Garden Flower

I am slowly working my way through the first painting in Jim Musil’s online class.  The class seems well organized and thought out and he is teaching his process.  My progress on the one painting that he covered in month of May has been slow for many reasons.  I hope to finish this week.  

On a different note, the irises in my gardens have been spectacular this year.  I kept wanting to do something with the purple ones by the alley, but they have come and gone.  The same is true with the Siberian irises. They are getting close to being done.

When it was lightly raining this morning, I went out and cut one that still looks pretty good.  I brought it in and went down and tried some rough sketches of the shapes. 

Nothing fancy and no goal to capture an actual likeness.   It felt good to have a pencil in my hand and explore.

Urgh, Urgh, and URGH!!!

My April art project is to do a little prep work related to gestural figure drawing, so I can try to do 100 people in 5 (or 7 days) in May.  This has been a one-week challenge by some urban sketchers and I decided to use this idea as a way to push myself, but in my own timeframe since they did it in March. Their timing did not work for me given the pandemic, the weather here in March, and my skill level. 

I’ve been doing a lot of prep work and have been looking at the pages related to gesture drawing in the book “Figure Drawing Design and Invention” by Michael Hampton, looking at some videos on Proko.com and Artprof.org and finally working through a Craftsy class by Suhita Shirodkar.  

I purchased this Craftsy class and a lot of others in the past and I have never worked through them. For a long time I had this weird hang up that time spent on drawing or painting should be focused on the active doing part. That never left enough time for learning, unless I was taking a scheduled class.  The internal critic is a sneaky bastard which has a bunch of different ways to try and derail progress.  Things are going much better now that I frequently split up my art-making time between learning and doing.

In this Craftsy class, I just rewatched a video of how to quickly capture a gestural sketch of someone walking towards you. I had to stop the video, stand up, and, slowly, exaggerate the process of walking to have the placement of the shoulders, hips (especially the hips), and the front and back legs make sense with how the instructor drew them.  When I was doing this, it made sense, but I know I am going to have to go back and do this slow exaggerated walking a bunch more times to create the body awareness that will make it easier to actually see.

It’s both funny and extremely aggravating that I have to work so hard:

1. to see what is happening when I am trying very hard to look, and 
2. to recreate it in my own body when I’ve been walking around my whole life.

It’s kind of annoying to realize how little body awareness I have and to also have my brain go on overload when I am trying to process what’s happening in a video of someone walking at a normal speed towards me.  

Also, I’m finding it hard to be gestural. I’ve mostly been doing loose outlines, when I’m trying to be gestural.  I am barely starting to understand how to get more gestural and am very slowly making progress.

All of this may sound negative, but the flip side is that I am thrilled with deciding what I want to learn and pushing myself to do it. 

Figure Drawing

This month’s project is a bit of a hodge podge. I have some “clean up” from prior months that I want to complete and I want to do some pre-work at home, so that I can practice figure drawing, mostly gesture, out in the world in May. Gesture drawing has never made sense to me. From a thinking standpoint, I do have a basic understanding. From a doing standpoint, I have always felt that I’m flailing around on the page. That’s what I am trying to fix. 

I found a good book, Figure Drawing Design and Invention, and the first chapter is giving me ideas and tools to use. This is going to take a lot of practice, but at least I have an entry point. I did 2 pages of gesture drawings today, which sounds like a lot. It wasn’t.  I was drawing very large and going also using poses from a website.

Here is the 2nd page and the two on the left are a good start for day 1 of a new project. 

Practice, Practice, Practice

Today, I am practicing eyes.  For your viewing pleasure, here is one eye.  I bookmarked some photos in Sktchy where people had something interesting or distinctive about how their eye(s) appeared in the photo.

One, random, floating eye looks a bit goofy.  I haven’t completed my practice for the day, so I’m off to do more. 

It’s Alun Armstrong Month

Roz declared here that March is Sketch Alun Armstrong month.  I confess that I didn’t know who he was, however I decided to fit a few Alun Armstrong portraits into my general March project involving portraits and I am glad that I did.  First, the overall idea is just playful.  Second, he has a really fascinating face.  Third, I’m finding it easier to work on trying to sketch people I don’t know.  If I only get a partial resemblance, it doesn’t bother me.  

Here’s the portrait that I worked on yesterday and today.  The eye on the left is off as to placement and shape, but otherwise I’m very pleased with the result.  

The first one I did had less resemblance.

For both of these, it was such a good exercise to push myself to complete a piece. The one in pencil is more of a sketch, but it’s a complete one.  Honestly, I am kind of amazed that I can do this.

It’s A Face

Since the month is more than half gone, I decided to look to some of my other resources.  That meant pulling a beginning drawing book off the shelf and looking at the pages devoted to doing portraits.  This book had a different way to approach the proportions of a straight on view.  Trying this was good and also it was good to go back to trying a full, but unfinished, portrait, since I’ve mostly been practicing noses, eyes, and mouths from the Sktchy class on the Loomis method.  I noticed that I’ve been getting a little too fussy about it all and I think I need to pick up the pace to a slightly uncomfortable level to keep moving along and prevent getting stuck in one place for too long.  That started to happen with noses.  Right after I felt like I was really starting to get noses, I lost it. I wanted it back so I started to try harder, which didn’t work.  It got frustrating.  Eventually, I realized that it was better to move on. When I took Roz's online drawing class, the pace was brisk. I'm not going for that.  I want a pace that leaves me just slightly off balance.

Here’s what I did today.  It’s a face. I used my own reflection from a mirror, but the resulting drawing is not my face.  It’s vaguely related to it (like maybe a 2nd to 3rd cousin), but it’s not my face.  Since I’m working on newsprint, it’s also a crinkly face.  This paper does not lay flat on the easel and any crinkle in the paper catches light in a weird way.   

All of that is okay, since resemblance is not the goal.  Working on portraits this month has stretched me and has been helpful.  I feel like I’m making better lines, seeing more clearly, capturing shapes better, and improving proportions and placement.  

I Can See Clearer Now

 I’m not quite to declaring that I can see clearly now, but I do think I can see clearer now.  Working through Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain was a good thing to do. Even better has been deciding on a monthly project and doing around 60 minutes of work each day.  On most days, I watch or read something to help with learning for about 1/2 the time and draw the other 1/2. 

Today, as part of my daily project, I decided to draw the major and minor planes of the nose from a picture drawn by the Sktchy instructor where I am learning about the Loomis method. 

Look at all of these fussy little shapes, angles, and so on.  I was be-bopping along with drawing these when it suddenly occurred to me that I was seeing things in a different way, which meant I was able to draw both of these with very little rework to get all of the pieces to fit together.  

After that, I took a bit of a break and returned to do my monthly project.  I have pledged to do a self-portrait sometime in the first week of each new month in 2021 and maybe beyond.  

I procrastinated on starting it (could the mirror be in a better place, should I adjust the easel, do I need better light).  I also fussed over it.  My goal was to try to take what I’ve learned so far about the Loomis method and to try and draw a self portrait.  

While there’s only a very vague resemblance to me, I am not bothered by that. Instead, overall, I’m pleased with the proportions and very happy about some individual pieces like the nose.  It’s really a nose.  

I could not have done anything close to this prior to using monthly projects as a way to focus and learn in December.

Some Ears and A Cat

As I work through the book, Drawing on the Right Side of Your Brain, in January, the exercises are focusing on portraits.  Even though I’ve been using the skills in this book, it is still hard to see and draw what you see, rather than being impacted by the symbols in your head.  Ears have been a stumbling block.  It’s not just seeing the shapes.  There are also a lot of details so there are decisions about what is needed what is not.  

Since I have been struggling with the basic shapes of and within the ear, today, I sat down, looked at some profile pictures or Sktchy where I could zoom in on the ears, and practiced drawing.  For some of them, I did the upside down trick.  Looking at those ones on the top makes my head do a loop-de-loop.  For others, I went right side up.  These are way more detailed than what would go into a portrait, but I figure if I understand them better, hopefully, I can make better decisions.  Here's the part of the page where I was working on the whole ear.

I still haven’t figured out how to balance drawing and painting.  It's hard to find time to do both in one day.  Since my January project is about drawing, I am trying to paint when I have some extra time.  Rather than rushing, I am working to slow down, which also means working on thumbnails. 

It’s weird how sometimes things just work.  This one was short, easy, and quick.  I wasn't fussy and did worry about the making a good drawing.  It reads better than many of my paintings.

I worked on this painting over the last few days.  It’s a little fussy.  I should have stopped sooner.  I like composition and I think the values work.  Having the thumbnail helped with that. Although, there is a spot on the right under the eye which should be darker. 

#371 - A Little Orange Sunshine - 8" x 8" - paper

It felt good to paint a cat.  It’s been a long time. 

Something Changed

When I drew the corner of the stairwell landing several days ago, something changed.  How things relate to each other started to make more sense and tackling more than one object or subject matter isn't as overwhelming.

Yesterday when it was almost 40 degrees, I did draw the house and apartment building across the street and today, for the official perspective and proportion homework exercise in the book, I tackled a more complete drawing of the stairwell landing.  Since the main point was the stairwell, I didn't bother with what you can see through the glass in the top part of the door.

This took an hour to do.  There was a lot of fussy measure of proportions and angles, but it was all built from the height of the window as the base measurement and figuring out angles with a pencil as a tool.  It took multiple tries to get the side of the stairs going up placed correctly, which means I was not taking the time to truly stop and see them.

The drawing is about 6" x 7".  I am a tad amazed that all of these details fit and got represented in that amount of space. 

I know there are people who are better at processing the whole and shapes within the whole as their more native way of thinking.  I am not one of those people.  Drawing on the Right Side of Your Brain is a good book and her methods work. 

The Part I Like Better

My last post was whiny and I feel bad about that, but I wanted to get it out and process it a bit, by posting about it.  It was the last step of throwing a mini-internal tantrum.  That part didn't make it into the post.  What I forgot about is that, frequently, when I reach this point (the frustration part, not the tantrum part), a breakthrough usually follows shortly afterwards if I keep working.  I haven't always done that and, at least, part of the reason is that I've gotten stuck and haven't know how to move forward or address how to learn what I don't know.  Yes, of course, a big part of it is also the internal critic successfully sidetracking it all, but that's not where I am going with this post.  

Since my January project is to work through Drawing on the Right Side of Your Brain, I wasn't stuck, just very frustrated.  I am very thankful to Roz for generally being so generous with her knowledge, but especially for her December focus on projects.  I think it's a game changer for me.  

Working in the next chapter of the book, a bunch of things fell into place.  I've used a pencil before to help with proportions.   I have used a pencil to discern the angle of one line, such as one side of a roof line.  I hadn't figured out or ever seen using it parallel to a point where two lines come together, such as at the peak of a roof, to consider the angles of both of them and, more importantly, their relationship to each other. 

Last night, I did the pre-exercises, which are in preparation of doing a drawing in perspective.  Here is a basement door with a dartboard and side trim pieces.  As a straight-forward view, it was relatively simple, using a pencil to measure and get accurate proportions.  I couldn't get back far enough to stay within the pre-drawn frame.   

Here is a stairwell landing.  I went outside the frame, again.  You can see vestiges of the vertical line on the bottom.  The vertical line on the top got erased along with other marks which you can somewhat see. 

When I first tried to draw the angles on the top, I angled them down rather than up.  I'm not sure how I flipped this.  It wasn't apparent to me until I decided to add the crown molding. After the error was fixed, I moved on and decided to add the angle for the stairs going down and added the 3 vertical lines for how the side of the stairs relate to the wall and molding.  I didn't do this proportionally.  It was enough to work on the angles and relationship without the proportions.    

The breakthroughs were:

1. No internal critic.  There was no drama or negativity from figuring out I goofed and how to correct it.  This makes me more determined to banish this goon.
2. Pieces became a whole.  I've stayed mostly in the world of dealing with one object as a subject.  I have not had the tools for dealing with more than that, so I sort of surprised myself in the moment by going on with the crown molding and "stairs".  Adding the vertical lines to show where the stairs would go felt like a victory, since it's the first time I had the tools/skills/seeing/whatever to understand how and where they fit.  I think working on both angles at a corner point got me to see and consider things in relation to one another in a different/better/new way.  Something big fell into place with this.    

These breakthroughs are always a surprise when they happen.   

All of this helps answer the question of why I continue to work on learning to draw and paint, and in the larger context pursue creativity, in spite of or maybe because of the ups and downs.  This morning when I went outside to grab the newspaper, I looked across the street and the thought popped into my head that I could try drawing the house and small brick apartment building across the street as a way to continue to explore the proportions, relationships, and angles of how things relate to each other.  I am going to do that later today.  

This pursuits keeps me open to further exploring and to life itself, which is especially appreciated in this present moment with so much uncertainty.    

More Drawing on the Right Side of Your Brain

Working through this book is a little like flossing your teeth, taking your vitamins each day, or eating a big salad without any ranch dressing.  I can't say that I am having fun.  I also have been encountering a lot of internal resistance prior to each exercise.  Some of this is the internal critic.  Some of it is the instructions are so long that sometimes I'm just tired by the time that I've read through them.  I'm also finding that there is a lot of good information in the book, but I don't find the way it's presented to be engaging.  I am using the version from 1999.  The concepts presented aren't dated.  They are really good and effective.  The way they are presented seems dated, but I want to learn and it's my January project so I am slogging along.  

Today, I did the negative space exercise with a chair. 

Here are some in process pictures.

This isn't quite the same angle as my viewpoint, but it did clarify some of the wonkiness.

I went a little rogue and  did not focus as much on the negative space and tried some quick fixes.  It's still wonky, but I learned a lot during the process and wanted to be done.  Chairs are hard and when I picked one with armrests I knew that it would be a harder one. 

Rather than moving on in the book, I think I'm going to work on some drawings like this in the next several days, while at the same time not being so fussy on any one drawing.  

On a different, and much more positive, note, yesterday morning was one of those magical winter mornings where everything was outlined in the light dusting of snow and the light was beautiful.  It was all the more special, since I didn't know it was supposed to snow so my first glance out the bedroom window was pure magic. 

I quickly got out of bed, got dressed, fed the cats, and headed out to walk around my neighborhood.  It was a welcome respite from all of the anxiety, angst, and so on over the current of the union.  

Here is the neighbor's magnolia. I could take pictures of tree branches like this one outlined in snow all day long.

Plants are so interesting when flocked with snow. 

I saved the best for last.  I love the structure of coneflowers when they are in full bloom or when it's just the seed head.  In a weird way, these and a lot of other structural looking plants make me thing of Louis Sullivan ornamentation. 

This was the coolest thing of all.  I have no idea what connected these flowers prior to the snow. It was just really cool to see the snow strands connected some of the flowers with each other. 

  

Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain

My January project is working through this book.  It’s one of those things I’ve been meaning to do for a long time, but never have quite gotten around to it.  I have had a bad habit of gathering materials to learn about drawing and painting and not using them.  Working through one of the classics, which has always intimidated me, is a good start. 

Today, I did the the first ubiquitous exercise where you copy a Picasso drawing upside down to bring about the shift to the non-verbal side of your brain.  It’s in chapter 4 of the version of the book that I have.

I first started feeling the brain shift, that happened again today when I drew upside down and that the author talks about in this chapter, for awhile now.  When I was done with this exercise, I remembered this post and the day I wrote it.  I was feeling overworked and frazzled.  After I drew that day, my brain felt refreshed and like it had been on vacation.  

I was really resistant to doing today’s exercise from the book and some of the exercises for the pre-instruction drawings, but it’s been been helpful so far so I will continue to plow ahead.  

Back To Drawing

I've started drawing, again, and I'm starting with the basics. Hatching and crosshatching continue to baffle me. While it might not be the most exciting goal ever, I am going to focus on this for now, by working on giving volume to a shape and not worrying about the aspects related to convey value. It just does not come naturally to me. Last night, I spent some quality time with an alma papricka pepper from my garden. I sat there and looked at it and tried to think about how to add crosshatching. The proportions are a bit off. The drawing should be wider relative to the height.

Next up might be working on thumbnail sketches.

Drawing Practice

I'm back to drawing. I'm sorry to say that it's not every day, but it is most days. Taking the online class was a good choice. In the last week, I fell behind on the lessons. Class ends this week. I am planning on starting it all over again and going through it more slowly. 

For now, here are several practice sketches of Hammett. When he is sleepy in the afternoon, he is a fantastic model. When he is deep in sleep, he holds poses like these for a long time.

He will hold interesting poses for a short time if I pet him on his tummy when he's sleepy. He goes onto his back with his paws at interesting angles. After that, he will sometimes settle into a pose which I call origami paws. He tucks and folds his paws in delightful ways. 

He's a fluffy guy, so he offers a lot of opportunity to figure out how to capture that in a drawing. 

Drawing Practice

I mentioned Roz's class in my last post.  Her class moves you along at a pretty fast pace.  Once class is done, I intend to work my way through it again at a much slower rate.  There are a lot of fundamentals that I want to work on.  Really seeing and capturing values is one of those skills which I've mentioned a lot over the years on this blog.  It's even more challenging to me when I'm trying to do this with a live subject, even if it's a sleeping house cat, and I find that I still have a lot to learn with this. 

As a result, I sort of cheated one day this week with my homework.  Rather than working with a live subject, I used my polar bear toy with very extreme lighting so that the values would be distinct.  I used a single color of watercolor and a water brush.  It was slow going, but I felt like this was a mini-breakthrough for me.

The top part was practice.  With the bear in the bottom, I like the chest and two front paws the best. I am annoyed that I didn't let the face dry enough so when I finished the nose and mouth these features grew and it looks like the polar bear is smiling.

Going forward, I am finding that I just need to do, accept and embrace the process, be comfortable that I may not be enamored with the results, and trust that if I work on the skills from Roz's class it will help me get closer to the place I want to go.

That Was Silly (In A Good Way)

If I only have time for one activity, I’ve been drawing. I didn’t draw yesterday, until right before bedtime and I was on the lookout for scissors, since they have an interesting shape when they are in a container. The first pair which caught my eye were in a ceramic mouse which sits on top of the kitchen sink.

First, I did a rough, quick drawing, trying to feel out the shapes. I even started with some light, geometric shapes to try and get the relative size of things.

Next up, I decided to take focus on the neck and face and so a little quick shading.

Looking at this, now that I’m done, I can see that it would be better to angle the lines of the shading better carve out and represent the planes of the face. When I was in the moment, I wasn’t thinking about that.  

Overall, it felt silly in a good, light hearted way to give this a try and gratifying to feel like I have some building blocks to try and tackle more. The best thing I can do is just keep up and continue to make drawing and painting a priority in my daily life. It’s better to do 15 minutes every day than to do 2 hours once per week.

Drawing Direction

I haven't had specific goals or direction with either drawing or painting. Given that, low energy from the never ending cold, and a full schedule, my commitment has been sporadic. Yesterday, I think I discovered a direction for my drawing. While I've been practicing cross hatching, I don't have the skill or stamina to approach a full drawing.

Yesterday, I worked from home and at lunch time I arranged several peppers and tried to roughly draw their shape and relative position to each other. Back when I took Carl's class at Wet Paint, he showed us rough drawing and feeling out the shapes. I kind of get it, but kind of don't, so I'm practicing that as well. This represents a good combination of things I want to work on, including shapes, relative size, and position.

After that I took one part of one pepper and worked on a separate drawing of that piece with cross hatching.

I think I found my drawing goal for the next 30 days.

Floating Pear

Yes, the pear is floating, but the point was to work on cross hatching today and yesterday. I started on the left side and tried, VERY, VERY HARD to figure out which direction to make the cross hatch marks to denote shape (without much success). It’s one of those things which seems like it should be simple and it’s just not.

Somehow, I eventually got a little looser in the brain and stopped trying so hard. I also switched to the right side, which turned out better.

Tonight, I worked on it a bit more. 

The plan is to work on cross hatching, not finish drawings, so I will move on tomorrow. I am determined to improve my cross hatching!

The Latest

It’s been a productive week. I am making an effort to draw and paint every day, while also finding the balance between pushing myself to do it without becoming too militant about it. For drawing, my plan is to work on drawing a simple object with crosshatching each day in January. So far, I’ve done two drawings for the first 4 days of January. Here’s one.

In addition to getting better at crosshatching, I want to figure out better which direction to crosshatch when building a particular shape. This does not come naturally to me at all. I hope this will cross over into better paint strokes.

Here is the last painting of 2019 and the first one of 2020.

#360 Mandarin - 5” x 5” - paper

#361 Yellow Pepper - 5” x 5”

My 17-year old cat, Dorian had surgery on Thursday. I am so grateful that it all went well. She has to endure 11 days of wearing a cone, so she can’t disturb her sutures. Once she is past that, she should be happier and healthier. I am so relieved that surgery was successful, that I decided to do a painting of her. She is one of my favorite models. I love to paint from pictures of her and to take pictures of her. However when she was a kitten, I used the flash too many times, so she almost always scowls or has a fierce expression for the camera. 

I liked the drawing.

The painting is okay. I didn’t like it last night, but today it doesn’t seem so bad, except for the whiskers. 

#363 - Dorian - 6” x 6” - hardboard

Just Keep Drawing

I've kept up with drawing each day. Lately, I've been looking at pictures of people engaged in sports and trying to capture rough, general shapes using cylinders and other shapes. The focus is on shapes, not proportions. I wish I could draw smaller, but I just can't at this point. On the plus side, I think this type of practice is helping.