Idling

My days have been so hectic of late, but today was a welcome contrast.  What  a lovely, quiet day of hours spent idling and lolling about.  The autumn air was unseasonably warm.   Had coffee in the kitchen beside the golden light of our little lamp.  Lazy tropical thoughts in my head.  After a bit, I took my coffee to the big window.  Had my notebook in my lap.  View of the trees beside me, leaves of changing colors, kind breezes coming through the open window, comforting humidity.  I had a long talk on the phone with my mom, and while we talked I sketched some flowers in the notebook. 

I love my notebook!  Spent long, lazy minutes doodling with it in my lap, talking with my mom, traveling back through time. 

Getting ready for making a shift to still life.  Still life.  It’s been my all-purpose aspiration these days!  Stillness, sweetness, not having to rush about so much!  One of those things that art does (it serves many aims, comes in many guises) is render things still.  Someone has said that the defect of painting is that it’s flat and it doesn’t move.   And for me that’s all the charm!  Let motion pictures charm the hectic world.  I crave stillness!  I get all the dizzy motion I want looking at inanimate objects.  “Does an apple move?” Cezanne asked.  Well, it did for him as his nervous, searching lines attest.    The contours around flowers can be very hard to pin down.  One would think the bouquets are dancing a ballet.

I like to draw things over and over.  If I paint these flowers, I’ll have drawn them a dozen times in advance.  These are artificial flowers, of course.  But there’s ways of playing around with drawing  when working from life too –  and lots of artifice involved in making things that are “real.”  My fake flowers make such demands on me that I’m scared of real ones.  And if you’ve ever seen one of those time-lapsed pictures of flowers, you discover that flowers are actually very weird and scary — one is wise to think twice about being alone in a room with a vase of tulips!

The last have-at-it today needed crayons (of course).  Rather unapologetically I did not “finish” my sketch!  And there’s a whole bunch more unfinished drawings coming right behind these!

Lastly, I must include a detail of my unfinished drawing.  On a lazy day, one simply cannot neglect enjoying the laissez-faire of scribbled lines.  All my leisure lies suspended in these lines:  heedless, lazy, indulgent, contented, grateful! — on a quiet Sunday.

Beautiful Graphite!

In the previous post I explained that collage could be a means of escape from the indecision that sometimes accompanies drawing.  But, pshaw!  What’s wrong with a little indecisiveness now and again!  I love to waver.  “Almost’ is my middle name!

I love the beautiful smudginess of pencil drawing.  And so when I was designing exotic flowers, I could not resist a loopy, devil-may-care pencil version. 

Sometimes you just gotta have fun.

Here’s the drawing in situ.

There’s More to Me than Being Koi

Sometimes I like to use collage to design things.  It’s very freeing.  Almost no matter what shapes you cut out, you get something attractive.  And it’s the ultimate in bold drawing.  There’s no opportunity to hesitate about cutting paper.  No half measures.  It’s all or nothing.  No smudges.

In a painting that I’ve been fiddling with for a long time, a woman sits on a chair covered in exotic flowers, and I have played around with the design of the flowers.  Just for fun.  These cut flowers are one version of my playtime activities.

Kids’ paint.  Scissors.  Glue.  Paper.  That’s all you need.

Comparing old and new

I just posted some little flower drawings I did today.  It’s interesting to compare these small drawings with some very large drawings that I’ve done in the past.  These are the older, large drawings above.  If you click on the blog heading you can see these in comparison with the new drawings I did today. 

I guess I must really like flowers.

Thinking about flowers

I started off my day with flowers.  Cup of hot tea, quiet studio, an hour or so to draw.  After having been busy with many non-art things lately, I thought it was time to just draw.  A still life that I set up months ago was hiding behind a pile of things.  I uncovered it and decided to draw it again.  Previous drawings were large.  These are small.  All on sheets 9 1/2 by 11 inches.

Sometimes it’s good to just draw.  Without goals, without preconceptions.  Just let the lines go where they will.  Fool around with different tools.  Let yourself watch lines forming and time passing.

I drew a magnolia flower

I took a break from koi briefly, recently, to draw a magnolia for Benedicte’s  il studio site.

Children are wonderful artists

 

I love this dark cake with a flower.

Thoughts in Miniature

I will make many such little drawings while I work on my painting of flowers.  I posted an earlier one already.  Such drawings are made after the manner of  a person muttering to herself; they are my haphazard thoughts made in idle moments.  When I take a break and relax in my chair — or while I talk on the phone — I begin remembering my painting.  These sketches are my memories. 

These pen gestures each reveal subtle differences  in feeling about what the picture is “supposed” to be — what I think it is — in the effervescent moment.

à la Matisse

I have blocked-in the flowers of my 36 x 48 inch canvas in a rudimentary way.  It has a “Matisse à Nice” kind of feeling in this early stage of painting.  Everything is thinly painted.  Everything is just “there” enough to suggest the composition as a whole, and yet I have lots of room in which to wiggle.

This is a wonderful stage for a painting — where there is a chance for firmness in the initial drawing and yet still so much opportunity to dream.

First Lines

The first lines of my canvas look somewhat like these dream scattered lines of my notebook.  In the morning over tea I drew my still life from memory.   Now at the end of the first day, I realize that the first lines I drew with paint were rather like these precursors. 

First lines are the gathered essential thoughts, the first impressions, the longed for idea bundled up like flowers.  In their still vague dress of make-believe they merely point towards hopes and longing.  I will love this painting once it’s underway.  I am already enjoying work.  Looking into the depths among my objects I find the hints of so many possibilities.  One small corner of a room can contain radical amounts of color and tone, shape and meandering line, hidden questions and enigmas to satisfy the needs of a hundred painted pictures.  Yet soon after I had finished assembling my still life I found that one core set of forms had drawn my heart into this idea, so I’m inching along, laying down lines, trying to gain enough ground to see the first reward.

Perhaps hiking a mountain is like this?  There’s a lot of work with your head down before you get to enjoy the view.

My first fumbling sketches are a crude map toward my destination.