Twenty-Six

We're from the ocean. Our bodies have become rigid from trying to stabilize on land. 

Twenty-Seven

I recently went to an amazing vision care workshop where I learned that only 10% of vision is in the eyes, the rest is in the body -sensing, feeling, hearing. Most optometrists treat our eyes as a static system, providing prescriptions based only on eye exams, then we fit our bodies into our prescription. And our perception.

Twenty-Eight

I also noticed that it doesn't occur to me to make copies any more, that I prefer to venture into the unknown and just see what happens. One day you can't figure out how to get up without training wheels and another you forget that you had them on altogether. 

Twenty-Nine

It was while drawing this 71st head that I realized I forgot to be afraid of drawing faces.

Thirty

I recently raced to Santa Fe to see a show of Lee Friedlander's work titled "Mannequin" at the Andrew Smith Gallery. The reason I raced was I had done similar work in the same place, like here and here and here, and I couldn't believe that what had caught my eye also caught the eye of a famous photographer. This time what I was looking at was $14,000 photographs and what I saw reflecting back in the glass was me.

Thirty-One

I loved the way this model posed with two white paper fans. I'm currently in a year long program to become a Certified Yoga Therapist. One of the things we work with is the difference between what "Is" and "Ought" to be. For example, I think I ought to be able to draw every day, but in reality I also need to work and complete all the requirements of the yoga therapy program, that is what "Is." 

The way the "Is" line gets closer to the "Ought" line is through baby steps and being real about where you truly are. With this I announce that my 100 Heads project may only post a time or two a week rather than the "Daily" in my title. I started this project wanting to face my fear of drawing faces, through baby steps and being real about "What Is" I am getting closer. 

Thirty-Two

Every now and then I stop by Studio Incamminati's website to fantasize about all the classes I wish I could be taking. What a total surprise to discover that, by popular demand, they've started a new workshop series called "In Your Town" and one of the towns they're coming to is Albuquerque! I actually burst into tears when I read it. There's a constant sting in knowing that the instruction I long for is so far away. Amazing to think that for one week the far away place I long for will be right here.

Thirty-Three

Slowly, quietly, not all at once but every now and then, I have made my way back to life drawing. I like the way my last post makes it seem that I spent the whole summer break in New England. It's a dream of mine, winters in New Mexico, summers in New England, painting, drawing. This model looks to be in transition, awake but not quite ready to get up yet. 

Summer Break

I didn't mean to leave our model coiled up in the 100 degree heat for as long as I did. I escaped to Vermont for summer vacation and thought for sure I could fit in another drawing session before I left. I'll be out of town again for two trainings, in craniosacral and yoga therapy, so my 100 heads project will be on an official summer break until the end of August.

This photo was taken last week at Kingsland Bay, just a few miles down the road from where I grew up. Kingsland Bay is the essence of summer vacation for me. It rained so much this year that the dock is under water, I took this photo when the sky cleared up enough for an early evening swim. The huge clouds overhead looked threatening but never touched us.

I always have the fear that a project will fall apart if not diligently attended to, that if I don't grasp and hold on to the original plan it will ultimately fail. But another possibility is surrender. What we fear might never touch us. Let's let our model rest a little longer, let's see what comes from letting go.

Thirty-Four

I returned to life drawing last night but it was a struggle. My main focus was trying not to pass out in the 100 degree heat. It felt like in my two weeks away I forgot how to draw altogether and I also had the added frustration of trying out a new type of paper. For the last pose of the night the model surrendered to the exhaustion of the heat, taking a pose I totally related to, and I took out my last piece of newsprint. It was when these things came together that I finally drew an image I was happy with. For this reason there will continue to be a drought of drawings until I can get back there next week with new paper and a bottle of ice water and try again.

Thirty-Five

This is a ten minute sketch from about two months ago. I kept reworking the face because it looked like she was looking down while the model looked like she was looking up. I just came off of 5 very intense days of work at the rehab hospital, at the end of which was the Wednesday evening life drawing session I was determined to make it to, it's what I look forward to most each week. I took a quick shower but when I found myself still sitting in my robe on the couch staring into space at the same time drawing begins, I knew I had to surrender to the exhaustion.

I don't like to interrupt the rhythm of projects on my blog but I am so overbooked these days that I won't be able to get back to drawing until the end of next week. It brought this image to mind, a weary looking model propped on a cane, and how I had to rework the face to get her to look up instead of down. I like how her right foot looks like its solidly planted on the ground as if it's not giving up despite the weariness.

Thirty-Six

I like to listen to the sounds of charcoal on paper as we move progressively from a one to a twenty minute pose. Short poses bring quick, scratchy sounds, as if the charcoal is racing with the panic and excitement that comes when there is not enough time. Long poses bring slower sounds, you can almost hear the charcoal groan over the thinking of its artist. With more time there is more time to worry about getting it right.

Thirty-Seven

To my new followers here at Daily Art Works, thank you and welcome to my quiet corner of the internet, I'm really glad you stopped by. It was three years ago this month that I started out on an amazing Road Trip (the story starts at the bottom of the link). I jumped through a window of opportunity in order to spend some time attending to things I've always wanted to do, such as painting in Philadelphia or writing on the coast of Maine. And to take time to visit people I've loved throughout my life along the way. It took four months to live and a year and a half to write about it. 

When I started out I thought it would be more like a bucket list, putting some things to rest before I started my new professional life. I didn't know at the time that I was really planting seeds and dreaming my way into being all that I wanted to be.

Thirty-Eight

Ah, Memorial Day, A day of remembering and rest (except that I've been working all weekend, including today). I don't get the rest right now but I can still have the memories and one of my favorite ones is the Memorial Day I spent three years ago with my favorite Indy 500 fans at the beginning of the road trip of a life time. I also remember my old cell phone, the unexpected painter who came along and told the tale in the most poetic way.

Thirty-Nine

When I took the painting workshop at Studio Incamminati three years ago, one of the instructors told us if we kept practicing, just kept going through that awful muddy phase, we would start to get glimpses, little areas of our paintings where something starts to come alive. And we wouldn't even know what it is was we did. Then, as we noticed the glimpses more and more, we would also start noticing what it is we did that made them happen, and then we could do it again and before we knew it we would really be painting.

Forty

The model looked like she was gazing at the clouds when she took this pose. I couldn't quite capture the look of ease the model had, but I was thrilled that I went for it all because it turned out to be very difficult to draw a face from this angle. I like how her hand turned out too.

Forty-One

I love this drawing. It looks like she's hailing a cab, or waiting to be called on in a nudist class, but in reality she was holding onto a frame that was overhead. A bit of a poor compositional choice there, but what I love about this drawing is her lower back and butt. Something is happening there with light and line and texture that makes the form really come alive. I like to look at drawings and paintings and notice the parts that work, even when there are other parts that don't. 

Forty-Two

All this talk of bones reminds me of a post I once wrote called Resting Place. The brain and bones use more oxygen than other tissues of the body. When we are constantly worrying, thinking, and planning, we're actually stealing blood from our bones.

Forty-Three

I love Tara's comment on last week's drawing of the sphenoid. In my work as a therapist, one thing that's challenging but necessary to convey is that we are so much more alive than we realize. When we think of bone we tend to think dry, hard, white. But that's dead bone. We are made of living bone which is always being formed and modified. Bones form by the pull of muscle, muscles move at the command of the nervous system, and the nervous system responds, most often, to the pull of our perception.

Forty-Four

Just over the half way point of this project and I can feel my comfort level with drawing a face and not worrying about it start to increase. I also came up with a vision statement to help me stay focused amidst the feelings of overwhelm I get from all the directions I'm trying to go. Perhaps spending a few days with the sphenoid helped. Here it is:

Draw the drawings you want to see. Write the book you want to read. Teach the classes you wish you could take. Run the business you would love to support.

Forty-Five

This is the sphenoid as seen from the side. The following is a fascinating example of how energetics can affect structure, from "The Heart of Listening" by Hugh Milne.

Sphenoid torsion is body language for "being all twisted up" or "torn apart" by conflicting loyalties. This often occurs in children whose parents are fighting; the child, for security reasons, wants to take a side, but cannot because of conflicting feelings of loyalties to both parents. Imagine the child's head looking first at mom, then at dad... The bone has no peace. Something has to give, and the sphenoid ends up being torqued to one side.

Forty-Six

From this angle I was taken with how much the sphenoid really does look like a bat. Bats are the totem of shaman, a symbol of death and rebirth, and learning to trust your intuition. This bone is sitting right there in the center of your head and when you're facing someone this is what's looking back! The tips of the wings at each side are your temples. All the little holes are for cranial nerves and sinuses and things. 

Forty-Seven

Life drawing was cancelled for the last two weeks and I was out of town for one so I've been left without a model to draw. This coincided perfectly with reading in one of my craniosacral books that the best way to understand the sphenoid bone is to draw it from a few different angles.

The sphenoid is the bone that is in the very center of your head. It touches every other bone in the cranium. It's said to look like a dragonfly or a bat. In Japanese it's known as "Cho Kay Hotsu," the butterfly bone. It is considered the visionary bone. The front of your brain sits right on top of it and nestled in a little saddle in the middle is the pituitary gland. Further back and deeper in the center of the brain is the pineal gland, also considered the third eye, relating to intuition and perception.The pineal gland is shaped like a pine cone and what's really cool is it's actually filled with rods and cones just like your regular eyes. 

Forty-Eight

Yesterday I felt so agitated about the uncertainties of life but I knew I had to do a drawing nonetheless. I decided to draw the divine mother in honor of Mother's Day, and turned to a photo of la Virgen de la Soledad from Oaxaca. I was frustrated with the way it looked after scanning so I decided to take a photo. I liked the juxtaposition of the mundane clipboard and masking tape with a holy image, and the shadow of the vine at the bottom.

Then what caught my eye was the crack in the sidewalk. It brought to mind the question I asked when I started the project of drawing 100 heads. Can watering the seeds of what you love crack the concrete? It felt like a good sign on a day of agitation with all the unknowns.

Forty-Nine

Last night, after posting about the power of vulnerability, I watched an episode of the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. Brandi was crying about the pain of her cheating husband ultimately leaving her for LeeAnn Rimes. Then she clenched her jaw, held her breath, and declared to Lisa that no matter what she felt she would not, under any circumstances, let her two sons see her be vulnerable. It's amazing how scary it is to really be real.

Fifty

It's my 50th post, which means I'm halfway through my project of drawing 100 heads. When I started this project in February, I wondered what it would be like now in May. I'd hoped for long afternoons of drawing portraits but I can barely find the time for quick gestures. It turns out that having a day job, running your own business, and being an artist is a lot to do at all once. This project has become less about learning how the frontal bone relates to the nasal bone, and more about how to keep drawing at all in the midst of modern life.

I've become less afraid of drawing faces, however, and now find them the first place I go instead of the place I most try to avoid. I still feel the panic, during life drawing sessions, of seeing a face and thinking "I don't know how to draw that!" but the difference is that now I try to draw it anyway, despite that feeling. And then I come here and post them despite how I may feel about that too. It brings to mind Brene Brown's amazing TED talk on the the power of vulnerability, a reminder to myself in those times where I think if only I had the time, I could really be good at this, to just keep going, keep drawing, keep posting, wholeheartedly.

Fifty-One

I've been fascinated by ribs these days. I remember both Sherrie McGraw and Rob Liberace pointing out that when drawing breasts it's important to draw the ribs in order for them to have a form to lay on. Even if you don't actually see it. That's something I captured in this gesture.

As a therapist I find that almost every client is amazed that their ribs go all the way around their body. Of course we know it intellectually but we don't tend to feel it, we tend to feel like our ribs are just in the front. When we breathe well our ribs expand and contract, when we don't, they don't. This is why back stiffness can often be alleviated simply by breathing well.

Fifty-Two

I like how this gesture shows both movement and stillness at once. It snowed 8 inches when I was in Boulder and I loved it. I stayed a few blocks off Pearl Street and didn't have to drive for 4 days. I walked everywhere, along the river path, to Dushanbe Tea house and to the Boulder Bookstore where I found a great book by Jen Sincero called "You are a Badass. How to Stop Doubting Your Greatness and Start Living an Awesome Life."

She points out that when someone asks you how you are, "Good, but busy!" seems to be the new "Fine, thanks." She also writes about the importance of taking care of your body because, "During our little sojourn here on earth, we need our bodies more than they need us...we, if you're anything like me, run around doing all our busy work with our poor bodies flapping behind us like old wind socks."

Fifty-Three

When I took Lynda Barry's workshop, the one where she taught us the beautiful technique of writing down 10 images from our day, she said it would take 30 minutes to do the assignment. That's 10 minutes to pace around trying to avoid doing it, 10 minutes to actually write down the images, and 10 minutes to freak out that you actually did it.

That's how I feel about vacation. There's vacation, then there's the week after where you're between two worlds, amazed at what you experienced and not quite ready to be back. This is a different drawing than the last one. Sometimes I like to take long poses and break them up into short ones, to learn something new each time. Our model is not quite convinced that vacation is over either.

Fifty-Four

I'm leaving this morning for my own personal Spring Break, heading on a road trip North to Boulder for rivers, green trees, independent book stores, and really good tea. In the past I've always scrambled to post ahead on my blog when I went on vacation. But I reminded myself of the one New Year's resolution I made this year, No Rushing, and that my original intent with this project was to move toward a balance between work and play. I'll post again when I return in a week. The model's last pose of the night was a perfect one to hold in honor of this time of rest.

Fifty-Five

Wendy thought of my project here when she saw the new campaign by Dove called Real Beauty Sketches. This is really cool and well worth watching. I apologize for the poor photo quality of today's drawing. I drew this last night and am packing for a trip, I'll redo the photo when I get back.

Fifty-Six

This was a fascinating pose to draw because my mind got confused, I kept wanting to turn my head sideways in order to draw the head from a familiar position. Since I couldn't do that, and could only draw what was right in front of me -light, shapes, angles -there is a quality about this face that makes it one of my best yet. I've often read what Sherrie McGraw wrote, below, but with this drawing I could better understand what she meant.

Painting and drawing are simple, but there is a reason that in practice they are not easy. There is the small matter of our own minds. This is the real hurdle that is not broached often enough. Every brushstroke and line we make is filtered through our own perceptions, prejudices, and emotional resistance to change.

Fifty-Seven

I'm now enjoying doing my own drawings more than the copies. It's unknown and many fail and that's frustrating, and I miss following the refined lines of the masters, but it's also risky and wild and interesting to see what happens. It's a lot harder to find life drawing sessions though than it is to draw from a book. Oh, how I long for Spring Studio, where life drawing sessions run every day, from morning to night.

Fifty-Eight

I love this one. When the model took the pose I thought with no face and no drama it would make for a boring drawing. But I realized it was a great opportunity to experiment with what I'd learned from copying Watteau's lines and angles.

Fifty-Nine

Well, this project is called One Hundred Heads, not One Hundred Faces. I once heard that a teacher needs students as much as a student needs teachers. I didn't understand it at the time. I thought if you knew something well enough to teach it you would be happy you'd figured it out and content to just bask in your knowingness. 

But I've since discovered that what happens is you get so fascinated and excited about what you've learned that it makes you want to share it with someone else. And now I understand why a teacher needs students.

Sixty

This model was drawn a week later and already looks more comfortable than the drawings from the week earlier, as though she's just hanging out on the page.

I recently was craving going to a yoga class but nothing felt like quite the right fit. Then I realized it was because the one I wanted to go to was my own. I dreaded teaching for a really long time, I thought you had to attain a certain perfect state before you could start teaching something, and I was so far from that.

But the class I was craving had tadasana at sunrise at the top of Mount Madonna, savasana over the rumble of the subway in New York City. It had rain falling on a wall made of glass bottles during a back bend in Oaxaca, a fall afternoon in Santa Fe where the study of the serratus anterior in my mind was suddenly felt in my body. It had the cold wood floors and rustle of trees in Vermont, the smell of Cuban food wafting through the windows in Chicago. It had teachers that were just beginning and ones who'd taught for thirty years. 

I realized that the only common thing in the class I was craving, besides all the yoga, was me. In "Steal Like An Artist," Austin Kleon writes that we are mash up of all our influences. Isamu Noguchi wrote, "We are a landscape of all we have seen."

Sixty-One

This is the type of pose where I definitely would've avoided drawing the face 20 years ago. The foreshortening of the body was enough of a challenge and I could just let the head fade off into the distance at the other end.

I remember thinking, back then, that leaving the face out, or making it a dramatic smear of charcoal or dark silhouette, was making some sort of a statement, like "Who are we really anyway?" But really I did it because I didn't know how to draw the face.

Sixty-Two

I almost scrapped this one. Her face was in shadow, but still there, and when I felt things get too dark I wasn't sure what to do. When I panic I start darkening with quick scratchy lines as though that will somehow stop that going-down-with-the-Titanic feeling. Then I remembered how Sherrie McGraw says "Draw less, see more" and how she points out that a drawing is an artist's nervous system on paper. It reminded me to step back, take a breath, do the best I could, and not give up despite the darkness.

Sixty-Three

I love this gesture drawing. I like the way the face and hair turned out, and how even though there are few lines it really looks like her head is resting in her hand. It's fascinating how that can happen, how you can't plan for such a thing because you're drawing quickly and it just falls out of nowhere.

I also like the way she looks solid and planted. Maybe because that's been on my mind these days as I just wrote a post on my therapy blog about falling.

Sixty-Four

I started going to a life drawing session on Wednesday nights and I'm really enjoying it. It feels like an oasis in the desert. This is one of my first gesture drawings. I like the way I didn't shy away from the face and leave it blank like I once would have. It doesn't have much detail but I made sure it was part of the gesture as a whole.

Sixty-Five

Study (after Watteau). Watteau is a master of angles and I'm learning so much from his drawings. For this one, I used less detail on the body to show that it's moving further back in space.

Sixty-Six

Study (after Sherrie McGraw). As my comfort level with drawing heads increases I can feel that it's time to bring the body back. My 20's were a time of headless torsos, my 40's a time to come face to face with faces. It's now time to bring the two together. I turned back to Sherrie McGraw's drawings for some guidance. I love the way a single line for the ear and neck separates the head from the hand.

Sixty-Seven

Study (after Watteau). Tara once told me that, having moved here from California where there are so many people and everything you need is right there, living in Albuquerque makes her more appreciative of things. Like when you find someone who shares an unusual common interest, such as Japanese tea ceremony, it feels like an oasis in the desert, precious and rare. It's true, we don't have the abundance of the Japanese gardens at the Huntington or Japantown in LA, so when you sip the green tea at Kokoro, sit by a stone lantern at the BioPark, or see the pink paint smear of cherry blossoms on the Japanese Railways poster at the Deco Japan exhibit, you feel almost giddy with gratitude.

For further ideas on how to pretend you're in Japan when you're really in the parched desert begin reading here. The story runs from March 18 - April 8. It's interesting to feel a longing and look back to discover you had the very same longing at the very same time, years earlier.

Sixty-Eight

Study (after Watteau). Speaking of Japanese design sensibility I just went to see a great show at the Albuquerque Museum called Deco Japan. If you find yourself in Albuquerque longing for Japan get a cup of green tea and head to the Japanese garden at the BioPark. 

Arrive when it first opens, when it's cool and quiet, and before you end up surrounded by kids feeding the koi. Sit on various rocks, sip tea and notice the patterns on water, stone lanterns, and Spring blossoms. Maybe you will see the Night Heron who lives there. From there stop by the museum to see the Deco Japan exhibit and end your day with lunch at Kokoro. Gochisousama deshita.

Sixty-Nine

Study (after Tully Filmus). My natural tendency to be heavy handed, evoked by my Tully Filmus studies, brought back memories of my frustration with crayons when I was a kid. Crayons were too waxy, the color came out too light and when I would try bearing down to make them darker they would just snap in half. I could never understand how other kids weren't also frustrated by the lack of color saturation, how it didn't just annoy them.

I was blessed to have a very cool mother who introduced me to Cray-Pas. I couldn't have known at 5 years old that it would be the beginning of a life long love affair with Japanese design sensibility.

Seventy

Study (after Tully Filmus). I really like this one. It was fun to do because I could draw quickly and be heavy handed, which is my natural tendency. It looks like a bridge between describing form with line vs. light and dark.

"Steal Like an Artist" is a brilliant and generous book and I'm really enjoying it. In the back, there's a section where the author shows how he began his book on index cards. I was thinking about how much that page reminded me of how Lynda Barry works. On the very next page Austin Kleon says thank you to all the artists he's stolen from and first on that list is Lynda Barry. Her book is also at the top of his recommended reading list.

Seventy-One

Study (after Corot) It was the end of the day and once "painting drawing" got started it couldn't be stopped. Learning to describe form using only line is hard. Like treating yourself to ice cream after doing your duty with broccoli, sliding into shading felt smooth, cooling, and comforting. 

Seventy-Two

Study (after Anne-Louis Girodet de Roussy-Trioson). After struggling to learn from Watteau how to draw only with line I collapsed into the comfortable shading of a "painting drawing." I was thrilled to discover the work of a female painter, especially one named Anne, but I later discovered that Anne-Louis Girodet de Roussy-Trioson was a man.

Seventy-Two

Study (after Watteau). I have to admit, I feel a little weird about copying other artist's drawings and posting them on the internet. When someone compliments one of them I tend to cut them off with "You know that's a copy, right?!"

Then, today, I stumbled upon a great little book called "Steal Like An Artist, 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative," by Austin Kleon. The first page I opened up to said "Start Copying." Kleon writes, "Nobody is born with a style or a voice. We don't come out of the womb knowing who we are. In the beginning, we learn by pretending to be our heroes. We learn by copying." He reminds us that we learn to write by copying the alphabet, that musicians learn to play by practicing scales, and that even the Beatles started out as a cover band.

Seventy-Three

Study (after Watteau). I loved reading about line, planes, and influences in Andrew Dasburg's room, next to the kiva fireplace. It made me wonder who Watteau's greatest influence was. When I got back to google I discovered it was Peter Paul Rubens.