Pastels - 2 - I Think You Can Guess

As I said, I do these in the garage (pastels are a mess) and generally in under 15 minutes.  Sharpie and pastels on kraft paper.  As a kid I loved drawing and coloring on brown paper grocery store bags, cut open.  I tap into some of that child's energy and glee when I color on this brown kraft paper.

Here is the rapid Sharpie drawing that preceded the pastels.  Drawing time less than 2 minutes.  The speed is deliberate to prevent over-thinking (a major stumbling block for me).

So what do you see in the drawing?

I am really enjoying these.

Pastels - 1 - Tithonia

As an extension of the auto drawings and blind contours, and to continue my effort to cut out the hesitant, verbal (and second guessing) part of my mind, I began a series of pastel drawings on kraft paper.  These are 18 x 24 inches, done with Sharpies and pastels.  They are drawn in less than 15 minutes, so there isn't time to freeze up.  They are done in the garage, because pastels are a mess.

This first one was inspired by tithonia I could see in the flower bed closest to the open garage door.  And some phlox.  The flowers here don't follow tithonia - they look like more like the way tithonia makes me feel, like birthday candles on bright orange cupcakes.  And to give you some idea of scale, our tithonia plants typically top seven feet tall.  This drawing is way too tame, and too predictable - but it's a start.  The second in the series is more to my purpose (but that's another post).

I have no idea where I'm going to keep these drawings.  Pastels are hard to store.

Flowers from Marcia

Several months ago I began a painting in the mountains with watercolor and no subject.  I wish I had a photo of that, but I wasn't taking as many step-by-step shots then.  I brought it home and it sat for a week.

Our first stop at the local farmer's market is always Marcia's Cut and Carry Bouquet's.  She knows us and our particular tastes in all seasons and usually has a bouquet or two made with our colors and favorites.  We buy a bouquet and several large, loose specimen flowers (sunflowers, irises, gladiolas, dahlias, hydrangea, etc. depending on the season) pretty much every week.

The painting and one of Marcia's bouquets, full of mixed coreopsis and rudbeckia, collided in my mind this particular Saturday.  I drew blooms loose on the painting, using prismacolors, verithins, and perfettos.  I added wrens, which are in our gardens year round and (with crows) are my favorite birds.  Then it sat for several months while I tried to decide how to finish it.  The final version just needed the band of lighter blue that runs through/behind the orange circles.  I made other adjustments, but they were minor.  I finished it this weekend.

This keeps the fresh joy that was my goal.  I don't usually paint flowers, but I sketch them fairly often, and I've gardened since my teens.  I love plants and flowers for their names as much as for their beauty, variety, and changes through the seasons.

Watercolor, pencils a little acrylic, and maybe some ink (I don't recall - but I think some red ink...).  In the original the ultramarine blue (lower left) is not so intense, and is a little darker.

Glimpses from the Studio

My studio is actually just an 8x4 sheet of glazed masonite on a lumber frame over an old couch which acts as storage for my art books and supplies while under the old couch cushions, out of sight, are decades of National Geographics reaching back into the 70's.


Here are several glimpses.  The small gouache portrait in the last shot was inspired by a blurred photo of our daughter dancing a hip hop routine.  The beer cans were brought back from the Czech Republic by a friend who is from there.  The ceramic piece on the wall, with the flame cast fern images, is by an artist friend, Heather DeLisle.

Other things for you to find:  The ugly doll Ox, a patch from the USS Wisconsin, my Dad's slide rule in a case laced with camphor, ribbed arcs with barnacles, Japanese erasers (sea theme), 3-D Manhattan puzzle, a bear bell, peace sign pin from Asheville NC, line drawings by our oldest son.  I'm of the sort whose art space gradually fills up with inspiring, memory laden objects until there is no room, and then I have to do a big clean-up.

Auto Drawing 4-6

More of the bed time auto-drawings.  I'm posting them in chronological order.  These began as formless doodles but figures emerged.  That doesn't happen as much lately - these are several weeks old.

Fox Boat

Belly Dancers

Neandertail

Click any image for a closer look.

Auto Drawings - 1-3

I mentioned a few posts ago that I started using an old notebook for an experiment.  Just before bed each evening I take about 15 minutes and draw, using a Perfetto pencil (graphite on one side, red on the other), with only half a brain.  The right half.

I try not to think too much, and I hang back and watch as my hand just does things.  I have no model or preconceived ideas.  After a few weeks of this I'm noticing some things:

• The speed of the drawing shows.  This is gesture almost as much as it is drawing.
• I can tell when a shape is coming from deeper inside or when it is a quick cop-out.  If you look at the drawings over the next few posts, I bet you can tell, too.  I am seeking the deeper gestures.
• Sometimes something recognizable emerges and I play with it.  Sometimes that's good (the rabbit) - sometimes it's not good (the turtle).  Some are landscapes, some are figures, many are animals, etc.
• I began working on one half of the opened pages (the right hand, flat leaf) and leaving the other blank.  That went out the window when my hand just took over the other page, too.  Now I draw over the whole surface.
• It began feeling like a lot of space, and now it feels small, even though I doubled it just a few nights ago when I started drawing on both pages.
• Some nights I can climb into this and sit and watch like a tired kid at the end of the day - other nights I can't get out of the way.
• I have no plan or pattern for the red vs. black - I just go with it.

At first I thought these were too personal to post, and a few are - but mostly they're not controversial.  I don't know if they will interest anyone besides me - but I thought I would post and see what people think.  Feel free to comment.  As usual, click an image to enlarge.''

Here are the first three - later drawings become less abstract.

Roeliff - And Furthermore...

I decided there was little to be gained in keeping this as-is.

And actually after not looking at it for several days, there were some definite small improvements that stood out.  They required acrylics, however - or some other opaque paint.

First, the orange object toward the bottom is gone.  Then I heightened and changed the sweep of the rings or motion lines in the lower left.  I also changed several other shapes, to improve the flow of the piece.  And I painted over some blotchy areas on the sycamore trees which were not pleasing and doing nothing for the composition.  A little white highlight for the fish in the lower right...  Probably the largest change is under the sun, where I really didn't like the painting style (too calculated) or the shape.  Once again, some of these changes removed drama, but it's closer to the childhood memories and feelings I'm trying to reach.

There will be more - and maybe more drastic steps.

Below is how it looked prior to these most recent adjustments, so you can compare.  Overall color temperature is just a trick of the lighting when I took the photos.  Click on the images to enlarge.  Feel free to tell me what you think - particularly if you see something you don't like, or have thoughts on what you would do if you had the brushes* in your hand...

* Talk nicely to those brushes.  This piece so far has been painted by Abner, Louise, and Frondine (the usual suspects when I'm doing watercolor).  More about the named brushes at the end of this post.  And back in 2009 when I named them, I posted this: "I am thinking of naming my paint brushes - at least the three I use most often. Is that weird? Paul Klee named his engraving tools... And he seemed pretty sane."

I've read a lot more about Paul Klee since then...