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.  

Winter Robin

 I’ve taken my camera out on a few winter walks this winter, but haven’t been positing pictures.  My preference is still to try and take the picture that I want, rather than cropping.  I don’t know why, but maybe it’s because it’s more of a challenge. 

Here is a Robin, who forgot to fly south for the winter and who does not appear to have any wool mittens, hats, or scarves.  Poor dear.  

For this one, I think the bird is displaying a rather elegant line.

I like the colors in this one, including the snow at the bird’s feet, the moss or lichens on the tree, and, of course, the red chest of the bird. 

Quick Thoughts As "Do It Anyway December" Comes To An End

I followed Roz's guidance for doing a project in December and found it to be useful and productive.  The actual project was an exploration of color by painting apples in acrylic.  This branched into exploring and learning more about value.  Along the way, I also started to do thumbnails and try a bunch of new things such as:

• Painting objects in unrealistic colors.  I was surprised how hard this was to do at first.  I haven't some pretty strong rules in my head about how things should be and I want to bust through them.  
• Using a different colored ground. 
• Copying other people's apple paintings to get some ideas about how to do different brushwork, and 
• a lot more. 

As part of focusing more on values, I pulled together some additional tools and used some new things.  Most of these, I already had, although I did buy the gray and black paint.   

I'm not good at making up backgrounds in my head, so awhile ago I had painted some folders in different colors to use when I set up a still life.  Once I started focusing more on value, I found it extremely useful to painting the folders into neutral or gray scale tones. 

Another thing I discovered (or rediscovered) is that I was never making my lights light enough and I used to shy away from using light backgrounds.   All of this meant that my consumption of titanium white paint has gone way up. 

On December 1, I started out essentially have to start all over again, since I had not been painting.  That was painful. 

Day 2 went a lot better than day 1.

Along the way, I discovered that I'm more interested in learning, so I experimented a lot, rather than getting as caught up in the results or the output. 

The month ended well.  I wasn't trying for that.  It just sort of happened.  I especially like the shape of the green apple. 

I Couldn’t Wait

I finished my latest hat last night. It’s for me and I love it. It’s downstairs soaking in soapy water and will look better once it’s done and dry. It relaxes and flattens everything out. However, I cannot wait to post pictures and have made no attempt to take “good” pictures. 

The first bit of embroidery that I added was the outline of the star above. It’s amazing how much embroidery adds. It can also add a lot of ends to work in, like on the side of the hat above, but if you just work on it a bit at a time it’s worth the effort.  

 

Commitment, Focus, and Follow Through

2020 was a tough year and for much of it, I lacked commitment, focus, and follow through related to creativity, in general, and with drawing and painting, specifically.  Knitting was the bright spot in my life, creatively, and I am so thankful for that.  Knitting was a comfort and I enjoyed playing with color and either re-learning or learning some new techniques.  I'm almost done with my 10th pandemic hat, which I think I'm going to keep.  Here's the most recent one, which I gave to a friend. 

Most of the new knitting techniques came from attending a monthly Zoom classes put on by Sena Klets, a folk costume museum in Riga Latvia.  I attended one today on "Many Color Knitting".  Those Latvian knitters are really something.

I started getting my act together when I took the last session of Roz's class on creating background textures.  I really started getting my act together when I joined her Patreon site and several months later finally got into her Facebook group related to her Patron site.  There were some technical difficulties with Facebook.  I asked Roz to try a few different things and the last one finally worked.  The timing was great because it was right when she rolled out the idea of "Do It Anyway December".  A lot of things clicked for me about how I can and should use projects to focus on and develop skills. 

One of my stumbling blocks has been that I don't know what I don't know.  When I got stuck with a drawing or painting problem, I wasn't sure how to get unstuck. I think if I can adopt Roz's manner of doing projects, along with goal setting and assessments I can be a better captain of my own ship in deciding what I want to learn and how I can get the info, tools, techniques, and so on that I think I need.  

My project for December has been to paint an apple every day in acrylic paint while exploring color options.  It may not seem like much, but I keep bumping up against these color-related rules (and other art-making rules) in my head that aren't real and that I need to confront and make them go away, so I am doing things like painting blue apples. It may not seem like much, but it is helping me confront my internal critic and it's getting me back to creating on a daily basis and I can see small, incremental changes.  

I've also been focusing in a much more effective way on values.  The value finder tool has become my friend.  I purchased some black paint and a premixed gray and have been also working monochromatically.  The biggest surprise is that I started doing thumbnail sketches, which I previously have been afraid of and didn't understand how to do them.  Slowly, I'm learning.  Here's ones from the last two days and, the pen mark on the one on the left shows where I made something a darker value than what it actually was. 

I've been writing about all of this a lot, but what I've been writing has fit better into a journal app that I use, called Penzu.  I have multiple journals in this app and the exploration, processing, and journey fits better in the creativity journal I created.  I haven't figured out how the blog fits into all of this.  My guess is that I will post occasionally, because this blog captures the arc of my journey in a different way.

One last thing is that I have spent some time thinking about why do I want to learn to draw and paint?  It is clear to me that having creative outlets is an important aspect of my life, but I've never really answered the question why dry and paint.  While I don't think this is my final answer, here's my best answer as of today. I want to use art to capture everyday objects, moments, and experiences in an uninhibited way as part of staying grounded and present in my life.