Some drawings from my morning and evening BART rides today in ink in my small Moleskine sketchbook.
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A.M. Waiting for the train
AM Riding to Work
PM Riding Home
Tag: People
Brown ink and watercolor in Moleskine large watercolor notebook
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A few days after I posted the drawing of Dane I received an email from Aileen, the beautiful woman in the photo below, who sent me her photo and asked me to draw her too.
I planned to do a quick sketch of her today as a warm up before doing some “real” painting (I put that in quotes because it’s silly of me to think that one kind of drawing or painting is more “real” than another). But instead of it being a warm up I spent all of my painting time today working on sketches of her.
I drew the first one at the top quickly in ink and then painted it. The drawing was goofy so I decided to do it again, using pencil and eraser, still working in my large Moleskine watercolor notebook and came up with the this one:
I wasn’t happy with the way the ultramarine blue I used in the shadows looked and the drawing still wasn’t quite right so I did it again, this time using the last page in my Moleskine notebook:
In this one I did a fairly dark pencil drawing first, planning to leave it mostly as a pencil drawing, just adding just a little paint, but I got carried away and forgot my plan.
The funny thing is now that I’m done, I like the very first one I did the best. It may not look like her, but it was the most fun to do and is the most Jana of all of them.
Which do you prefer and why?
Brown Micron Pigma ink and watercolor in large Moleskine Watercolor notebook
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The other day I got a mysterious email from someone calling himself “Fake Dane.” He wrote, “Hey, I think your art is great. I was wondering if you’d be willing to sketch me from a picture. I’m assembling a collection that I’d post. Dane”
And he sent me his photo. If you want to draw him too, just click the photo below and select All Sizes when you get to Flickr and then you can print it out:
I wrote back, “Sure, why not?” and did the sketch above. I was going for caricature so I hope he’s not offended. (UPDATE: He replied and said he really liked it and put it on his blog. There’s some funny drawings of him as a vampire there too.) If you want to do a drawing of him and send it to him too, there’s instructions in the “Please Read” sidebar on his blog.
It was a fun, quick painting project on a day in the studio that was mostly spent at the computer, trying to sort out photos and compositions for upcoming paintings, something I don’t particularly enjoy doing. And that made me think about the differences between…
Alla Prima/Plein Air vs carefully planned painting
When I’m planning a painting I consider focus, value, composition, color scheme, etc. I do thumbnails and value sketches. If it’s something requiring exact proportions, such as a portrait of someone’s child, pet or home, I’ll start with a drawing and then work from a photo, tracing it onto the watercolor paper. But even with more carefree subjects like flowers and still life or landscapes, that prep work saves a lot of frustration once painting is underway. I’ve learned that lesson the hard way.
On the other hand, my understanding is that people who regularly paint alla prima (in one setting) or plein air make the prep work quick and intuitive and let go of exactitude, painting their impression of the subject rather than a careful rendering. I’ve done some and it’s a lot harder than people like Kris Shanks, Nel Jansen, Ed Terpening, and others whose blogs I enjoy visiting, make it look.
What I’m trying to figure out is how to combine the two approaches, or how to avoid all the labored pre-planning. Judy Morris, the teacher of the workshop I took in February, said that her favorite part is planning and composing from photos, not the actual painting. For me it’s the opposite — while I enjoy drawing, I love painting more and don’t really enjoy spending a lot of time photoshopping compositions and sorting through photos at the computer. (She does the prep work manually, working with black and white photocopies and enlargements of the subject and background, which she cuts out and assembles.
On the other hand, if I don’t do the pre-planning (especially with watercolor) the whole painting ends up being a study that has to be done over. I guess with acrylics and to some extent oils, one can just keep working on and changing a piece until it’s right, but I’m not sure if that’s a great way to go either.
I’m hoping to find my own way of working that incorporates the best of both worlds.
Categories
Woman at the museum
Oil on canvas board, 12 x 16″
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Thumbnail sketch (1.75×2.5″) in sketchbook for painting
Ink in small Moleskine notebook
(original sketch at SF Museum of Modern Art cafe)
A few weeks ago I went to see the Picasso and American Art exhibit at SFMOMA and was inspired by this woman’s thick, grey hair in a giant clip and the way the teeth of the clip separated her her hair. I also took a photo of her while I was there (below) but the view was different from my drawing so I didn’t end up referring to it when I made the painting. I’m still struggling with oils and acrylics but this one was a little easier because I stuck to black, white and 3 grays. I had intended this to be an underpainting and was going to glaze over it with the colors of eggplant and chocolate but decided to leave it because I like it the way it is.
I used Gamblin Chromatic Black for the darkest darks which is not a dead black pigment like most. From the Gamblin website: “Chromatic Black is black, but it has no black pigment in it. It is made from two perfect complements: Quinacridone Red and Phthalo Emerald.” For the grays I used Gamblin’s Portland Greys in light, medium and deep. So there was no color mixing, just a value study and an attempt to get some control with applying and blending oil paints.
Categories
The Horn Players
Ink & Watercolor in Moleskine sketchbook
Composed from memory, a quick scribble on a sticky note and a small photo (see below)
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When I was taking a lunchtime walk on Wednesday, I saw this guy playing his sax on the corner. A mom and little boy stopped in front of him and the mom pulled a little toy plastic horn out of her bag. She handed it to her son and encouraged him to play too. The boy was fascinated by the sax player, who sadly showed no interest in the boy and just kept on playing. I didn’t have time to take a photo or sketch so tried to take a mental snapshot. As soon as I got back to the office I grabbed the first pen and paper I could find and tried to draw what I’d seen on this purple sticky note.
The next day I was out walking again and the horn player was back on the corner so I took this quick photo from across the street.
Tonight I finally had a chance to draw the scene in my sketchbook, using my mental snapshot of the scene, my sticky note scribble and the photo (which was really helpful since I didn’t really know what saxophones looked like enough to try to draw it).
Does it bother you that the sax player is more realistic and the mom and boy are more cartoonish since they’re drawn from memory?
Art show update: Thanks everyone for all your good wishes. The opening was so much fun! All my best friends, family and local art buddies came, including a (formerly virtual) friend from the Everyday Matters art blogging group. Some people brought friends and neighbors, and there were a few unknown faces too. From all reports everyone had a good time, and there were quite a few “small world” connections between people who I had no idea knew each other. The show will come down March 31.
Every day I write and draw something in my AM/PM sketchbook, usually from memory — in the morning an image from my dreams and in the evening something I’ve seen during the day. This is an assortment from the past week in my Handbook Journal Co. notebook drawn with an Expresso pen which I don’t like much but for some reason am using for all these drawings.
PM (Tonight): Walking around the lake by work today at lunch the geese were acting crazy, honking at each other and wiggling their heads and flapping their wings while the pigeons and seagulls looked on. I saw some seagulls with festive polka-dotted tails.
PM: Kitties are already asleep and I should be too.
AM: View out the window (at a distance)
AM: A silly work dream and another dream about Donald Trump (watched the very bad Apprentice LA that night).
Ink and watercolor in large Moleskine watercolor notebook
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I wish I could have actually done this sketch in person along the Malecon waterfront in Puerto Vallarta but there was no time alloted for outdoor sketching in my workshop. I noticed several different people selling both corn on the cob and corn kernels in plastic cups that they barbecue on site (the corn not the cups).
I wanted to do a small watercolor in my sketchbook since my painting time lately has been spent working with oil paints and acrylics. When I went to look through my Puerto Vallarta photos for something to paint I discovered most of them were missing. I’d done some nifty photo organizing the other day, sorting everything, trying to back up onto DVDs (but it kept eating the DVDs so I gave up and copied files from my PC to my laptop). Somehow I’d deleted half of the folders I’d sorted, thinking I was deleting extra copies from my laptop. Without going into lots more detail about how this stupidity occured, I’ll just say that I went through all the steps of the grieving process: anger, denial, bargaining etc., through to acceptance and then oh so gratefully, found a folder on my laptop that had the files!!
Ink in Handbook Journal notebook
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Today I was tired after all the prep and then the party at last night’s opening for my show (which was great fun by all accounts). This morning I tried drawing little sketches of everyone who attended the opening in my AM/PM journal. It was hard to remember the details of people’s faces, though surprisingly easier for the people I’d just met than the ones I’ve known most of my life.
It occurred to me that if I tried to superimpose in my imagination a caricaturish outline on the faces and features of people I see, it might make it easier to draw them and might also be a good way to start to see and understand the essential components of each face that make it different from every other face.
So tonight while I was watching a documentary I’d TiVo’d a couple weeks ago — “Cezanne in Provence” — I saw the guy on the top left, Curator Philip Conisbee, and discovered I was doing exactly that — I could see the imaginary lines superimposed on his image that I wanted to draw. So I paused the program, grabbed my journal, and drew him. Then I did the same for other people I saw in the documentary, Cezanne, Monet, Cezanne’s grandson Philippe and art historian Nina Kallmyer (sorry for beard Nina, I went a bit too far with the shading).
I also jotted down some of the quotes by and about Cezanne: “He is a true artist but has far too many doubts about himself.” “He liked to be free and alone when he was painting.” “He was a hermit.” Cezanne said, “The pleasure must be found in the painting” when dismissing with disdain the importance of showing and success. “Vollard displayed 150 of Cezanne’s paintings (that he’d bought from the art supply store where artists traded their paintings for art supplies) and Cezanne didn’t come to the show. He stayed home painting.”
While I fantasized about painting today, I never did get in the studio other than to tidy up a bit. I think Cezanne might have been right. Preparing for a show sure diverts time and energy from painting!
Ink & Watercolor in large Moleskine watercolor notebook
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On our trip into town this friendly gentleman (reproduced here twice from two different photos) was standing in the hot sun selling hot corn. He gave me a big smile and held up his sign…not exactly a candid, natural photo, but P.V. was rather like that. People were very friendly and kind, but very much oriented towards the tourist. I wish I would have planned for time to travel away from the well-beaten path after my workshop.
I changed the colors from the photo to use a warm, analagous palette (colors near each other on the color wheel). In the photo the umbrellas were multi-colored and the wall was a royal blue. But in a small sketch like this I thought it would be too busy with all those colors and wanted a hot feeling instead of a rainbow.
After I scanned the original version below, I decided it needed a dark doorway to break up the long wall and give some contrast and focus to the front-facing man. Which do you think works better?
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BART Rider – Ink in small Moleskine sketchbook
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Peets Coffee water display – Ink in small Moleskine sketchbook
Woman in the SFMOMA Cafe (loved her thick grey hair in a huge clasp)
Ink in small Moleskine sketchbook
Just before the earthquake Friday: BART Rider with Orchid just before the trains stopped. Ink in small Moleskine sketchbook
Friday, Susie and I met at the SF Museum of Modern Art on the opening day of Picasso and American Art. It was very interesting seeing Picasso’s groundbreaking paintings and the way American artists picked up his ideas and explored them in their own paintings. I think my favorites were the Willem de Kooning paintings; the first was quite derivative but you could see the development over the half dozen or so paintings spanning a couple of decades how his work progressed and matured into his own strong and unique voice.
More than anything, what I got from this show was the importance of an artist’s unique voice. I’ve been pondering what makes something “art” vs. decorative, pretty, marketable pictures; or what makes an artist a “real” artist. This exhibit helped me to understand that it’s not just technique, talent, or skill (all important things) — it’s also the expression of the artist’s unique view and personality that is essential. An artist doesn’t have to invent a new “ism” or create a whole new way of working like the impressionists, cubists, expressionists, etc. But a recognizable, unique and authentic voice or perspective that is courageously or confidently expressed (even if it’s ugly) seems like it might be the key.
Do you agree? Do you have an opinion of what makes an artist a “real” artist or art “real” art or do you think the whole question is irrelevant?
ADDENDUM: I must point out that my questioning this is all this in terms of my own place in the world: I’ve been painting and drawing and identifying myself as an artist for 30 years but there’s always that question in the back of my mind….that voice that says, “If you were a real artist you would…[fill in the blank].” I don’t meant to imply judgment on anyone else’s choice of style or work. Please see my comment in response to Katharine‘s comment for more.
Jana Bouc, Artist 
