Art Quote du Jour

Le dessin est la probité de l’art.

Dessiner ne veut pas dire simplement reproduire des contours; le dessin ne consiste pas seulement dans le trait: le dessin c’est encore l’expression, la forme intérieure, le plan, le modelé.  Voyez ce qui reste après cela!  … Si j’avais une enseigne à mettre au-dessus ma porte, j’écrirais: Ecole de Dessin et je suis sûr que je ferais des peintres.

Drawing is the integrity of art.

Drawing does not mean simply reproducing contours.  Drawing does not reside solely in line;  drawing is also the expression, the interior form, the composition, the modeling.  Show me what’s left after that!  If I put a sign above my door, it would say Drawing School; and be sure, I would produce painters.

                                                                                                           – Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres

Ant Walk at the Frog Pond

Taking an ant walk with your eyes along the porous surface of the veil of light that hangs perpetually before your eyes.  That’s my idea about what realism is.  I speak of that veil of light that coalesces to form the image of things inside the mind.  Wake up, open the eyes, and there’s the world, waiting. 

A meticulous realism can be many things.  For some it’s a virtuoso performance of throwing down lines one at a time .  They assemble like a magic act to make recognizable objects,  captured in what we count as amazing detail, while the audience responds with gasps and childlike clapping.  But realism can also be the felt-out path, as much the muddle of true reality as the persuasive life-like picture.  True reality comes with contradictions and stereo vision and some assembly is required.  In reality, any line is both here and here, depending upon which eye you consult, left or right.  True reality is also your unfolding attention, the fact that you notice one thing before another.  A true picture of one’s perceptions includes all the lies as well as the truths that God knows.  True reality is as much what I think as what’s actually present, for who is to referee?  In truth we cannot quite make out sometimes what reality is when perception is so elusive and experience so unfinished.  Time rolls along continuously bringing more and more reality to bear upon us.

So I take my ant walk with a pencil.  The ant walk describes with line the path an imaginary ant travels chaotically across the surfaces the artist draws.  If my watching follows the footfalls of those most delicate and quiet padded feet, what will I discover?  The drawing is a log of a journey in intimacy, and the world is my apple.  That ant of imagination chooses the path by desires too arcane for comprehension.  I choose only to watch and record, being the amanuensis of a mystery.  A docile pencil, a companionable creature of imagination.

Today’s “ant” walked to the frog pond, drawing the contours of this odd tea pot.  I like to get into the small aspects of the object where planes turn on a tiny pivot, where a line bends, where many shades of light and dark converge.

Art Quote du Jour

I have been thinking of the freshness of memories and of their power to lend enchantment to the distant past, and I have been marvelling at the way in which our minds involuntarily suppress and brush aside anything that spoiled the charm of those happy moments when we were actually living them.  I have been comparing this kind of idealization, for such it is, with the effect that great works of art have on the imagination.  A great painter concentrates the interest by suppressing details that are useless, offensive or foolish; his mighty hand orders and prescribes, adding to or taking away from the objects in his pictures, and treating them as his own creatures; he ranges freely throughout his kingdom and gives you a feast of his own choosing ….

En réfléchissant sur la fraîcheur des souvenirs, sur la couleur enchantée qu’ils revêtent dans un passé lointain, j’admirais ce travail involontaire de l’âme qui écarté et supprime, dans le ressouvenir de moments agréables, tout ce qui en diminuait le charme, au moment où on les traversait.  Je comparais cette espèce d’idéalisation, car c’en est une, à l’effet des beaux ouvrages de l’imagination.  Le grand artiste concentre l’intérêt en supprimant les détails inutiles où repoussants où sots; sa main puissante dispose et établit, ajoute où supprime, et en use ainsi sure des objets qui sont siens; il se meut dans son domaine et vous y donne une fête à son gré ….

                                                                                                                                                           — Eugène Delacroix, Journal, 28 avril/April 28, 1854

                                                                                                                                                             [translation, Lucy Norton]

Learning to fiddle fast

What I did with the creamer, I thought to do with my flowers on a larger sheet of paper.  These drawings are made on Strathmore 400 series 18 x 24  sheets.  It’s difficult to work as fast on the larger sheet — though I haven’t given up.  Without switching to other media, staying with my sharp and steady Dixon Ticonderoga pencils, I want to gain a greater ease and freedom with the larger scale drawing — approaching the subject in the same manner, with a point-and-shoot, see-it, draw-it swiftness only doing it bigger. 

This size sheet is too small for me to do this particular still life at actual size.  If I got a vase of flowers that fit into the 18 x 24 format, that might speed things up further.  (Let’s see, do I have any admirers who could send me flowers?)

(Um, no.)

Anyway, the first attempt is rather pointedly out of scale — a problem that would be fixed by switching to something smaller that I can fit into the sheet without downsizing (and we thought only corporations downsized).  In the second drawing, I was more self-consciously determined to deal with the proportions before scribbling into separate passages.  Nevertheless, mistakes or no, it matters not.  The point of this whole foray into drawing is that I shall have no fear, feel no scrupples, and draw until I drop.

I had a third drawing that I began last night under different illumination, and I would display it here — except — I dropped.

Art Quote du Jour

I was looking for a way to get work done without the burden of having to do anything good.  I wanted desperately to be good, of course, but whenever I sat down and tried to think of something that would be terrific to do, I couldn’t.  — Jennifer Bartlett  [as quoted by Calvin Tomkins in Jennifer Bartlett, Abbeville Press, 1985]

La Crème de la Creamers

As advised by her union, Doll has taken another day off.  In her absence I turned my attention to my creamy colored creamer.

The great artist Edgar Degas once said, “il faut refaire la même chose dix fois cent fois”  (you must redo the same thing ten times, a hundred times), but hopefully Doll won’t be gone that long.

I don’t know whether or not another French expression applies here.

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. (The more things change,  the more they stay the same.)

Or whether my creamer metamorphoses or stays the same.

I gave it the most loving attention that could be fixed upon a little creamer.

I even drew what it feels like, drawing without looking at it, drawing with the sense of touch.

I drew it many times, and still it has secrets to share.

Let’s have a nice round of applause for the star of the show, the Creamer!

Art Quote du Jour

All my life I’ve liked the good things.  I don’t like ordinary things.  I’ve always valued élégance and beauty.  I’ll leave it to others to describe that word élégance.  It is not for me to say if I’m élégant or not.  — Stephane Grappelli  [quoted in Matt Glaser's Jazz Violin, 1981, Oak Publications, p. 31]

Doll’s Day Off

I drew the doll all day yesterday and was so pleased with the results.  I fully expected to continue the theme, but the doll would have none of it.  So I drew this potted plant instead.  At least Doll left me this clementine.

Did a little warm up before I took on the whole plant.

My Coloring Book

A somewhat lesser know fact about how artists made pictures in the old days is that a lot of the old guys (more reverently known as the Old Masters) did, from time to time, come across works by other artists that they altered in some fashion to suit their fancy.  For example Rembrandt made radical subtractions and additions to an etching plate by Hercules Seghers to transform a Tobias and the Angel into a Flight into Egypt.  He wasn’t alone, and you shouldn’t blame Rembrandt.  Anyway, he did a nice job in making the transformation.  But back in those days, if you didn’t want anybody messing with your picture, you sure were well advised to hide it in a vault.

Today in our era of reproductions galore, you can alter works by past masters without feeling the slightest bit guilty, and some artists have made whole careers out of the fabric of another man’s cloth.  Me, I’m just using one of my favorite draughtsmen to have some fun.  I bought two copies of the ridiculously cheap edition of Degas’s Halevy notebook by Dover Books and used the extra copy as my coloring book.  It makes me feel like a kid again!  (And that’s worth something all by itself!)  And it’s a great additional way to study the old guy.

The top image is dressed up using gouache, the lower two using colored pencils.

Art Quote du Jour

“The Sun will not rise, or set, without my notice, and thanks,”  Winslow Homer in a letter to his brother Charles.