05.04.08
Posted in Personal
at 4:36 pm
I’m sketching from life a lot lately. I stop what I’m doing at about 3:00 each day, grab the messenger bag that I’ve stuffed with drawing supplies, and head for our meadow. After six laps around the meadow, I’m trying to loose weight, I settle down and draw.
Flowers, sprouting leaves, and things that catch my eye become my models. I’ve been doing this for two weeks, nearly everyday, and my sketching ability has improved tremendously. And I’ve lost two pounds! Drawing from life is an ability that needs constant practice to stay sharp and I was rusty.
I’m addicted to life sketching now and can only go a day without before the desire to capture a likeness overwhelms me. Yesterday, after a day and a half of rain kept me indoors, I stalked the cats. I snuck up on them while they were napping and satisfied my sketching hunger.
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04.26.08
Posted in Personal, The Muse
at 5:14 pm
Color is a distraction. It pulls the attention away from the subject and re-focuses it on the surface of the art. Yes, I know that color has lots and lots of emotional impact, but I’d rather bring the viewer deeper into the art.
I want your eyes to follow the shape of the subject deep under the surface of the drawing. I want you to understand the light and shadows you find there in an intuitive way, and I create an undemanding and quiet atmosphere so you can explore the drawing without distraction.
Drawings are more about the wholeness of a captured moment, and less about creating a new one. They are about time and space and touching the presence of a moment with the eyes, mind, and heart.
I sculpt light and shadow onto the surface of paper with my tools. I create form, texture, and line, and let them kick up their heels to the harmony of the spheres. That rhythm is my drumbeat.
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04.16.08
Posted in Personal
at 6:24 pm
I love to chase rabbits! Love to follow ideas to see where they’ll take me. I love the energy of the chase and I use it to start new projects. Planning is not my strong point, imagination and spontaneous invention are. In the past few months, I’ve started quite a few projects and, in order to keep them all afloat, I need to pull them closer to center and tie them all together.
I draw, as you well know, and I write, as you may have deduced. I write drawing lessons, forum posts, blog posts, and pages for my main website. It’s kind of embarrassing doing all this writing, because I don’t think it’s what I do best. I draw best. I really do. But, the words I write make teaching possible, another thing I love, and they make my drawing club work, also greatly loved. And all these words make a little money, too, which makes it possible for me to work from home and have more time for drawing.
This complicated swirl of projects originated in my heart, and they stay close to it. I’m standing in the middle right now, and examining all the connections, tightening knots, and taking a good look at each an every child of my heart. It’s good to see they’ve finally learned how to work together, or maybe I’ve learned how to be a better caretaker. Either way, it’s a relief.
I’d like to send a humble thanks out to Mark Bernstein, the author of the article called “Writing for the Living Web.” I read through it often and it gives me the courage to write with my own voice, and that’s what makes all of this possible.
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04.01.08
Posted in Miniatures - Cat, My Artwork
at 6:13 pm
I’ve discovered that the blinds are going to be both the beauty and beast of this piece! I can’t draw them straight enough freehand, and yet if I make them with a hard lead and a straight edge, they’ll look too perfect. After a hour or so of feeling like I couldn’t win at getting these little details drawn properly, I stumbled on a combination of straight edge, battery powered eraser, hard lead, and a little grace from the Powers that Be that worked well enough. I can use what I have here as a base for what I need to draw.
The mood of this piece is “waiting” and “calm” and those delicate feelings are conveyed by the shadows the blinds cast. Because the blinds are a link in the chain of events that cause the mood, they’re very important and must be drawn with just the perfect touch. Too much emphasis on perfection and they become like the bars of a jail, too little and they recede into the background and emotional power of the mood is broken by an inconsistency that catches the eye like a sharp hook.
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03.31.08
Posted in Drawing Techniques
at 6:48 pm
I think there is a big misconception about drawing with precision. A lot of people think it leads to drawings that look over rendered or “tight.” I can understand how they think exactness leads to harshness, but it’s not true. Overly tight drawing is not a precision problem, it’s a lack of seeing problem.
If you feel your drawings are too tight and that you need to loosen up, I’d like to suggest that you try to draw with even more precision instead. Look closely at your shadows and highlights and see if you’re drawing them as they really look. In most cases, you’ll find that you’re making assumptions that aren’t true. Look for soft and hard edges in even the tiniest details. They are there! You just need to look close enough.
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03.25.08
Posted in My Artwork
at 8:14 pm
Here’s the current progress on my miniature drawing of Molly the cat. If you’re screen resolution is 1280 x 800, you’re seeing this drawing at about actual size.
After creating a light line drawing on my paper, I brushed value into the background because it’s easier to create a soft edged texture, like Molly’s fur, over a background that’s already there rather than the other way around. Then I hatched in Molly, even though the background is not completely done.
Because I’m working from such a contrasty photo reference, I’ll have to carefully balance values as I work, playing the background values against Molly’s until they look like some version of reality. I suspect the reality I come up with will be somewhere between what I actually saw and what the reference shows me now.
I love this drawing already. I hope I can honor it by drawing it well.
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03.20.08
Posted in My Artwork, Personal
at 7:40 pm
I’ve been talking about drawing miniatures in the Drawing Club, too, and a few people asked me to put together some tips about drawing them. I’ve done that and you can find it here.
I’m getting ready to begin a new drawing using this fairly awful photo of my cat Molly. The shadows are completely black in this version, but I’m able to pull some detail out of them by manipulating “curves” in Photoshop. If all else fails, I’ll have to get Molly to pose for me again. (And let me tell you, that’s way more easier said than done!)
My main obstacle in getting started on this small piece, I’ll draw it at about the size you see it here, is that I’m out of the habit of drawing every morning! I was setting aside some time every morning for drawing over the winter, but got off track when I had to shift gears and throw myself into creating a new drawing lesson. Somehow my personal drawing time got lost in the shuffle.
I’m not a schedule freak, and tend to think they’re made to be broken, but they sure do help me get things done. Housework, exercising, and my precious personal art time all flourish under the influence of reasonably managed time. Tonight I’ll get all the little pre-drawing steps done so I can easily step back into my old drawing schedule tomorrow morning.
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03.17.08
Posted in Personal
at 8:40 pm
I’ve been thinking about drawing miniatures again lately. I work small naturally but, although most of my work would probably be considered “miniature” by most people, I have an on again off again emotional block to being labeled as a miniaturist. If you look in my gallery, you’ll see “Miniature Art” in the file structure. I rebuilt my gallery section during one of my “happy to be a miniaturist” periods. Then, after I’d cycled out of that accepting frame of mind, I removed almost all traces of the word “miniature!”
I love to take off my glasses (I’m very near sighted) and draw about six inches from my nose, and I love to use very finely pointed leads to create tiny detail. I can work like this for hours and feel refreshed afterwards. This kind of drawing feels very intimate to me, like it’s part of who I am. I was born to be a miniaturist!
I’ve been struggling to understand why I don’t embrace this knowledge about myself. After all, it’s nothing to be ashamed of. Is it? Well, yes, as a matter of fact it was something to be ashamed of when I was in college. Those were very formative years for my art. I listened to and absorbed all the ideas I heard in my art classes during those years and what I heard over and over again was that only “big” art was good art. Drawings had to be large and quickly made, and they were only studies for even bigger things. This was during the 70’s and there was simply no room for small refined art.
To tell you the truth, I thought I was a failure as an artist and I became an apprentice jeweler after college instead of pursuing fine art or teaching. Good old Abe taught me all about goldsmithing and carving wax and everyone appreciated my ability to create tiny detail. Looking back, I think I took that job to prove my abilities had value.
I’m revisiting this issue once again because I have several drawing ideas queued up and waiting to be drawn, and they’re starting to get impatient! I don’t want to make these drawings miniature out of expediency, though, I want to make them miniatures because that’s how I draw best. I think I owe these ideas my very best.
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02.21.08
Posted in Personal
at 5:27 pm
My life has become so busy all of a sudden! Well, not so suddenly really. My plans to teach my art on the web and create a community for artists are off to a good beginning. Tending these ideas does take up vast amounts of my time, though! Hopefully, I’m finding a balance.
What I love most about my basic line drawing class, and what keeps me going even when I’m tired, is seeing people learn how to draw. There’s nothing quite like taking someone from wobbly stick figures into the realm of well done life drawing in a short time. It empowers them and it pleases my artistic soul. It feels a little like I’m setting them firmly down on an artistic path and giving them a encouraging pat to start them moving along it well.
I love that feeling. :)
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01.02.08
Posted in My Artwork, Personal
at 2:57 pm
I’m drawing Queen Anne’s Lace with 18 inches of snow on the ground, and it feels wonderful. I forget about how cold it is and how long it is until Spring as I sculpt each flower and shade each feathery patch of foliage.
It’s a very simple scene of my mailbox surrounded by Queen Anne’s Lace, with a fence, a field, a line of trees, and a moody sky above, but the intricate mosaic of Lace and leaves is taking a very long time to draw. I enjoy drawing each section in phases, bringing it into clearer focus with each step. I feel like a snail feeling my way up, over, and down each stem, leaf, and flower.
I think that’s the way this scene should be drawn and I hope people can sense the slow blooming love I’ve put into each stroke. After this piece is done, I want to place it in a loving home like I would a kitten or a puppy. Maybe I’ll put an ad in the paper, “Tenderly Created Art, very reasonably priced to the right home. Interview required.”
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