It’s another blue ball point pen drawing which I’ve made to help me figure out the big shapes of a new landscape painting that’s in the works. I love drawing this way. It totally suits me. It’s wonderful when you have a form that fits your thoughts and emotions to a tee. With the pen, I figure out how to think about the scene. With a pen I can walk around in my own imagination.
I love the cool blue lines of the Bic ball point pen and the miniature world of drawing. Art makes possible the dream-like convergence of dissimilar things. Lines offer complete freedom.
I like revisiting warm summer during the cold of winter even if only in thought. Brrr! It’s so cold today!
The drawing catches little of the actual situation. Lucy lies inside her kennel where it is dark. She lies on a black mat which makes the darkness more amorphous. The edge of her dark muzzle against the black mat is difficult to discern. Meanwhile, I draw upon a white sheet of paper. It could hardly be less amenable to the subject matter. And I use a blue ball point pen (wonderful tool) which if used to create dark passages requires many scribbles, and I am feeling fundamentally lazy today. This is abstraction and mindfulness. There’s a species of drawing possible — that seeks out the keenest realism — that nevertheless often fails to resemble its subject. Here it is. I recommend it highly.
I began again. The first drawing — sequence of heads — lacked room to put in her ears. Below her muzzle I played around with zigzag lines that pretend to treat some of the form of the mat she lies on — that black mat which fuses the edges of her nose into indistinct lineless contour, soft dark on dark.
Even in the deepest darks, one has a sense of the contours of a thing. I pretended that the tonality wasn’t even there. I just made lines around forms of the dog’s head. I followed curves, depressions, convexities, concavities, searched out the end of the nose, the flap of the lip, the edges of the ears, and so on. If you don’t know where a thing goes (this works temporarily for house cleaning too, so take note), just put it somewhere. You’ll figure it out later. Perfection is the enemy of the good. A useful catch phrase. Remember it.
Then Lucy turned over! A very relaxed dog! I found myself looking at a beautiful pose: the dog head upside down, underside of the chin, lovely honey colored spots on a white patch of an otherwise brown dog. I started drawing (not shown). Thirty seconds into it, she resumed the first pose again. Ah! Gone so fast. I decided to draw it — such as I might — from memory based on the not illustrated fast contour. The memory drawing is below — not sure if it’s at all legible. Doesn’t matter.
Sometimes you draw just to draw. Your hand describing the forms in concert with your active looking begins teaching you to understand the forms. It’s a relaxing and useful thing to do. It stills your mind. It hones your focus. Look at one thing at a time and react using the line as a form of biofeedback. It’s a form of meditation.
The notation “figure this out” visible at the top of the first drawing has nothing to do with the drawing. It’s the last words of notes I wrote myself regarding another topic — but it seemed like a good subtitle for the post so I let it remain.
“Figure this out.” Another good motto to tell yourself whenever you are looking at something and drawing. Figure it out. Wander around inside the visual idea. Get your bearings. Record what information you can. Leave the rest to float in airy thought until another day.
I was so taken with a picture by Frederick Remington, great cowboy painter, that I saw recently in the museum. I was wondering how he managed to capture the horses’ movements. It got me wondering how much of a role memory played in his understanding of equine motion.
The animals I have around me, that I see daily, whose forms I know best, are our dogs Lucy and Zoomie. Zoomie as his name suggests is a creature of motion. Being a terrier, he loves defying gravity. He is often found aloft — if only for brief bursts of time.
When he jumps up, what I principally see are teeth and piercing glances. The teeth rise up from the floor with dog attached. So I tried to remember a bit of it. A far cry from Remington’s masterful portrayal of horses, but a start toward understanding the teeth that fly.
Frogs and dogs.
And birds.
And fishes.
I used to be such a snob.
I didn’t think Frederick Remington was a real artist because he painted cowboy themes. I was that peculiarly annoying thing: an East Coast snob. But I was young. One must forgive the young for their annoying stances — especially when it’s your own young past self!
Anyway, I was at the Museum of American Art last weekend with an agenda: I wanted to make a drawing after Childe Hassam’s painting “Tanagra, The Builders” (which I posted recently). While I was there I also did a certain amount of wandering around and encountered this tour de force by Remington. It stopped me in my tracks.
In all humility I made a rapid sketch of the main horse, rapid because by that time I was supposed to meet some other people, and I only had a few minutes to spare.
I’m glad that I make these fast drawings these days. I used to feel intimidated and it cost me some wonderful opportunities. There’s nothing to lose and much to gain in simply drawing the world around you.
Jules Breton was famous for his portrayal of peasants.
I found Jules Breton’s painting of a peasant woman at Hoakley’s The Eclectic Light Company blog. I made a quick drawing of the woman’s head on a sheet where earlier I had made a little drawing after a face by Ingres.
My page and Breton’s peasant below:
Sometimes I want drawing to be my idleness. If I just draw, without expectation, choosing something I want to look at, to think about the vision with the pen making lines as I watch, that can be an unhurried, lazy drawing.
I decided that spending some time with pictures I love could be a good way to use this idle approach. I found Odilon Redon’s “Mystical Conversation” in a book and have made this little exploratory drawing of it. As you can see, it’s a good picture to relax with. Sometimes idleness can bring with it great freedom.
Today’s morning coffee drawing is composed of miscellaneous scribbles after Albrecht Durer. Imagine Durer working for Walt Disney — along with that imagine a delicious cup of coffee. You there?
Well, that’s where I was. These drawings were made (Bic Cristal in hand) from peering into the excellent exhibition catalog of a National Gallery of Art show on the artist that took place some years ago, called “Albrecht Durer: Master Drawings, Watercolors, and Prints from the Albertina.”
My drawing was a totally international endeavor — German Renaissance artist, American scribbler, pen manufactured in Mexico for a French company. The notebook was made in the USA — as was I — but I think I already mentioned that ….
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.
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