Oops

Have a look at this painting:

Say what? Wasn’t this painting of the bridge much further along? Indeed it was.

It was sitting on a tabletop easel on that round white table, just as you see it in this photo. I put another painting on the folding easel (the one with aspen trees) and set it in front of the round table to begin painting. As I reached back to tighten the bolts to prevent it from falling backward, WHAM! it fell backward. The top of the easel ripped a long tear into the bridge painting on the easel behind it. Lots of thoughts went through my mind, sort of like they do when you see a Mustang headed directly for your driver’s side door at 60 mph and know you are toast. Here are some of the thoughts:

  1. Canvas can’t be repaired.
  2. That was the expensive thick 18×24 canvas.
  3. I love painting that bridge.
  4. This isn’t really happening.
  5. I should have seen that coming.
  6. Maybe I got that expensive canvas on sale.
  7. Good thing I like painting that bridge.
  8. Good thing it was only 1/2 finished and not 75% finished.

Perhaps all those thoughts weren’t there as the easel was collapsing, but they were there shortly afterward. The odd thing is that I didn’t swear or even feel upset. I just took the wire off the back, got another (thinner, less-expensive) 18×24 canvas unwrapped and applied the wire to the back. Then I started painting again.

After it began to soak in that I had just knocked my finish time for all these paintings back by a large amount of time, I retreated to the studio and took refuge in my pencils.

Broken Sleeper

My sleeper is broken. In the olden days of my life, 9 hours a night was a requirement. For the last several years, I feel lucky to get 8. What does one do in the middle of the night if sleep won’t happen? I think, I pray, I plan, and sometimes I just give up. Library books, knitting, and the internet are all good quiet occupations for those wee hours. Looking at the art of those I admire is one way I try to not just veg-out, because it is a given that I will be fairly useless during the day after one of those super-early mornings. I hope that by looking at the art of the Big Boys and Girls, something helpful will get absorbed into my memory. These are the artists I am currently watching:

June Carey – I saw a piece (reproduction) by her at The Wooden Indian in Visalia and never forgot her light, the lay of the land, the subjects, the realism combined with impressionism, the brilliance of her colors. She paints orchards, vineyards, hillsides, all with purple shadows on the roads, high contrast, fuzzy edges, perfect proportions, a building or two, Italy, Sonoma (or is it Napa?) and has typos all over her incomplete web pages. Who cares when her paintings just stop me in my tracks? Maybe I should sell my car and buy one. . .

Morgan Wiestling – “First Dance” was my first vision of this man’s mind-blowing fabulousness. It was at Masters of the American West in 2008, and it almost made me flip over the handlebars because I stopped so suddenly. My hand had to mechanically reach up to close my mouth, because my jaw truly fell open in awe. I don’t know where he gets his material – maybe he hires models and stages his scenes a la Norman Rockwell. Maybe he finds old photos and recreates the scenes in color. Maybe he is just a freakin’ genius! His edges are a little blurry, the light is subtle, the colors are muted and yet everything almost looks photographic in its proportional perfection. No maybe about it – he must be a genius!

There is something both encouraging and discouraging about viewing work of this caliber. The negative side of my brain says “Give up, you Poser because you are already 51 years old and aren’t even 1/100th of the way of getting to where these folks are and besides, you quit school and didn’t even go to a real art college”. The positive side of my brain says “WOW oh WOW, I’m just sure if I keep painting the subjects I love that one day my work will grab people as this work grabs me”.

Perhaps instead of producing 100 paintings per year at a very low price, I should paint just 10 and price them at $6,000-10,000 each. What do you think??

Get real, Toots.

Doesn’t this look like something June Carey might choose to paint? maybe if it had a house or a barn. . .

I Love February

Because there are flowers in the yard and the flowering quince is coming soon.

Because it is green around the studio.

Because the daylight lasts longer, the sky is blue, and the cats don’t beg to stay in the house during the day.

Because Kaweah is waiting for me to go paint.

And although she prefers my lap, she is content directly underfoot while I stand to paint!

Hope I never squash her sweet little self!

Demonstration and Workshop

On February 25 and 26, I will be giving a demonstration and workshop in Porterville for their very active art association. There is still space if you’d like to register. The cost is $30 for members of the P’ville Art Assn. and $35 for non-members. I may have mentioned a time or two that I love to draw, and pencil drawing will be the subject of the events.

Everyone likes a freebie – door prize, raffle prize, pick-a-prize, silent auction, live auction, buy-one-get-one-free. (I like free stuff too, particularly consumables, specifically dark chocolate.) This is what I am donating to the Porterville Art Association – not sure how they will turn it into a freebie. Guess we will all have to attend!

Flew The Coop

MA’s little iron birds are back home with her, and now she has this little guy too! That was a fun one. 😎

Words Mean Things

Sixth in the series “Thoughtful Thursdays”

When teaching people how to draw, sometimes it is difficult to articulate my thoughts. A picture is worth a thousand words, and sometimes a thousand words still can’t explain the picture. Often, I can’t find the right word, so I will make one up. The funny part is that my students understand the meaning!

A woman was working on some boulders but something wasn’t looking believable. The problem was that she had inadvertently drawn potatoes and an oversized pinto bean! We figured out how to turn them in to rocks, and then she asked how to draw some grass behind the boulders. I was trying to keep her from making a lot of little lines all in a perfect row. Remember the bird “Woodstock” in the comic strip Snoopy? His word bubble had a lot of little vertical lines. To help her not make Woodstock word marks, the instructions came out, “You need to sort of bounce your clumpage along – that’s it, just horizontalize it a bit more”. She got it.

Some folks have taken lessons so long that I have become a habit to them. I tell them they don’t need lessons because they know how to draw. They tell me that unless they pay their monthly fee, they will not carve out time in their lives to draw. While they draw, we talk about art, drawing and life.

Truthfully, I love my students – we become friends, comrades, buddies in the artworld. I show them my art and give them the freedom to tell me anything they think about it, good or bad. We speak truth to one another and try to use known English words.  It is helpful and refreshing and sometimes, it can be hilarious!

Swirls – 11×14″ – pencil

Working from Photos

It isn’t popular in the artworld to admit that one works from photos. In fact, the closest you’ll get to reading that someone works from photos is “I use them for reference”. Brings to mind something Jack White, my painting inspiration/guru/mentor said – “All realistic painters either work from photos or they lie about it”. Me? I TOTALLY work from photos – if I just use them for reference, it is because the scene was so complicated that I just started making things up!

The other JB and I visited the Buckeye campground in Sequoia National Park over the weekend. There is a mellow little trail that leads to a picturesque footbridge over the main fork of the Kaweah River. (You can read about it in the  January 17 blog post.) When JB saw the view, she burst forth with the declaration, “If you paint that, I will buy it!” Being a hard-nosed business tycoon (snort, guffaw), I said, “Okay, I will show you some sketches first so you can see if you like it and after I paint it, I won’t hold you to buying it.” (Jack White would not be pleased with me for that!)

Here is the main view that JB was so taken with; you can barely see the bridge in the photo! This is why I will have to sketch things in advance of painting – how large can I make the bridge without distorting reality? How much rock, if any, in the foreground is actually necessary? Can I “grow” the river, because in our memories, it is The Main Event?

All these photos will be useful to create a small (“thumbnail” in Artspeak) sketch that will determine what size and where each part should be in proportion to the other parts. If I was carrying a backpack that day, a sketchbook would have been a helpful item. But I am a modern chick who uses a digital camera with tremendous gratitude for the technology.

Drawing or Art?

Fifth in the series “Thoughtful Thursdays”

In college, an art professor said to me, “Just because you can draw doesn’t make you an artist”.  I was devastated, insulted, dismayed, shocked, and any other adjective you can think of for the situation – how dare he say that to me!! Now that I have the advantage of life experience and wisdom, I know he was right, even if it was an insensitive and snotty remark. His point was that there is more to making art than simply drawing.

Master of Fine Art, or MFA, is the highest degree possible in art.  My college professors may have had their MFAs but mostly they walked around the room while taking a break from their own work, and offered criticism and snide remarks (”Just because you can draw. . .” or “You need to work on composition”) without ever bothering to actually teach, to demonstrate or share information.

I have been teaching people how to draw for 16 years without an MFA.  Drawing is a skill, and in teaching the skill, many other things about art can be shared. We talk about different styles, ways to set up a drawing from the beginning, ways of arranging the elements in a drawing, and lots of technique. First I show how, then I explain why.

Through the years, only two of my students that I can think of have pursued art as a career.  Everyone who has stayed long enough to learn to draw has learned to draw, and they each have drawings they can proudly show off to prove that they know how to draw. Even without going into art full-time, learning to draw has give each one confidence.

A year or 2 ago I saw 3 former drawing students. Louis was in the Navy, Stephanie was thinking about occupational therapy, and Mark was a cowboy. Drawing lessons were not a waste of time for any one of these wonderful young folks – they learned to draw (duh), learned to communicate with people of all ages (that is the way my classes are arranged), explored a type of art in a comfortable environment, got to display their work in a show or two, developed a bit more confidence, and made new friends.

I enjoyed every moment spent with each of these people and love seeing how they are turning into adults. We have an easy friendship that transcends age and that has lasted through time and changes.  They can draw; are they artists? I think so! And I am an artist in addition to being a teacher and being able to draw, so there, you Snotty Professor who is now probably just a retired teacher!

The Beach House, graphite, 10×8″

private collection

Professor 6B

Diane commented on my post “The Rules” about Professor 6B and it was funny. Made me realize I had lapsed into a bit of jargon, so here is some clarity for you all. And here is a weird thing – not a single art teacher taught me any of these basics. I learned about them from digging around on my own. Sure, a person can draw without knowing all this stuff, but it is better to know about one’s tools than to just bumble along, particularly if one calls herself a professional!

First, I no longer have all those mugs of pencils on my desk. The colored pencils are in a basket on a shelf overhead. Every so often I have a Clutter Attack, and stuff starts flying out the door. Having unused things, no space, too much stuff in general just bugs me. I’ve mentioned before that I may have whatever is the opposite of that Hoarding problem.

Pencils are not made of lead but the writing part is still called a “lead”. They are made of a combination of graphite and clay: the more graphite, the blacker and softer the lead; the more clay, the lighter in color and the harder the lead. Differing manufacturers combine these things in different percentages, but they all use the same rating system. B = black, H = hard. The higher the number with the letter, the stronger that particular quality is. So, a 6B is blacker than a 4B. A 5H is harder than a 2H. HB is dead center – I’m guessing 50% graphite and 50% clay. If it has only H on it, that is the equivalent of 1H. They assume we will figure that out. (Ditto for B.)

Pretty straightforward, but then some of those manufacturers have to throw a monkey wrench in the simplicity of the system with a pencil called “F”. Excuse me?? I used to think it stood for “funky” because it didn’t fit into the rating system. Turns out it stands for “fine” because it can be sharpened to a fine point. So can every other pencil, so I fail to see the point. Oops, a pun. It seems to be about the same hardness as an H.

The softer/blacker pencils get used up much more quickly than the harder ones. I still have my original 6H from a college art class, although the lettering is worn off the casing. If you drop one of the softer pencils on concrete, you might as well put it in the trash, because it will be broken all the way through and the lead will fall out in little pieces every time you sharpen it. I can hear the collective “aha” as you all realize you have experienced this annoying phenomenon.

One last piece of trivia – those #2 pencils required by test givers to fill in the bubbles are the same as HB. If you look closely at the words on the casing you might even find “HB” written there. It remains a mystery to me why there are 2 rating systems for pencils.

Perhaps next time I will write about erasers (and the lack of them on drawing pencils).