drawing Archives | Page 4 of 5

October 24, 2016

Rain day

by Carol L. Douglas

Rain, I can handle. Wind—in the usual amounts—I can handle. The combination is difficult, since the wind makes an umbrella impossible. Rain makes for gloomy paintings anyway, which one can sometimes recast as moody, but not always.

The organizers of this weekend’s event had given us two days for one painting. So when Saturday was both windy and guttering rain, Brad Marshall and I decided to take pencils to the Met instead. We thought we’d look at Max Beckmann, follow him up with some lighthearted Fragonard frivolity, and then find a bit of Roman statuary to draw. But as Brad held the elevator door, a gentleman turned to him and said, “Did you see the Caravaggisti? Really excellent.”

by Brad Marshall

There really being only one Caravaggio, I’ve never been that interested in his followers. There’s a fine line between emotionalism and being just plain silly. So I was pleasantly surprised at what a fine painter Valentin de Boulogne was.

I found myself in a group of three ladies querying me about Judith and Holofernes. (Brad had neatly sidestepped.) “How do you know this stuff?” one finally asked.

by Brad Marshall

“I’m an evangelical Christian. We learn this stuff,” I answered. But regardless of faith, these stories are a powerful part of our cultural legacy, since the books of the Bible are the greatest collection of literature surviving from antiquity. There was a time when everyone learned them, and they learned them predominantly through paintings. As Brad said later, “I know them from Art History.”

Valentin also turned out innumerable morality paintings, as per his time. All those fortune-tellers-with-soldiers put me in the mood to draw armor, so we made our way to that Hall. Since there were no benches, I asked a security guard if we could sit on the floor.

by Brad Marshall

“Absolutely impermissible,” he sniffed, in the refined tones of a descendent of ten generations of Norman knights. “Not allowed… Still, if you promise to not tell my supervisor that I allowed it, go ahead.” Later, he walked by again and muttered, “Impermissible,” at me. He would have his little joke.

by Brad Marshall

So we drew horses and armor, Brad sketching away lightheartedly and me fuming and cursing and complaining that I didn’t understand how the mannequins were seated.

“Stop drawing what you know and start drawing what you see,” Brad said, and it was, of course, good advice. I was rather surprised at the stature of these warhorses. In my mind’s eye, I’d seen them towering like modern-day Friesians. Instead, if the armor is any indication, they were about the size of my old quarter horse.

Suddenly it was 7 PM and time for us to head back, since Sunday promised to be a long day. We picked up a pizza as we exited the subway. That made it a perfect New York evening.

July 8, 2016

The Sketchbook Wars

Pastor Alvin Parris listening to the sermon.

Pastor Alvin Parris listening to a sermon.

This week my student noticed that she seemed to be seeing things differently since she started to draw. That is because drawing changes how the brain works, as surely as studying music or language does. This is neuroplasticity in action, and it’s a power you can use for good or evil. Only you control whether you make good choices, like art, or bad ones, like using drugs.

Before the invention of the camera, people in many different fields were expected to understand how to draw. The visual image was almost as important for communication as were words. Nobody had the luxury of saying, “I can’t draw a straight line,” or “I’m not talented.” Drawing was too important to leave to a few anointed geniuses.

Most of my sketches are pretty fast, since people shift around in church.

That’s why I love this recent story in Scientific American. Dr. Jennifer Landin of North Carolina State University expects and gets beautiful drawings from her biology students. “Drawing is merely making lines and dots on paper. If you can write your name, you can draw,” she wrote. “But we all take shortcuts when we see; often our brains fool us, and we skip over most visual details.”

As I noted Wednesday, kids draw all the way through childhood until they reach adolescence. Personally, I think art is how they process the amazing changes their young brains are experiencing. Why most kids quit drawing is not well-studied, but cultural factors play a part. Not only do we devalue the arts in our culture, but we believe that only people with talent (whatever that is) can do them. As Dr. Landin so wonderfully demonstrated, talent is mostly about doing the work.

Coat thrown over a chair. You get to draw this a lot in the Northeast.

I always encourage people—and especially children—to carry sketchbooks around with them. Ten minutes in the doctor’s waiting room is far more productive when you surreptitiously draw the person across from you than when you leaf through last year’s People magazine.

I sketch in church because I’m someone who processes words better when my hands are busy. I’m not alone in that; it’s why so many people knit.

But try applying that principle to ADHD kids in school and you get into major trouble. My son needed the distraction of drawing when asked to sit for hours on end. His school absolutely forbade it. Letting him draw would break down discipline in the classroom. Their answer was drugs or a special school for troubled kids. As you can imagine, his school career was one long, unpleasant skirmish.

Don’t ask me what those words mean.

He graduated by the skin of his teeth. Now that he’s in college, where he is in charge of his own actions, he’s on the Honor Roll.

An art teacher friend of mine told me that the only time her kid ever got in trouble was for drawing in class. It was one of the issues that motivated her to move to another district. If she, a respected professional, couldn’t get the administration to understand the value of drawing, who could?

“Real life isn’t neatly divided by subject,” wrote Dr. Landin. Educators would do well to remember that.

December 29, 2014

Drawing the genie from the bottle

Van Gogh Painting Sunflowers, 1888, Paul Gauguin. If still life couldn’t express emotion, Van Gogh’s sunflowers wouldn’t move us.

I have a young Facebook friend on the other side of the country who likes to draw. I try to give him pointers long-distance, but that isn’t always easy. His problems are less technical than emotional. He was the victim of significant and deep abuse and is now separated from his family. He has a creative block—lots of ability, lots of feelings, but he’s been taught (or taught himself) to repress them so deeply that even expressing them through drawing is difficult. His default behavior is to anesthetize his feelings with drugs, not unpack them and look at them.

He often asks, “What should I draw?” This is not a question most teens ask; usually their ideas outrun their skill. It doesn’t mean his creativity is impaired; it means he has his thoughts and emotions bottled up. The genie-in-the-bottle is so big that it must be unpacked and examined piece by piece.

If he were here, I would have him draw and paint still lives. They have no meaning of their own. They are a means through which art students learn technical skills. However, powerful emotions have a way of leaking out around the edges no matter what the subject matter is.

Red Poppies and Daisies, 1890, Vincent van Gogh

Yesterday, I was coming back from New Jersey, and found this Facebook message from him: “How do I make drawings of how I feel? What do I draw? I want to draw it but I don’t know how.”

In recent weeks, my friend has made a good start by drawing the temple that symbolized his abuse. He has drawn it consumed by fire, wrapped in a snake, destroyed by a fire-eating dragon. It doesn’t take a psychologist to see this as a leap forward.

I often refer to Vincent van Gogh when discussion the importance of practice in drawing. This is Miners in the snow at dawn, drawn in 1880.

Earlier this year, I wrote about a test called the House-Tree-Person. As initially designed by John Buck in 1948, this test was meant to be purely subjective—the artist would draw a house, a tree, and a person. The psychologist would interpret them.

And this is Road with Pollard Willows and Man with Broom, from 1881. What a year with a sketchbook can do!

I suggested to my young friend that he start by drawing these three things. They are both universal and meaningful, because they represent home, life and growth. But I’m a painting teacher, not a therapist. Any of you with proper qualifications who want to chime in with suggestions, they would be very helpful.

Let me know if you’re interested in painting with me in Maine in 2014 or Rochester at any time. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops!

December 19, 2014

Be prepared!

With a sketchbook, even the Emergency Room is tolerably interesting. This, from last month’s visit.

Yesterday morning I struggled up out of sleep to the sound of my phone ringing. My second oldest child was taking her turn with the collywobbles-sans-merci and needed a doctor. Without thinking much about it, I threw my clothes on my back, my backpack in my car, and slipped down the Thruway to Buffalo.

Any place people are sitting, there’s a drawing waiting to happen.

I drill into my kids that they should carry a scraper, candle, matches, chocolate or energy bar, small folding shovel, and an extra jacket or blanket in their car. The deaths in Buffalo last month should be a reminder that this is not just motherly paranoia, but a reality for America’s snow belt.

You will never be bored, or at least not impossibly bored.

I’m going to add one thing to my own list: a sketchbook. Even though I’m an old pro at hospitals, the before-dawn phone call rattled me, and I didn’t check to be sure it was in my backpack. I spent nine hours in waiting rooms, and all I could find to draw on was my own eyeglasses prescription.

Neither waiting room had magazines, which were, in my day, the last refuge of the terminally-bored person. They’ve apparently been replaced by large television sets. Daytime TV is shockingly bad. I might have already known this except that when I’m in waiting rooms, my practice is to burrow in with my pencil, drawing the passing parade.

And occasionally, waiting rooms contain delightful surprises, like this elegant skeleton.

Let that be a lesson to me. Be prepared. Make sure my sketchbook is always in my backpack where it belongs.

Oh, and my daughter is doing fine, thanks.

Remember, you’ve got until December 31 to get an early-bird discount for next year’s Acadia workshop. Read all about it here, or download a brochure here.

November 17, 2014

Tenacity

Cece and her self-portrait in progress.

Cece has been working on her self-portrait for two weeks; Jingwei for a week. This is a laborious process of learning to measure, learning to model, and then assembling these techniques into an autobiographical whole. This is the hardest assignment I give to high school seniors, and their ability to buckle down into it says a lot about their future prospects.

Sandy’s charcoal self-portrait of this week.

Since Sandy Quang was here and we weren’t painting, she decided to do a fast charcoal self-portrait as well. This gave me a great opportunity to compare her drawing to the one she did for her own portfolio in 2008.

Sandy’s graphite self-portrait of 2008.

The biggest difference between a teenager and an art school graduate is assurance. Sandy whipped this drawing off in an hour, and her mark-making reflects that. Her measurement and transcription were painstaking in 2008; they’re automatic today. That reflects hundreds and hundreds of hours of drawing in the interim.

Jingwei’s unfinished graphite self-portrait.

Every plein airpainter is used to certain comments from passers-by. One that I’m sensitive to is, “I used to paint, but I don’t have time anymore.” Another is, “That looks like so much fun!” Yes, art is fun, but it rests on a solid foundation of instruction, learning and practice. If you’re not willing to do that, you’d be wise to choose an easier career path. Most successful painters I know have spent years learning their craft. When youngsters come to me to study art, the first question is whether they have the tenacity for an art career.

Cece’s unfinished graphite self-portrait.

I will be teaching in Acadia National Park next August. Message me if you want information about the coming year’s classes or this workshop.

November 7, 2014

When life hands you lemons, draw them

Passing a kidney stone. Did I mention there’s very little privacy in a hospital ward?

Yesterday I found myself bunged into the hospital. (This is about the miasma that passes for a climate here in November, and it’s nothing to worry about.) Luckily I nabbed my toothbrush and sketchpad on the way.

It ran into the drawing above, but I loved the caring gesture by the doctor.

I may be the only patient in history that asks to be left on a gurney in the hall. There’s much more interesting stuff to draw.

Two guys who were passing through.

Don’t believe what you hear about people lying on gurneys waiting for hours; in general they’re treated in a minute or two. In most cases, I have very little time to work. (It’s always about me, isn’t it?) I start these drawings as fast gestures. And no, nobody objects to my drawing them—they’re too sick to care.

Charting.

The easiest people to draw are staffers working on computers. Engrossed in patients’ records, they’ve been known to sit still for minutes at a time. Conversely, sick people move around all over the place. They’re uncomfortable.

Charting.

Inevitably, someone said, “I’m so jealous of your talent! I can’t draw a thing.” I answered as I always do: I can teach anyone to draw. Her disbelief was writ large in her face, but it’s true. The point isn’t whether these are good, bad or indifferent drawings. The point is that you learn to draw mainly by using your time to draw.

Waiting.

Having said that, I’m down to my last three pages of clean paper. Either they spring me loose this morning or my daughter is going to have to bring me a new sketchbook.

I will be teaching in Acadia National Park next August. Message me if you want information about the coming year’s classes or this workshop.

October 20, 2014

Do as I say, not as I do

Winter coats thrown over chairs are the sketch artist’s dream.

I advocate drawing anywhere you’re required to sit quietly: the subway, doctors’ offices, and especially in church. (‘Idle hands are the devil’s workshop.’) I have stacks of sketchbooks filled with drawings of unsuspecting people, but I’ve noticed recently that my drawing is falling off both in quality and quantity.

Part of this, I’m afraid, is because I got a smart phone at the beginning of summer. It’s too easy to pick it up when I have a few idle moments. But as dissolute as I am, I would never hang out on Facebook in church.

I’ve been letting my kids choose where we sit. Their inner WASP leads them unerringly to the back row. When church is lightly attended that’s not a problem; I can still see well enough to draw. But when it’s crowded (as it usually is) all I see is the hair in front of me. Unless the wearer has spectacular cornrows, that’s of limited appeal.

Even I get tired of always drawing people from the back.

But this week I was saved by the season. It was 40° F. when we left for church and our fellow worshippers were bundled up in coats. Our church being humble, there is no narthex, so winter clothing ends up thrown over chairs. And fabric tossed willy-nilly is the sketch artist’s dream.

Message me if you want information about next year’s classes and workshops.

October 17, 2014

Why do we draw? (Part 3)

Two pieces of silverware and a coffee cup: a tricky thing to draw. But when you’re done, you’ll have the basic tools to draw anything.

Yesterday’s lesson on the pencil and thumb method was easy to teach in person, but difficult to write out in steps. Today’s lesson, on using angles, is easier to write, but will be a little trickier to master.

This has to do with how our brains are wired, not how “talented” you may or may not be. We simply don’t ‘read’ angles and negative space when we’re not focusing on them. This is why we use our pencil as a visual aide. It forces our brains to pay attention.

The good news is that you can rapidly teach your brain to notice angles and negative space.

Once again, close one eye and focus on the pencil, not the object you’re measuring. Hold the pencil along an imaginary plate glass window in front of you, and tilt it to match the angle you’re measuring. Then reproduce the line on your paper.

If at first you screw up, it’s probably that you’ve canted one end of the pencil away from you. Straighten it up and try again.

Once you’ve mastered measuring with the pencil and thumb method and learned to see and copy angles on to your paper, you can draw anything from portraits to animals to landscapes to figure. I promise.

Start by measuring the basic shapes using the pencil and thumb method we learned yesterday. Mark off the heights and widths of all the basic shapes.

Use your pencil to determine the angles at which the silverware, the sides of the cup, and the handle are traveling. Draw them in as straight lines. This takes a little practice, so be patient and take your time looking at each one.

Use your measuring and angle hash marks to block in the major shapes.

Often, you can see distortions, objects that are too close together, etc. more easily in the negative space than you can in your drawing of the positive objects. It’s best to check this before you go on to finish your drawing.

You can use angles to check your work. Here I checked the angle from the right tine of the fork to the handle of the cup, and the angle across the top of the two pieces of silverware.

Message me if you want information about next year’s classes and workshops.

October 16, 2014

Why do we draw? (Part 2)

Teachers often tell their students to hold the pencil fully outstretched. I disagree, because moving it up and down and sideways makes you move in an arc, as Sandy demonstrates, above.

Many people tell me they would like to learn to draw, but they live too far away to take my class. Often they are going through some kind of crisis. From long experience, I know that drawing is cheaper than therapy, it always calms anxiety, and a tablet of paper and pencil are so small and benign that they can be carried anywhere.

I can teach most people the rudiments of life drawing in a single class session. Drawing is a series of actions, rather like dance. The best way to teach it is to sit next to the student and demonstrate the steps. Still, a half loaf is better than none.

Drawing starts with measurement. Get that right, and everything else is just details.

Instead, hold your pencil loosely and comfortably, as if there were a plate glass window along which you were running it. You will have to recheck your measurements frequently, but you should be doing that anyway.

1. Put yourself a few feet from the object you want to draw. Make sure you’re comfortable.

2. Hold your pencil between your thumb and fingers as shown. Most art teachers tell you to do your measurements with your arm completely outstretched; I prefer to have my arm loose and to visualize an imaginary plate glass window I’m running my pencil along.

3. Close one eye and focus on the pencil.

4. Holding your pencil upright and straight, align the point of your pencil with the top of the vase.

5. Slide your thumb down the pencil until it is at the bottom of the vase. This is now one unit of measurement in space.

6. Put marks on your paper where you want the top and bottom of the vase to end up. This is now one unit of measurement on your paper. It doesn’t have to be the same size as your unit of measurement on your pencil.

7. Go back and line your pencil up again with the vase so that it fills the pencil from the point to your thumb. Now raise the pencil so you are measuring the flowers. Are they as tall as the vase? Twice as tall? Half as tall? When you’ve determined this, add another mark to your paper to indicate where the top of the flowers should be. This should be the same ratio on paper as it was in space.

8. Go back and recheck the measurement on the vase height. Then just flip your pencil sideways and see how wide the vase looks in comparison to its height. Is the object as wide as it is tall? Twice as wide? Half as wide? Once you’ve determined this, go ahead and put horizontal marks on your paper to represent the width of the vase.

9. Turn your pencil to the side and observe that the flowers are about 2 or 2.5 times as wide as the vase (depending on where you’re standing). Make those marks on your picture.

10. Once you have the proportions of the objects marked out, mark in the big shapes with a light pencil and then start breaking them down into smaller shapes. You are well on your way to drawing the object.

Tomorrow I will talk about using angles and negative space to measure.

Your pencil is your ruler. You are measuring ratios and then transferring them to the paper. (Note: my ratios look slightly different from what Sandy was seeing because I drew the picture later, from a slightly different angle.)

Recheck the height with your pencil and then flip it to see how the width of the vase compares. It’s that simple.

It really doesn’t matter where you start measuring or what order you measure in. You will figure out a system that works for you.

Once you have the measurement hash marks in place, draw in the big shapes and start breaking them down into smaller shapes. The rest is just details.

Message me if you want information about next year’s classes and workshops.

October 1, 2014

Bicycle artist

Rat, Michael Wallace, 2013. The pictures are by necessity crude, and the charming wobble comes from the accuracy of GPS, which records changes of a few feet.

Michael Wallace draws pictures using his bicycle, his Samsung Galaxy smartphone, two GPS apps, and the streets of Southeast Baltimore. It’s a simple concept: his phone records his rides (the double apps are in case of crashes). In five years, he has completed nearly 500 drawing-rides.

Wallace prints out Google maps and sketches his route over them. Then he consults Google Maps Satellite View to verify that the route he’s planned actually exists. In an online interview, Wallace said he doesn’t climb or jump fences. When obstacles require changes on the fly, Wallace consults the printed map he’s carrying.

Downtown Crab, Michael Wallace, 2013.

Wallace isn’t blindly following his GPS; the act of mapping out the pictures makes him memorize the route. This is analogous to what happens when an artist draws a subject before painting; he can draw it again, much faster and more expressively, because he has memorized the subject. In some way, Wallace is duplicating this drawing process, but while using his whole body.

Sailboat, Michael Wallace, 2013.

I have the same phone and a bicycle. I’m going to try this when I get back to the Duchy.

Message me if you want information about next year’s classes and workshops.