textures of the second kind

 

There are two kinds of texture in art.  Both are wonderful.  Both deserve consideration.  Sometimes both exist together.  Sometimes only one or the other is present.

There’s the texture of the things depicted:  the soft silk that looks like silk, the lemon that has a rough skin, the egg shell that seems to be brittle because it looks brittle.

Then there’s the texture of the art materials used to make the picture, and they are many. In the illustration above, a detail of one of the koi drawings, the crayon catches on the raised burr of the paper speckling the surface, creating a veil over the imagery below it.  It’s these textures of the second kind that I love to discover.  Every artists’ medium has a wonderful, special charm.

In the detail above of a crayon drawing made after Matisse’s painting La Coiffure at the National Gallery of Art, the layers of crayon colors overlap.  Some of the paper texture breaks up passages of color.  In other areas sharp lines delineate forms and soft lines blend one passage into another.  Because the pigment can be applied in layers, warm and cool passages of color can interact with each other above and below.

In the pen drawing details above the color of the ink is a strong factor, and equally strong is the white of the paper.  In a pen drawing, sometimes what you don’t draw — the shapes of the spaces that you leave blank become dramatic effects in the drawing.  Of course the characteristic hatchings and wiggles and calligraphy of pen lines give a pen drawing its essence and its energy.

 

Pencil drawing is a responsive medium for creating contours with line, for evoking texture through imitation and for creating subtle lights and darks that reveal forms — and in the case of portraits graphite provides the subtle gesture that gives way to visual expressions of emotion.

With pastel you can drag very soft passages of pigment over top of other layers, the layers can partially blend, and through these operations you can achieve very soft transitions and delicate blurry effects.

Whatever the material, each medium has its own peculiar charms that the artist must seek out through manipulation and experiment.  Sometimes the natural textural qualities of the medium can be used to evoke the optical textures of the things depicted.  Sometimes the beauty of the material’s texture is sought as an end in itself.

Through these limited examples in my own art, I hope readers find another element of drawing that they can use to pull them closer into the magic of pictorial art.

 

Drawn from the heart

Durer wrote about drawing from memory, enjoining artists to use their memories and imaginations to create images.  I can’t remember the whole quote, just the last (as I know it in English — he was German of course) … “drawn from the heart he gives them form.”  He saw the great artist as being someone who is “inwardly full of figures.”  Durer was himself inwardly FULL to overflowing with figures!

Well, I’m working on it.  Not inwardly full quite yet, though I do draw from memory more and more often these days as part of my regular discipline.

But this drawing of seashells was made sur le motif.  I have a bunch of seashells on the table.  I paint them again and again.  I draw them again and again. I love the shells because they are so complex.  They offer the artist so many lines, textures, shadows, angles.  You can turn the shell and see something totally different.  Drawing and redrawing them aids in painting them because I grow better at understanding their forms. Ah, the clever conch who makes these objects doesn’t have to work half so hard at his task!

Another fun thing about a drawing like this is that I don’t do all the drawing in one sitting.  It is, instead, my thing that I can pick up and put down.  I nibble away at it.  Adding a bit more now and again.

I thought this one was complete now, but as I look at it again I see more things to draw such as the large ginger jar on the left which is only barely indicated here — and the foreground of the table offers many possibilities ….  So many things remain for delight …

So one’s seashell thoughts stretch out over days and occasions.  I find my enchantment again and again.

thoughts of flowers, future tense

Drawing some yesterday, planning future flower paintings — to take up the loose threads of paintings I began but never finished — and get new ideas for possible future works.  I love making pen drawings as a way of dreaming about things.  It helps me get acquainted with the objects.  The smallness of scale makes me feel as though I enter another dimension through the pen lines.  It’s a way of mentally moving among the objects.

Some objects need special consideration.  The blue compotier will be empty and its interior spaces will need to carry a lot of weight alone.

I will draw it over and over.  Each drawing helps me see it differently.

I was also inventing a still life in the notebook, adding things as I thought about them.  It’s just an idea for something where yellow is the predominant color (as my written notes attest).

 

Then there was a little sketch for another idea that’s already on the back burner simmering.  I day dream about this picture that I’ve written about before.

 

 

 

 

 

Birds & stuff — just because

I like to draw a lot. Sometimes these days I’m inclined to draw just to be drawing, choosing images somewhat randomly. I decided to draw a blue jay and made four versions of him together.  I think the face was already there.  Flowers came later, and some kind of fruit hidden among leaves. There’s still lots of white space left so other items many join the group.   We’ll see.

Why not?

odds & ends

Draw everything.

You can’t of course. But why not just pretend that you can. There may not even be an everything to draw (philosophically speaking).  Who is to say how much stuff there is in even a corner of a still life. All that notwithstanding, when you tell yourself that maybe you’ll just sit down and draw everything now — you free yourself from the need to first draw this, and then draw that, and find the center of interest, and make sure to get the half-tones, and blah, blah, blah.

This is a really neat still life. It’s a visual forest that a person’s eyes can wander around in for hours. It has twists and turns. It has passages of light and shade. It’s abundant in RED. There’s the black vase, too, with its patterns on the surface and its depths and reflections in the black — with the window reflection that takes you outside if you peer into it really deeply!

In the carnival glass compotier, as I was drawing, I saw a patch of white and wondered what it was. Looking closer I saw that it was the inverted, distorted reflection of the white creamer! In every centimeter there’s a wonder to behold. In such a visual jungle one cannot possibly draw everything and yet if you are, like me, too thrilled to choose, and must draw a bit of this and a bit of that, then you find splendors in every direction. Oh, to an ant it’s a palace of ineffable grandeur and beauty! (Well, that’s if ants’ sensibilities include enjoyment of the scenery.)

I’ll tell you a secret, though I buy the best artist materials I can afford for the works that I plan for sale, I also adore working with very cheap and common things — expressly because they are ubiquitous in our society. I bought this notebook at RiteAid.  It’s cover caught my eye one day as I was leaving the pharmacy.

You can see how it has the busy bright design that I like.  I’ve been drawing with Bic Cristal in this notebook this morning — that would be the world’s cheapest and absolutely most wonderful and expressive pen — ever!

My parents were survivors of the Great Depression and instilled in me (without their realizing) a great love for the common tools that are abundantly available. In regard to drawing, when I pick up simple dime store tools and draw, I feel like I’ll always be able to draw come what may. I sit here in the corner of a room like an oriental pasha with my wealth of colors and thrift store treasures, exploring the seemingly infinite reach of my territory!

I have long admired the fishes on the Chinese tea pot and I decided to zero in on one of them at the risk of having the shape of the pot go somewhat crazy on me. If you care about the pot’s shape, you draw that first, but if you care about the fish — sooner or later you have to make a wild lunge for the fish, pen in hand.  If that puts the proportions out of whack, so be it.

After several drawings, I decided to draw with watercolor. It is similarly scattershot. But the brightness of the whole I find satisfying.

I’ve have drawn all afternoon en plein indoors sitting beside my still life table.

One more.  This one in oil pastel.

I drew this one very fast and began with the reflection of the window because it had been so beautiful, really pearlescent! But the light changed so fast and I wasn’t actually able to observe the effect that had brought me in. Still it’s interesting that the whole drawing began with that reflection, like the axis of a wheel.

late night sea shells

Sea shells on the shelf, say that several

times quickly. When I finished drawing my late night owl of the previous post, I turned my attention to the sea shells with the ceramic bird. I have an oil pastel that I work on when the light is right, and this pen drawing, made from a different angle, in different light keeps me thinking about the forms.

 

the map is not the territory

If I redraw the vase enough times

I’ll get some sort of map of it inside my head. The map is not the territory, but a drawing is not quite a map either.

It is not the thing, but it contains ideas about the thing. The thing is sitting over there on the still life table.  And these, on the contrary, were some of my thoughts in linear blue scribbles.

And it’s not just the vase, but the songbird on the vase (who is companion to the owl). So, it’s complicated.