Stick figures having fun
I am working on two portraits at the moment, one in graphite and one in watercolor. Both are taking a very long time. Graphite one – because it is complex, and watercolor one – because I don’t know what I am doing. I got tired of all this serious work full of self importance and had some fun with stick figures. So there!
Graphite and Pigma Micron pen on sketch paper.
Feeling blue
This didn’t go according to plan, and I am disappointed with the result. In fact, I was debating whether I should post this at all. I was doing a step-by-step exercise from a book, followed all the steps, but my painting did not come out anywhere as nice as the one in the book. My main problem, as I see it, is perspective and shadows, he didn’t address that in the book, and I just added the shadows without much thought. Note to self – never add anything without much thought, you’ll live to regret it. I also think that my brushwork really sucks here and my color is dead.
On a positive side I learned what is takes to go really dark, attempted to paint glass for the first time and tried tube color – Holbein’s Indigo – my instructor shared hers. (Tube colors are something else! I am thinking about putting half a dozen tubes on my Christmas list.)
Red Hat
According to my theory of predictable beginner subjects my next painting was supposed to be a building of some kind. No rule exists without exceptions, and so I created an exception. It is a human subject, and wearing a red hat at that.
The idea was to have color study exercise, a fast and sloppy wet-in-wet. It was really dripping. All reds in my box are here, mixed into cools and warms. The sketch and preparing washes took about an hour. The painting – 20 minutes.
Autumn Aspens
There are pretty good and logical reasons for beginner painters to choose predictable subjects. There are beginner fruit, mainly pears and apples, then come trees of different seasons, then sheds and old houses and so on. I speculate that these subjects are selected because they are tangible and contained, have reasonably interesting but not complicated forms, are easily found and well known. It is much easier to paint something you know. The subjects being well contained allow the student to concentrate on a small area at hand with little worry of what’s next. These qualities make them well suited for teaching and learning.
I did my predictable “beginner” pears and now have moved on to my “beginner” trees. My teacher complimented my brush work in class yesterday, even showed it to other people. She is very kind and a very experienced educator. She is able to find something to compliment in a most hideous work – a remarkable ability and at the same time a necessity for a teacher. When I am faced with ugly art, the best I can do is keep my opinion to myself.
I also learned some color “recipes”. I find the approach similar to cooking recipes. When I start cooking a new cuisine, say Thai, I cook from cookbooks at first. Then something happens, I internalize the essence of new cuisine, abandon cookbooks and cook “free hand” so to speak. But in the beginning I need recipes. I was very excited yesterday to mix my own Payne’s Grey from Burnt Umber and Ultramarine Blue. The best part is that I can now vary my Payne’s Grey to be warmer or cooler as I need it.
SOFA Chicago came and went.
I did not have anything on display this year, but I spent 3 days there to see what other artists have been doing and get my imagination charged. And also to hang around my gallery and spent time with Sami whom I adore but only get to see once a year. Here’s Sami, the owner of Mostly Glass gallery, and I.
We love each other, don't we?
I also worked after the show closed , from 6pm till 11pm, and helped my gallery pack – a Herculean task to say the least – nearly everything the gallery shows is glass. Here’s how SOFA looks after the doors are closed, fancy public in designer duds is gone and spot lights are turned off. Not the images from glossy brochures – the real deal.
This is not easy!
Box #117
Almost done!
Two pears
I started working with an artist and teacher from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. I am trying to introduce some sense of direction to my drawing and painting explorations. My teacher works with numerous media, but her monumental pen and ink works as well as her watercolors are particularly noteworthy. I am not taking formal classes in the Art Institute, this is too structured for me. Instead I work with Kaye in her studio where the class is very small and takes more of an open studio format. There are about half a dozen of us, all working in different media as it happens. I am the only watercolor student.
This is my first homework. The subject is inspired by wonderfully talented Jacqueline Gnott of Contemporary Realism. Initially I wanted this little painting to have some kind of a background, some painterly washes in complementary colors and so spent significant time mixing colors and making swatches in class yesterday. In the end my teacher made a suggestion that the subject is perfect and complete in its current form and only needs shadows to settle, the minimalist “incomplete” look just works. I agree.
Oh, and we ate one of the model pears for breakfast today!
Like a rolling stone
New portrait is complete. I probably spent 30 or 40 hours on it, but that’s over the course of 4 weeks. I don’t know who the guy is, the original photo is by amazingly talented Christine Lebrasseur. I had Bob Dylan continuously sounding in my head while I was drawing, and therefor the title is “Like a rolling stone.” My fellow graphite artists from WetCanvas! Drawing & Sketching forum have helped me tremendously by giving constructive critique in the most gentle and useful way.
3H-6B pencils on Stonehenge paper, size 6.25″ square.
It is official! Today we received an email from Palgrave Macmillan, a UK publishing house, that my husband’s book is going into production. It is a highly academic treatise called Empathy in the Context of Philosophy. This is very exciting for us both. But what is really important is that the image of my latest tapestry is going to grace the front cover. And the publishers emailed to discuss the details. The tapestry is called Dessuart:
Dessuart
The image on the cover will be a crop of the whole thing, probably the upper half, and will likely be too small to do it justice. But still I am very excited – I will have the credits in the book. You can read more about symbolism of Dessuart on Mostly Glass gallery site.
From Café Ennui
But I was not at all bored. My friend Mike and I got together for coffee and sketching in this dear neighborhood joint. Not trendy or snazzy, it is more of a cheap student place, old-fashioned, a little dumpy and in need of fresh paint, but serving good coffee and free Internet.
From my street level window, looking up, I saw an abandoned patio, now empty and closed for the coming winter. The café is on a garden level, so I had to look up at chairs turned in and a convenience shop across the street. The day was gray and blustery, I was looking for shadows to draw, but there were none, because there was no sun. Winter is coming…
Mechanical pencil, micron pen, watercolor pencils in my Artist’s HandBook.
Preston Bradley Hall, Chicago Cultural Center
Our Monday Sketch group met in Chicago Cultural Center today. Nobody can call us uncultured now! Us and about 90 Chicago seniors who happened to have some kind of event there. They looked about 80 and upward and were extremely frisky, running around like spring chickens, although some dragged their unused canes behind. I pray I would be that energetic when I get to be their age…
Chicago Cultural Center was built in 1897 at a cost of $2 million of that money. The firm of Shepley, Rutan and Collidge of Boston had the honor of doing it. These are the same guys who designed the Art Institute of Chicago.
We sketched in the Preston Bradley Hall on the third floor. Named in honor of an important Chicago theologian, the Hall is spectacular. The space is beautifully proportioned and exquisitely decorated: 38-foot tall Tiffany stained glass dome and Tiffany chandeliers, Carrara marble walls inlaid with mosaic of color stones, glass and mother-of-pearl, just to name a few things.
I was seduced by the curves of entryway arches and the ceiling and set out to sketch far too large of a view. You probably need to sit there for a week to do justice to the details. I had an hour and a half. Mechanical pencil and micron pen.
