Anatomy of a Drawing: Photo 3

And still another couple of hours worth of work. I'm not used to working in such slow stages, and as I do my drawing late at night, having to wait until I shoot it the following day in the same light as the previous drawing stages before I can continue working on it has been strange, but slowly I'm getting closer to finishing. And having to stop and think about how far I've gotten in the drawing and where to stop and then where to pick up the next night really has forced me to think more about what I'm doing. It's been odd but interesting.

Anatomy of a Drawing: Photo 2

This is about another ninety minutes of work on the drawing.

Anatomy of a Drawing: Photo 1

I thought it might be kind of cool to post photos of a drawing I'm currently working on as I complete it. This will give me the chance to see what I do as I'm doing it from outside the moment, which could be helpful to me. I thought of it after I had begun a new drawing of Edison (I really need to get working on a subject other than him for my sketchbooks before this gets to be incredibly dull, but he's just so damn cute, I can't help myself. Besides, it's a good excuse to sit and draw every single day and look at my darling doggie a whole lot, too) so this first one is already a little more than just roughly sketched in. I spent about an hour and a half, maybe a bit longer, on his right ear (which isn't remotely finished) and his right eye (which is for the most part complete). Keep watching for more of this drawing to make a slow appearance depending on time-allowed for photographing and posting it.

Hitting a Really Rough Spot

I adore everything art. I always have and I always will. I love to see art, I love to touch art and I love to read about art, so why am I having a problem with reading it for those who can't read it for themselves? For the last almost four years, I have been reading regional arts and entertainment news for the blind at a local radio station. I have never broadcast this part of my life believing that if one is going to do something charitable, it's far better to do it on the down-low than to make a big deal out of what you are doing. Keeping it quiet keeps it more from the heart and less from the head. But to be perfectly honest, I have grown weary of the weekly grind. It's difficult to admit this, but it's true. I still love to read about exhibitions at museums, book reviews, New England theater, et al, but for some reason having to read it each and every week and make it interesting each and every time has become something of a grind. Deciding what to read, what to cull, making sure it all fills the time frame required, and then listening to myself reading it all a second time through for any glitches is tedious. I had a few weeks off this fall due to circumstances beyond my control and I found that I liked not having to read. Loved it, in fact. This makes me feel guilty and selfish considering that it's only a couple of hours a week. But spare hours and time for working on art is hard-earned and lately not as frequent as I'd like, so I find myself resenting anything that drags me away from it. I wouldn't stop doing the reading in spite of my feelings of unrest about it and obviously no one is forcing me to continue offering my time, but each week come Sunday night I find myself thinking, "Arrrgh, I need to go read for this week." And then I not only feel shitty because I have to take the time to tape my allotted time for the week, but because I feel guilty for feeling shitty about it. I hope this is just a phase I'm going through and I'll find the joy in it once more, the feeling I had when I first began to read, but for now I just have to try to not overthink it and do as happily as I am able what I know is right. I'm not proud of feeling like this, but I am being completely honest about it. Hopefully saying it out loud will make it less horrible.

Paint By Number Heaven

Last week I was out with Griffin picking up some varnish and fixative, but because I was lazy and didn't feel like going all the way into town to my artist supply store, we went to a local craft shop. They didn't have the exact varnish I wanted, but I did find a can of photo preservative designed with a home scrapbooker in mind, which is far less toxic and dangerous than my professional grade photo preservative, so I picked up a can of that too. As we were heading to the register, in my peripheral vision I noticed an entire aisle that was chock full of paint-by-number kits, so naturally, I just had to check them out up close and personal.

When I was a kid, I loved paint-by-numbers and did them all the time. My favorites were pictures of horses grazing in a field or running in a group. The first set I picked up this time was of a small group of horses standing around a meadow and I thought it might be fun to do it, but then I came to my senses and said to Griffin, "What the hell am I thinking? Painting a paint-by-number picture of horses- what am I? Ten?" and I put it back on the display. But then I saw a crumpled box on the floor under the display that was bigger than all the boxes of puppies and kittens and horses. It was a Winslow Homer painting, was quite large, and was in terrible condition. The box was torn open, the oil paints were separating and/or dried and there was at least a half-inch of dust covering the whole thing. There wasn't a price on it and there was no place on the display for it either. I took it to the register and the girl price-checked it for me: $19.00 despite its awful condition, so I passed on it.

But when I got home, I got to thinking. If there was this one masters' series painting then there had to be other ones, so I got online and sure enough found a few more that were available at a couple of art supply places. I went berserk when I found two van Goghs. I ordered them both: a sunflower painting and his bedroom in Arles. I was really, really hoping that someone somewhere had Starry Night, but alas it was not to be. The two I bought came this morning and I am thrilled with them. Part of me is thinking what a goof I am to be so excited about paint-by-numbers, but a bigger part of me can't wait to get started on them. These kits have changed a whole lot in the last thirty five years. Mine say they're for beginners, but they require mixing paint colors, sometimes more than two or three colors for a section, which I think is really cool. And if I use up too much of the paints and run out before I'm done, I obviously have all the colors I need for both paintings so the warning on the box not to mix too much doesn't matter a whit.

And in the end, I'm going to have both the fun of re-living a favorite childhood hobby and get two van Goghs (even if they are cheap paint-by-number van Goghs) out of it to boot. The smell of the paints in their little cups and the feel of the thin printed canvas board, when I opened my boxes this morning after the UPS man left, took me instantly back far, far too many years to count. I can't wait to get started. This is going to be a total gas.

Self Portrait, acrylic, gesso, graphite and charcoal on glued paper, 2009.

I Like it, I Don't Like it

I've been trying to decide exactly why I like certain artists and not others and there doesn't seem to be any particular reasoning to it, though when I really dislike the artist personally, I almost never like their work either. For example, I can't stand Gauguin as a person because I consider him to have been an incredibly arrogant and obnoxious man and I loathe the man's paintings equally as much. Every last canvas. Even when I was a child, I couldn't stand to look at his work. But by the same token, I adore Van Gogh who was also an arrogant, obnoxious human being yet I not only feel a warm spark for who he was but love all his work as well, in spite of the fact that he routinely made basic painting errors on virtually every canvas.

Most of the time it isn't the subject matter that makes the decision for me as to whether I like the work or not, but the artist who is the deciding factor, oddly enough. One exception to this personal rule of mine would be Gustav Klimt. There is nothing particularly irritating about the artist as a man yet his work is among the most annoying I can think of (except for maybe Mary Cassatt whose work, to me at any rate, is equally irritating to behold). I've also found that even when I come to a body of work knowing little to nothing about the artist personally, the work that I find least appealing (or in many cases, downright horrible) usually ends up being by an artist I end up disliking just as much once I learn about their lives.

Apparently for me, the person who has created the work is equally as important as the work itself. I'm not sure why this is so important a factor for me, but it obviously is. For some people, the artist and their work can be seen as separate entities, whereas for me, they are intimately entwined. I guess in my mind, an ugly soul makes ugly art. I'm still trying to work out why, exactly, I feel this way.


Self Portrait, graphite on handmade paper, digitally altered to halftone, 2008.

Drawing 101: No Previous Experience Necessary

I'm always surprised when people tell me they wish they could draw but they have no talent and so it isn't possible. Granted, drawing really well requires a certain degree of talent, as does any skill, but in all honesty, anyone can draw. And like any other skill, it can be learned and mastered. I don't know why people don't believe this when I tell them that once they learn the basics, they can draw just about anything. Take a class. Buy a book. There are a ton of books at Barnes and Noble, all of them called "You Can Learn to Draw in Six Easy Lessons" or some variation thereof, yet so many people think there is some great mystery involved in creating a drawing. You don't have to be an "artist" to make a pretty picture.

Granted, being an actual artist is very different from someone who likes to draw just because it's fun or because they enjoy meeting new people in an adult ed art class at the local tech school. While an artist can learn new skills and develop new techniques and abilities, I don't believe that someone who isn't an artist in their heart and soul can "become" one through a few lessons. Either you is or you isn't. But even the isn'ts can master enough skill to make a pretty good show of it. It's what you carry inside you that makes the difference between the Sunday Draw-er and the Real Artist. When art is the air you breath all day long and every little thing you do is somehow done with creativity on the brain and you can do nothing less, then you're an artist.

But to all my non-artist friends who swear they can't draw so much as a stick figure: try it, you just might be surprised at what you can do and how quickly you can do it. Honestly.

Sketch of Edison Jack standing, graphite on handmade paper, 2008.

All My Missing Artwork

I don't have any of my own artwork up in my house anywhere. Not a single piece. Not too long ago, a woman who lives here in town who is a storyteller by profession (how many of them to do you meet in a lifetime?) was walking by and invited herself into my house to see it and be given a tour of it. Odd, yes, especially since I had never met this woman before, but as I know she lives in a very old house and I live in a very old house, I understood her curiosity in seeing what David and I had done with our house as opposed to hers, which is just a mile or so from ours. (David and I have actually seen her house before as it was on the historic house tour one year and we went through it, though she didn't know this at the time).

Well, anyways, we went room to room with me pointing out what we have done and what we plan on doing and she offered her opinions on many things; some quite astute and some, like herself, very odd. She asked me what I do and I told her I'm an artist and she told me she's a storyteller who performs regionally (I knew this already) and as we roamed about my home, she began to ask, "Is this one of your paintings?" each time we passed a different work and each time I replied, "No, I didn't paint that." When she finally just came out and asked me if any of them at all in the house were mine, I had to answer that there wasn't a single painting of mine in here. I have never found this to be curious as I would far prefer to look at others' work than my own (since I can see my stuff any old time and frequently do), but she found it strange. Honestly, I had never given it much thought nor do I believe has anyone else who lives in my house or, prior to her visit, anyone who has just been in my house (or maybe they have thought it odd but just never said anything).

But of late I have been thinking about this. Maybe I should have something that is mine in here somewhere. I actually have two places right now in need of artwork: a corner wall in the living room that until recently had a lovely Charles Franklin Pierce cow painting on it and an entire wall up one side of the stairs that has never had a piece on it but has simply been begging for something to adorn it since we moved here. I've been toying with some subject matter and think that perhaps after the holidays, when life settles back down to its usual dull and uneventful self, I'll start a painting for one of those two spaces. Both will have to be fairly large, so either will be a considerable amount of work, but I think I might enjoy this.

Looking at the finished product every day, however, might be a different story.

Edison Again

Edison Jack seems to have become my latest muse. A very small, hairy little muse.

Sketch of Edison Jack, graphite on handmade paper, 2008.

Genius or Hoax?

I just watched a documentary called "My Kid Could Paint That" which some of you might know is about Marla Olmstead, the "child prodigy artist" from upstate New York whose paintings each sell well into the five figures. There has been much controversy in the last five years regarding Marla and her art. She has a dad who is an aspiring artist, but who works the nightshift at a (I think, though I'm not sure I'm remembering this correctly) Frito Lay or Oscar Mayer plant and has never gone anywhere with his own paintings. One day when he was painting, Marla asked for her own canvas and paint and the rest, as they say, is history. When, at the age of four, her work began selling for substantial prices, 60 Minutes did a story on her and based on the footage they got of her working, came to the conclusion that she didn't actually paint the pieces herself, or at the very least not without help, thus angering her parents who in turn released a documentary DVD showing Marla completing a piece from start to finish.

The documentary filmmaker who made this particular film really and truly wanted to prove that Marla does in fact paint her own works from beginning to end without any help from adults, that she really is a child genius whose work deserves to sell for the figures it sells for, but he came away from this shoot thinking what most other people have felt: that Marla's work is not her own.

The trouble, it seems, is that when anyone other than her parents point a camera at her while she works, her paintings just don't look even remotely like those seen in the gallery she is represented by. The subtle nuances aren't there, the delicate lines, the obvious dexterity, the polished and finished look of the works available for purchase. Her works that have been caught on film in progress and in fact are never seen completed, while they contain many of the same images as the finished pieces, really look like nothing more than a child's drawings of suns and flowers and scribbles. Sometimes the paint is blobbed onto the canvas and swirled into a giant mess of hideous color and nothing more. And while she's being filmed painting she also repeatedly demands that her dad help her out, that he choose the paint for her or even paint something himself on her canvas. He laughs too hard and tells her she knows that isn't possible. When questioned by filmmakers why she is doing this, the dad without fail protests too much. Way, way too much.

Having watched this film and then taken a look at the works for sale on her website, I too have come to the conclusion that if someone else isn't painting these works in their entirety, then she surely is having them seriously tweaked by someone older, more mature and with a certain sense of balance a work requires, even abstract modern art that on the surface appears to be just willy nilly daubs of paint. I began watching this film thinking how amazing it was for a very small child to possess such talent but ended it thinking what everyone else who has watched her "work" has come to think: someone, somewhere is lying. They have to be. While a great many people have stood in front of a Jackson Pollock and with scorn in their voices said, "This is garbage. My five year old could do that!" the fact is that there are few, if any, adults who could do what Pollock did, let alone a five year old. Yet Marla has a few paintings that are very similar to those of Jackson Pollock's splatter paintings. And Klee's work. And Kandinsky. Coincidence? Not likely. And while her works all have a similar thread that runs through them that enables the viewer to readily identify them as having been painted by the same hand, there is also enough similarity to many well-known works that it quickly becomes obvious that a child that young couldn't possibly be adept at so many varied techniques and styles.

So one is forced to return over and over again to the one question that has plagued so many who have not only merely watched documentary footage of Marla, but have personally spent time with the Olmstead family: if Marla paints these works herself from start to finish without aid of any kind, why is she consistently unable to do this (even on hidden camera) when being filmed? Why is the only "evidence" of her abilities as an artist filmed by her mother? These are some lovely paintings, and Marla who is now eight, is a lovely child, but an artist worthy of making hundreds of thousands of dollars for her work? Sadly, I think not.