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. 

Seventy-Four

Study (after Watteau). Sherrie writes, it is no accident that some students are drawn to certain teachers. When we resonate with another artist's work, it is because we recognize it. The philosophy behind it lies deeply within us already.

I loved that of all the books in the UNM Fine Arts library I could have pulled off the shelf I somehow found my way to Watteau, and that one of my greatest influences had felt the same feeling. Resonance and recognition found in charcoal and paper.

Seventy-Five

Study (after Watteau). I brought one book with me on my weekend getaway, The Language of Drawing by Sherrie McGraw. I'd copied drawings from her book a few weeks earlier for this project but I hadn't had a chance to actually read it for a while. It was next to the kiva fireplace, as snow fell outside, that I discovered that one of her greatest influences was.....Watteau.

Seventy-Six

Study (after Watteau). I stayed in Andrew Dasburg's room. I love his paintings. The room was perfect for my artist's escape; thick adobe walls, vigas, wood floors, Mexican tile and a view of Taos mountain. It snowed hard as evening set in, I started a fire in the kiva fireplace as the white landscape turned deep blue. There was no TV or internet in the rooms now, as there wouldn't have been in Mabel's time. Once my nervous system surrendered to finding no screens, I felt my vision grow wide.

Seventy-Seven

Study (after Watteau). I recently spent a weekend in Taos at the Mabel Dodge Luhan house. So many of the artists and writers I love, such as Willa Cather, Carl Jung, Georgia O'Keeffe and Andrew Dasburg stayed there in the past at Mabel's invitation. I loved eating breakfast at the long wooden table and imagining the conversations they might have had.

I read that Georgia O'Keeffe was in a depression and couldn't paint, she was living in upstate New York and found the world around her to be too green. So Mabel invited her to Taos to see if that would help. It was in the desert that her depression lifted and she began to paint again, many of those paintings are the ones she is most famous for.

Seventy-Eight

Study (after Watteau). Watteau did so many studies and I love how many he did of heads at different angles. I struggled with this one a bit, thinking that the mouth was at a funny angle, but when I adjusted the mouth it didn't change. When I returned after stepping away I could see that it was not the mouth that was the problem but that the left side of her forehead (her right) was too wide. 

I loved the way her hair turned out and I didn't feel like changing it so the poor girl remains with hydrocephalus but great hair. I thought it was interesting too how this drawing problem solving relates to the work I do with yoga therapy -where the pain is felt is rarely where the problem is.

Seventy-Nine

Study (after Watteau). I love this drawing. One of the things I'm trying to do in learning how to draw heads is learn how to do so with line. This seems obvious at first but it's not really. I see more naturally in terms of light and and dark mass, as in painting, and it's challenging for me to describe form only with line.

Sherrie McGraw explains the difference between between painting and drawing here,

The language of drawing and the language of painting separate forms differently. In drawings, forms are separated by line. In painting, forms are separated by creating two distinct planes. One form lies next to another and changes either value or color. The painter never uses a line to make a separation as in drawing. Painting depends on flat shapes to communicate.

Eighty

Study (after Watteau). I ventured to the UNM Fine Arts Library, one of my favorite places in Albuquerque, to find more drawings to draw. What I found and fell in love with there was the drawings of Jean-Antoine Watteau.

I remember, in my art school days, finding Watteau's paintings too frilly for my taste. But discovering his drawings in charcoal and conté years later I felt amazed.

Eighty-One

Study (after David Leffel). This was done from an oil painting. I like the way the hair turned out on the left side (her right), it looks real.

I am really enjoying drawing again.

Eighty-Two

This was a quick sketch but I feel that it captured the model, Isabelle.

Eighty-Three

Another model from life drawing. By this point I could feel myself start to calm down and draw.

In other art news, I just posted a collage on my therapy blog. This was an interesting assignment I made for myself, to illustrate breathing. I struggled with images of lungs made out of paper and paint but nothing felt right. The first conclusion I came to was that lungs are rather ugly. Then I realized what I was trying to say about the breath was not relegated to just the lungs, it was a fully body experience. How could I make that into an image? 

When I realized what I was really looking for was an image that made you feel like breathing when you saw it, everything fell into place.

Eighty-Four

Another model from life drawing. This one came out looking a little too doll-like for my taste. Setting out to learn how to draw heads is feeling harder than I'd hoped. 

What did Rob Liberace say about brow lines? What was it Sherrie said about looking for landmarks when you lose your way?

Eighty-Six

This is the last one I did and it's my favorite because it captures what the model actually looked like. When I first got to the session I was disappointed that it was a costumed, long session. But it was actually a good experience because with each drawing I got to hone in on capturing what the model actually looked like. Noticing, no, her cheekbones are more narrow than that, yes, her lips are softer, more like that.

Eighty-Seven

It was a long pose so I got the opportunity to draw the same thing again. It's interesting how she came out looking so different. I like the softness of this drawing, but I feel it needs more contrast, which I'm realizing is really hard to get when using conte on newsprint. But I like that she has softer features here than in the first drawing.

Eighty-Eight

I finally made it to a life drawing session. I could only stay for an hour and I felt very rusty but it also felt good to be there. 

Copying someone else's drawings is great because they're making all the artistic decisions for you. It was scary to be set free with a real face before me. But I could feel how the practice helped me to know what to look for when I was out there on my own.

Eighty-Nine

A sketch of a metal sculpture from a book of Buddhist Art. It's so hard to get time for drawing and when I do I'm flooded with the feeling of wanting to spend a whole day doing it. A yoga teacher once said in class, "Isn't it funny how when something feels good you say to yourself this feels so good I should do it everyday! And with that thought you take yourself right out of the moment.