now and then to show I am literary.)
After I get approval for my drawing, I usually check with my client to see if she or he wants a color rendering for final approval. In this case, my client passed on the option, so I went on to transfer my drawing to canvas. I trace it with tracing paper I make myself.....from chalk pastel....color of my choice....and Bestine rubbed over the pastel I have rubbed onto a piece of tracing tissue. I like this method better than using Saral tracing paper, because Saral is waxy and the colors are too sharp...reds, blues, and blacks. (Also, it's cheaper!)
The next step is my underpainting, and I posterized this image a bit to make it more understandable. I paint plain Golden Acrylic Glaze all over the area and beyond where the image will be painted. Then I paint a faint background "bloom" in the area...in this case it was a very pale coral/peach glaze. After this dried, I painted a pale yellow on the shapes where I could alter the colors with glazes....i.e. pale blue over yellow makes a radiant green, pale vat orange or light quinacridone red over yellow makes peachy or coral hues.....but painted pale blues in areas for my periwinkles and purples.
Then I placed another more coral "bloom" over the area. Softly! Lightly!
And, as I said, this is a little dark because of my lighting, but I think one can see my progression....building up the greens, the reds and the periwinkles with thin glazes.
This technique is much like watercolor, and is done with liquid Golden Acrylic paints. However, you can bring it further into a more painterly and modeled form by going back into shapes and putting down opaque highlights and glazing over them. This is especially effective when you are working on a buff background, as I am doing here.
The old Flemish painters did this to great effect. Some instructor told me that Van Eyck would sometimes place 40 layers of red glazes to get that glowing rich red in his masterpieces.
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