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One. One hundred, really. One Hundred Heads. I counted backward in order to have a blast off effect when I arrived to this place. 3,2,1…
I did it, it took two years longer than planned, but I arrived at one hundred heads. I looked back at my first post of the 100 Heads project and was surprised to rediscover that I started it in conjunction with opening my occupational therapy private practice, Arise Therapeutics. I wanted the two to grow together and this is part of what I wrote then,
I've always been uncomfortable with drawing faces, they never seem to come out quite right. Drawings from my art school years are filled with faceless torsos. Back then, it seemed there would be time later to get to all the things I didn't understand. Now that later is now, it's time to come face to face with faces. My 40's seem to be a time of delving into all that is uncomfortable, in order to see what is really there...
…for so long, the things I love to do have lived like decorations on my life, attended to in spare time, while work has been a stressful chore that takes up the majority of my days. Can watering the seed of what you love crack the concrete? Is it really possible to close that gap? What might happen by facing the uncomfortable?
It turns out that watering the seed of what you love can crack the concrete. I found this out one person at a time. And what happens by facing the uncomfortable? One baby step at a time, you arrive to truly become the person you have always been.
I'm not only no longer afraid of drawing faces, I now enjoy it. How do I make a nose look like it's coming out? Or eyes like they're set in? It turns out that curiosity trumps fear. For so many years I convinced myself that those faceless torsos showed a depth, a mystery, but inside I knew I just didn't know how to draw them. I now see that depth comes from going into the unknown and uncomfortable and letting it look like what it looks like. It comes from delving rather than avoiding.
When I graduated from OT school and was overwhelmed with the fear and trepidation of being a new therapist one of my instructors told me that my OT license didn't mean I knew it all, it meant I could begin."You now have a license to begin," she told me, and that's what I feel when I look at this final portrait, that I have arrived at the beginning. The fear of getting into the ocean has shifted to the surrender of riding the wave.
Speaking of new beginnings, I will be leaving my quiet corner of Blogger, this place that raised and served me so well. My blog can now be found at my new art website, annewoodsart.com
Later is Now.
It was during this painting that something started to…happen. I started to see and respond in terms of painting not drawing. I could feel myself carve rather than render and in that the painting started coming to life. I like how she looks both dimensional and comfortable at once.
Sometimes I wonder why on earth I've taken up this not-at-all-easy task of learning to oil paint. It was during this painting that I realized it's the interplay of science and art that intrigues me, how it's the union of both that is needed to capture beauty. Science and art, light and shadow, Heaven and Earth. It's the union of opposites that makes things whole.
I'm so eager to attend the next life drawing session and build on some of these breakthroughs but I leave tomorrow morning for my final 10 day yoga therapy training in Calgary. And really, it's all the same subject, whether I'm painting someone or helping them heal, it's all about whole-making.
I finally made it made it back to life drawing! So much unexpected upheaval in the last two months kept me away, upheaval that resulted in some unexpected gifts like my first real art studio and the growth of my OT/yoga therapy business.
This is Laurence, one of my favorite models in town, painted during a 3 hour session. I am very slowly/hesitantly/eagerly delving into the temperature and value thing. Although I haven't painted at all since the workshop two months ago I can see progress in my understanding here.
Laurence will be taking this pose again and I look forward to refining this painting further. I've haven't had the opportunity yet to work on a painting of a model for more than one session. I waver between the feeling that I could make it better or screw it up, reminding myself that in order to create I must be willing to destroy.
It's been too long since I lasted posted. My business is growing in exciting and unexpected ways and I've been working to accommodate both its growth as well as the time I would like to have as an artist. I took an incredible class at the Scottsdale Artist's School with Sherrie McGraw, David Leffel, and Jaqueline Kamin two weeks ago. I'm so thankful for their brilliance as instructors and their generosity in sharing their knowledge. This is my second ever attempt to paint a figure in oil.
I loved being able to paint from 9-5 each day. We were all joking about how frustrating and exhausting learning to oil paint is and how your brain starts to lose it's battle by about day 3. One student said "You forget who you are and who you owe money to." It's then that the magic happens and you shift from seeing according to your familiar habits and perceptions to seeing what is truly right in front of you.
We finally had a male model at life drawing this week! He had a beard and bald head with long strands of hair. He struck awesome Renaissance style poses. This is a 10 minute sketch. I love the way it turned out and shows how less is more.
I painted this in a 2.5 hour life drawing session. My focus was on capturing the light and painting with paint which means using mass and brush strokes rather than drawing with paint. It's a huge shift in both seeing and doing. Less is More! It's so easy to get caught up in drawing unnecessary details which is the death of a painting. Every time I lost my way and defaulted to rendering I took it as a cue calling "Come back to the Light!"
I made it back to life drawing last night, it was the first chance I've had to attend to my artistic life since the Taos workshop. The model had amazing pre-Raphaelite hair and when she turned her in head in this pose I jumped at the chance to draw a portrait. The language of drawing is different than the language of painting so it was an adjustment to be working with line again.
What is common in both, and also in yoga therapy and craniosacral is that Less is More. It's a universal principle. When we force we lose touch with the essence of our subject, we push our will onto it rather than give space to let it "what is" emerge. Sherrie pointed out that what people commonly see is optical illusion and it's up to the artist to point out the truth. I saw that when drawing both the lips and the outside edges of the eyebrows. They looked darker at first but when I actually followed the light they were not as dark as I originally thought. When I backed off from what my mind thought was true and became quieter and drew less the true essence of the model was able to emerge.
