What Happened to Your Cow?

No amount of joyous mark making could overcome my cow looking a little like a garbage bag with a head and legs.

Whole Page of Fakery

People like to talk about painting strategies, but rarely talk about their own.  My strategy with this drawing was pretty simple: Define the things that should be defined, and try not to be fussy.  About halfway through I started making zooming sound effects for my pencil, which is never a good sign.

Short Essay on the Importance of Line

Sometimes when you draw from life you can get so caught up in trying to make something look like something else, you forget that your drawing, in the end, will look like nothing other than itself.  So all those careful smudges and erasures, which look just like the subtle shadows and lights in front of you, tend not to age well.  In the presence of the model or scene they make sense, however in its absence they sort of look like mud (a possible reason for this is that smudges and erasures are not full drawing elements, and possibly more like something in painting, sort of how lines sometimes work as support for color in a painting, but as a general rule are not the stars of the show).

In my opinion the best way to avoid mud is line.  Drawings need line.  The real strength of a drawing is its line (or its careful avoidance of line, in any event, line is not far from theconversation).  Smudging and erasing can make or break a drawing, but in the end (I think) line is the most important element in.

With that said, I am stepping up my line awareness.  This has lead to some disasters in portraiture, but a sort of nice tree drawing.  I definitely danced a bit in the mud, and have some finish issues (the bugs were starting to get to me), but I think it still goes into the win column (note the lines that sort of off set the mud issues at the bottom).

Childhood Rage and Uno Spin

Lets face it.  It is no fun getting yelled at by your sister for cheating.  Especially since you can’t read and are not entirely sure that you are cheating.  You are playing to the best of your ability, with the rules you can remember.  Curse you Uno Spin!  You are so fun to play, but so damn hard to understand!  Why couldn’t your rules be set to a sing-song?  Or at least short enough to pay attention to?  Why did grandma give us such a complicated game?  Why not an updated, or novelty edition, of Candyland?  Why?

Another videogame player.

Empty Fun

It was too windy to draw cows this weekend, but it is never too windy to draw sleeping babies.  I find myself in a very sort of empty place in regard to picture making right now.  I really am enjoying drawing from life.  It is fun to have sort of measurable things to compare and work on (right now I would put myself in the smudgy faking it group.)  And it is temporarily satisfying to have something look like something, and even more satisfying (although still temporary) to identify things that are uninteresting or do not make something look like something.

However it is a very empty thing and I am not sure where it will go: Man that looks just like that.  Hooray! (This is not to take anything away from realistic painting.  There are countless examples of wonderful realistic paintings, (There are terrible ones too, of course) and there are avariety of things people do to make them interesting, the word style comes to mind.  Style and subject matter.

Developing a style seems very un-fun , and I am not sure how I feel about subject matter.  Form and function come to mind as well.  I think I am just going to continue to draw and paint from life right now because I feel pretty confused.

I Pretend Objectively

I avoided some real muddiness in this one by rinsing the drawing under the tap before painting it.  This was a pretty terrible idea and washed away some of the subtlety of the lines (not that there was a whole lot, but I could tell.  Maybe it more transformed the lines and shades a bit rather than washed out some subtlety.)  I think I might go and try again with just watercolor or just charcoal, and leave them separate.

I am really enjoying drawing clouds and mountains.  For someone who struggles with, or at least worries about, figure ground relationships, it is very nice to draw something that sort of lacks a clear figure ground.  I guess mostly I am talking about the clouds, when they reach a certain point where the entire sky is cloud covered it negates the relationship.

Fun in Failure

I had a drawing 101 explosion this weekend.  Landscape, portrait, still life (to dismal to post, mostly because I tried to color them with watercolor, and watercolor plus charcoal equals mud).  I am not sure why I feel compelled to improve my technical drawing skills.  If I can draw better I don’t think it will make me a worse artist, but I do not necessarily think it will make me a better one.  I think I am hoping by bettering my drawing skills I will be able to see things better and move things better.  Maybe I will develop better seeing and thinking skills.  Even if nothing pans out I drawing the things in front of you is a lot of fun.

On an unrelated note, is it wrong to let your kids play longer video game sessions, just so that they will sit still for you to draw them?

Ism to end all Isms

For some reason I am compelled to join the ism to end all isms.  No I am not talking about “whimsical girls drawn on exposed wood-grainism” nor am I talking about “abstract painting with some autobiographic and/or humorous text thrown inism” I am not even talking about “nostalgic photomontageism” or “bad paintings of tabbo thingsism”.  No the “NOW” art movement that I find myself helplessly draw to is “generic observationalism”.

(We Generic Observationalists, if I may humbly begin to refer to myself as one, tend to wrap ourselves in a false word blanket of mean spirited irony in order to protect our developing skills.  Make no mistake that we are a hopelessly optimistic bunch, and with the seeds of our generic observational style will someday do great things.)

Behold! Jar round two.

Face!  Looking nothing like the sitter!

Why is Some Level of Realism so Satisfying?

I think the real strength to drawing from life is that it forces you to see subtle differences in line and light that you might normally gloss over when you are drawing from imagination (not everyone of course, but myself).  I find myself drawing much more complicated lines, and much more interesting lights and darks.  I think my next big challenge will be either A.) incorporating fully developed lines/lights and darks into my “important” work or B.) incorporating my “important” ideas into my more developed lines/lights and darks work, or of course C.) scrapping it all and doing something else, and hopefully D.) using color in some damn meaningful way.

All in all I am feeling fairly optimistic.  I think I will kind of continue for now in this sort of split way of working, alternating between drawing from life and making up imaginary scenes, with the hope of reconciling the two at a later date, or hoping something else great takes off.  As far as this drawing goes, I think it is OK.

Two Non-touching Rabbit Heaps

I am a little unsure of the shadows.  They seem a little false, but overall I think this one is OK.  Also I am not sure if heap is a good word.  It seems better than piles or mounds, but does not quite convey what I think it could.