. . . is finished!
Love to Draw!
All summer I have been in conversation and planning for a drawing of a cabin. It has grown from a simple drawing to a collage, and the very trusting and polite customers have given me freedom to do it anyway I want. Often, the customers like to participate in the planning and be given a few choices and have a little input. These folks have taken a different approach, and it is a tad bit nervous-making, and quite a bit of fun! Here is what is completed as of today:
It just takes me back to my roots of pencil, commissioned work, and, well, cabinart!
A large drawing in progress
This is the picture that has required 3 photo sessions so far. Yesterday I returned around noon, the time I initially photographed the scene. However, I forgot to take into account the changing season and new location of the sun. So, I now have the new photos with more visual information but the shadows are in the wrong places! That’s a workable problem – the other photos are showing me how to handle the light. I just may finish this next week after all!
Learning to draw, Chapter Twenty-One
I have a drawing student who has been very diligently working at her skills for perhaps 10 years. When we first met, my classes were full and the waiting list had 70 or 80 names on it. Her desire to learn was so strong that she asked me to recommend a book to her. As always, Betty Edwards’ Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain was my only and best idea. She bought it, worked through the exercises, and when space in my classes became available, it was apparent she really didn’t need drawing lessons from me! She disagrees with that analysis, but have a look at her work:
First Saturday, September 4, “Harvest”
Ever heard of The Cort Gallery? It is at 41881 Sierra Drive (river side of the highway) in Three Rivers. It is a little hard to see because the trees obscure the building, but it is worth the time to find. Gary Cort designed this building with rotating walls that swing open to the outside. He is a talented architect and artist with whimsical ink drawings. He invited me and one of my drawing students, Char Prazak, to show our pencil artwork with him on Saturday – a black, white, and shades of gray kind of event! You may remember Char’s work from a previous blog entry; here it is again:
To preview some of the participants in First Saturday September, go here: 1st Saturday in Three Rivers
Gaposis
Back in the day when I used a real camera, a complicated drawing might take 2 rolls of film. Now that the restraint of “wasting film” has been obliterated, I take as many photos as I want! It is such a nice thing to never stop to change rolls. Despite the abundance of images, there are always more needed. That is why there is a large gap in the middle of this drawing.
Here is the right side so you can see a bit more detail. The stone steps are so beautiful that I forget to admire the (unfinished) river!
Drawing again!
One more week in the studio due to technical difficulties with the mural. The Mural Team will sort it out, and I should be back on the wall next week. Meanwhile, back at the studio, I am working on this large drawing of a beautiful back yard on the river.
It is taking a pile of reference photos, and a list of more needed is growing daily.
This is the upper left corner. I started there, and now am jumping all over the drawing because I am missing so much visual information. No matter how many photos I take, I always seem to need more. This is because people hire me for accuracy, not just my “impression”. My art is called “realism” for a reason!
Learning to draw, Chapter Twenty
Could you draw like this when you were in 7th grade? I couldn’t!
Maleah can, and she did! The center of the flower was a bit worrisome, so we handled it the way I do the more difficult parts. When working on a difficult texture, practice different techniques on another piece of paper until it looks right.
Drawing versus art
In college, I had an art teacher in a design class or some other esoteric subject who 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 35+ years life experience and wisdom, I know he was right, even if it was an insensitive and snotty remark.
Drawing is a skill that can be taught, learned, developed and is sometimes just innate. Art has to be something that one learns about, develops over time, and comes about because of a love for the subject. Art can encompass many skills, forms and be useful in many careers.
Drawing is a skill that is useful regardless of one’s career, and it definitely is useful in any art career. One can become an artist without the ability to draw, particularly in this age of multiple tools. A number of years ago, I had an interesting conversation with an art teacher friend. She was teaching her junior high students more than any of my college professors ever taught me—principles, elements, styles and history.
My college professors may have had their Master’s of Fine Arts degrees, 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 over 30 years. (and that is without an MFA – imagine that!) It 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. (The main thing I ever want to learn is HOW and the second is WHY, so that is what I share with my students.)
Through the years, only a small handful of my students (that I know of) of have pursued art as a career. Everyone that has stayed long enough has learned to draw, and they each have drawings they can proudly show off to prove that they know how to draw.
I couldn’t draw this well in college; growth is the goal of many years of practice.
Drawing lessons were not a waste of time for any of my former or present students. They learn to draw (duh), learn to communicate with people of all ages (that is the way my classes are), explore a type of art in a comfortable environment, develop a bit more confidence, and make new friends.
I enjoy every moment spent with each of my students. We have easy friendships that transcends age and last through time and all its changes. In conclusion, I can draw AND am an artist, so there, you Snotty Professor who are now probably just a retired teacher! But I’m not bitter.
The Rules
There have been many art teachers in my life, and each one seems to have hard and fast rules. Several colored pencil (CP) teachers have said NEVER USE BLACK. Another CP teacher said, “If you aren’t supposed to use black, why do they manufacture it?” That strikes me as pure (un)common sense.
One CP teacher said to ALWAYS put the darkest color as the bottom layer and work up to the lightest color. Another said ALWAYS start with the lightest color as your base and then add layers in order of increasing darkness. I have done both on the same drawing and gotten the same result!
My best drawing teacher in college only let us draw with a 6B, which is a very soft black pencil. He did not let us smear or blend with any tool, including our fingers. He never told us why this was So Very Important, but now with many years of hindsight, I have this guess: if you could learn to control that one pencil, you could make any pencil do anything you wished it to do. It took me years to be able to use the entire range of pencils available because his idea was so deeply etched into my head. This is a drawing from his class:
Some of the painting teachers I have listened to say “NEVER use white alone”. (What are you supposed to use if that is the color you need??) Most say, “NEVER use black”. At an art show of Very Big Deal Artists, one of the artists I spoke with told me of his layering process and it included black paint!! Go figure.
Many of my students ask me how to hold their pencils. I show them how I hold mine, and tell them to try it, and to try anything that feels comfortable to them. The point is that there are some places in life where there are absolutes, but in art the only absolutes are determined by the results you desire.