I’m still working on the same project – glass ’stones’ – but for the next 2-3 days I’m installing, with a few friends, an art exhibit at The Gardens in Bellevue. I’ll update at least at the end of the week with, maybe, some photos. 

I’m also a sculptor.
…
Well, I want to be. I’ve been creating small projects, not many, for a few years now as I also try to learn more about drawing and painting.I’m trying to finish a project, creating glass pocket pieces, that was instigated by Kelly at Fusions Gallery in Ocean Shores. It is much more captivating and time-consuming than the drawings I had been working on. I like the complex problem-solving involved in creating and using molds and the kiln to form glass into art.

The experience:

Sunday
I created several pieces in wax, then started what I hoped would be the simple task of creating efficient molds to use in my studio kiln to produce the pieces. The first attempt was… too ambitious. The second failed miserably, the third…

Well, you get the picture.

I lost blood (carving and drilling tools are sharp!) and sleep. Inspiration almost never comes before the middle of a firing or the middle of a nightmare – whichever (sometimes both) you’re engaged in at the oddest time of day/night. I didn’t draw on ‘the exercises’ project at all, though I thought about it often and kept a couple of the drawings on my easel as goads.

I’m using wax for the models; plaster and wood, and paper, and plastic for the molds.
The first mold was made in C-asta-lot but I soon broke it trying to get it to work (I never got it hot enough).
I finally called Olympic Color Rods to get advice and they told me “Make it hotter.” Duh! ☺
I decided to make molds of plaster till I get it right (plaster is a whole lot cheaper than C-asta-lot) so now I’ve created about four different (2- and 3-part) molds, made copious illustrated notes in my notebook, and taken dozens of photos. I’m ready. Now. To make glass… in a couple days?

But I don’t have any drawings ready for Monday’s critiquing session, so I’ll take some pages of photos to show what I’ve been doing for the last week.

The Lesson:

It’s good to go!

Drawing and painting are the same thing if you believe them to be so… maybe.

We talked briefly about my photos.
We talked at length about Isabel’s, Pat’s and Ellen’s paintings. I discovered that I don’t know very much about painting. It was a good day!

Some time ago I decided, after some thinking about my past artistic and design experiences, and about what I liked doing, that sculpting was #1, drawing was #2, and that painting in pastels was close enough to drawing that I’d enjoy it most of any painting I might do. I draw all the time. I use more charcoal than anybody I know. Some weeks I use more than a single newsprint pad of paper. I carry several dozens of pastels to drawing sessions every week.

Today, I realized that for me the activity called ‘painting’ is different than it is for others. I really think of drawing and painting as somehow separate activities and not everyone does that. Though I know that I could paint with charcoal, I never think to do so. Even when I fill a page with charcoal as tone, it’s in support of line work.

I suppose that I think of the meaning of ‘drawing’ as very close to its use as ‘extracting from’ or ‘pull’ or even ‘derive’. Perhaps to draw is to extract from a source an impression of its likeness and to express that as a graphic image. Likewise, I think of ‘painting’ as very close to its use as ‘covering with color’ – so ‘cover’ a space with a colored expression of a source. I may not have good definitions of either. I do know that I think of the activities differently and that I am less free with paint tools and media than I am with drawing equipment. But I also have less apprenticery (not mastery) of painting than I feel I have of drawing.

I wondered, “what does a real painter think? How?”

What I said was that I think that the internalizing of principals and practices was important so that, effectively, those things – composition, balance, asymmetry, value, color, accuracy, etc. ad nauseum – become thoughtless results of practice. A real painter doesn’t THINK about those things in any direct sense until after(!) the painting is done. The reason for practice, practice, practice for the painter is the same as it is for the musician – to hone the tools to an edge with which they always perform as desired in the hands of the artist, to project the emotions, the will, that drives the image forth. We continue to practice those things so that absence of mastery is never an issue (oh yeah?).

The outcome will be as individual as a voice and as powerful or sweet as a canon shot or an aria (oh yeah).

Then do Picasso and Rockwell both produce… music (oh)? If so, how so?(yeah)

The exercise continues:

The iterations continued last week, challenging especially, inspiration.

As I think about it (which helps explain the importance of this blogging thing), inspiration, as enjoyable as it is, doesn’t teach much. It’s the slogging, boring, tedious work that builds and teaches (Sister Margaret Denis was probably right).

I created a couple drawings without the original photo reference. I don’t think that was helpful. I finally found the photo and stuck it up where I could see it, and I drew, as before, without looking at each previous drawing. Though at times I felt that I didn’t really know where I was headed, I drew anyway, guessing at what I’d like to see.

I worked on the last few pages of a pad of 24 x 30 newsprint, using charcoal and white chalk and also one pastel. I turned the pad upside down and as I finished each page, turned it down so I could no longer see it. I kept the (full color, 8.5 x 11” source material attached to the easel all the time. For the fifth page, I also used a full-size (24 x 30”) grayscale poster print of the source material.

Some interesting drawings (as a teacher once reminded us, auto accidents are ‘interesting’ too), but in the end, there was no clear direction in the set of 14 drawings. There were two or three nice things about a few of them – nice treatment of form, of attitude, good layout, kinda strong gesture, blah, bla, bleh!

The experience:

Angst. Tedium. Concern.

Angst:

“Why didn’t I start these earlier (it was Sunday evening)? Will I have anything to ‘say’?

Tedium:

“I just can’t do one more… ok… Maybe if I use the side of the charcoal stick… or maybe use vine charcoal… or maybe… I need another glass of ice/glass of water/bathroom break/…

Concern:

“Why can’t I think of something? Maybe I shouldn’t meet with those guys (Ellen’s critiquing group) tomorrow.”

The Lesson:

Repetition works!

If you’ve drawn it once, you can draw it again, but you might not want to.

Whatever you think this time, draw it once more anyway.

THEN it’s OK to compare, contrast, and critique all together (alone AND with the group)

I’m writing this a little under two weeks after the first posting. I’ve had a chance to evaluate and to procrastinate, and to get into an entirely other project. There are still things to be said about this exercise and my experience.

1. Elapsed time is not necessarily an aid to skills development. ‘Do it now’ is probably a very useful concept AND practice. It was easier, physically and psychically to draw once I started than it was before I started.Of course, it may be a fact that there is a direct relationship between the electrical effects of charcoal in hand and the bio-psychical energy of thought in brain cells; we don’t know.
2. We do know that until it’s ‘out there’ you can’t prove it’s existence as a thought or feeling nor can you fairly evaluate any possible worthiness as expression or impression.In art, unlike physics, for each action there is not (merely) an equal and opposite reaction. There is much more. In art, for each action there is a result; for every result there is at least one response. Each response, representing at least a thought, generates impetus toward another action, for which there is (at least) one response, for which…
3. Because I worked through the exercise without engagement, the ensuing evaluation was also unfocused.I went where even I couldn’t follow – too many directions. When we’d finished talking over the entire set of drawings I’d done, and tried to decide how to proceed, the only useful answer was to draw more. There was no group advice and no intuition that offered better direction than to draw.

I suppose that my experiences as professional designer lead me to the responsibility to draw regularly, dependably, without considering my emotions (do I feel like drawing?).
I understand though, that I need to do so with engagement with the subject, with my feelings, and with my materials so that those connections, supported by knowledge and skill, generate images (because that IS my aim) that are truthful and, perhaps, complete. This too is what is meant by being ‘open” to experience.

This exercise was prompted by a discussion with my friend and fellow-artist, Ellen Borison. She has great ideas. Often! 

The exercise:

From a picture source (painting, drawing, photo, print, etc… ), create from four to six drawings. Though each drawing may be sequential they should all be either experimental or developmental in the sense that each considers elements of form, composition, and rendition.

The goal of this exercise is to move from the easy rendition of a subject through several iterations that exercise and even challenge the artists’ understanding and talent, and ideally stretch his inspiration and skills.

I worked on the last few pages of a pad of 24 x 30 newsprint, using charcoal and white chalk and also one pastel. I turned the pad upside down and as I finished each page, turned it down so I could no longer see it. I kept the (full color, 8.5 x 11” source material attached to the easel all the time. For the fifth page, I also used a full-size (24 x 30”) grayscale poster print of the source material.

The experience:

The first drawing, in charcoal on paper – media I know well and like – was easy and typical of quick gesture drawings that I have been creating for years.

Each subsequent drawing was challenging and, at times, frustrating even when it eventually ‘worked’.

I tried, in each drawing, to produce an accurate drawing without creating an exact illustration. I sought to render a drawing that was recognizable and accurate in likeness, proportions, attitude, and moderate level of detail. Though I meant to produce line/gesture drawings, each drawing except the first, included a moderate number of areas-of-values (shapes) as well as line work.

Sometimes the renderings were proportionally inaccurate (the drawing was ‘bad’); sometimes the composition was poor.  When all the ‘rules’ were correctly observed, sometimes, still, things just didn’t quite ‘click’.

The Lesson:

Repetition works!

If you’ve drawn it once, you can draw it again, but don’t peek.

Think big; draw large.

Compare, Contrast, Critique all, together.

There are more than one important element to this exercise. They include, 1) repetition, 2) NOT seeing what you’ve done while you’re creating the next drawing, 3) drawing larger than the source, and 4) drawing the same size as the source.

1.)   By repeatedly drawing the same object(s), eventually you eliminate the difficulty of not ‘knowing’ the subject matter. This is important for ‘detaching’ the motor functions of the hand and arm from the mind so they can connect more directly to the eye.

2.)   “If you’ve drawn it once, you can draw it again.” This does not mean that you must, nor does it mean that you should! By starting ‘fresh’ with each drawing, you focus on development of art from your mind and out your hands rather than first through the additional filter of your eyes. When I started each new drawing without looking at what I’d drawn before, I had to ‘climb into my head’ where all the formal information about composition and shape and placement and size and… and… and ‘all that’ is and let it mix –at the same level- with the memory of the last drawing, and use it all together. 

    After you’ve created several drawings (we did 4-6 here, but a dozen isn’t too many), put them all up (or down) where you can see them all. Compare them. Contrast them. Critique them. Get help. Have a party over them, about them. 

   What do you notice? What do you feel? … What do you think? (this is last for a very good reason – it’s least important here, at this moment.)

    What you discover during this review will lead you to the next stage of the process, which could be any number of actions from running screaming (or cheering) into the night, through more and more drawings, or to full production or framing.

3.)   There are a couple reasons for drawing large. The most important is that it’s easier – easier to do and easier to learn from. One of the strongest tools for teaching children new skills and victims of severe brain trauma old-but-forgotten skills, is to combine verbal instructions with manipulation of limbs and other body parts. When you draw big, you ‘get into’ it – drawing. Draw what you see, but also try to FEEL what you draw.

4.)   If you can make the source the same size as the target drawing, then you’re essentially emulating a Xerox or a scanner and there need be little ‘brain-work’ involved. Go ahead; lightly trace the major areas of the source, then draw over the tracing. If your motor dexterity is at any level above palsy, your drawing will be at least proportionally accurate. If you try hard, all the details will be fine too. Then, when you draw over the tracing, it’s all YOU! Follow the lines. Don’t follow the lines. Do what feels right… this time. After all, “If you’ve drawn it once, you can draw it again.”

     Understand; this is classic art. The first practice in any art school (in ANY school) in the last 1700 years, is to copy(!) We just have better tools for it – computers, scanners, copiers, cameras, Sharpies. Eventually you may reduce the amount of copying you do, just because it’s faster not to. But it’s NOT wrong to copy; it’s essential – of the essence.

Welcome to my new space!

I’m ba-a-a-a-ck!

This is the sequel to the Pied Biker of song and story. Though I spend time in ‘Bekko Blu’ instead of on ‘Purple Haze’, the impetus to write and to entertain is as strong as ever.

Enjoy!