Check out the new site I have with Jeff...

It isn't a replacement for this one... jut serves a different function. I'll get to photographing and updating this eventually!

www.jillandjeff.us

Taking a break... other forms of creativity

I recently had a week off for spring break, and although I had planned to work on a new still life at school, I just couldn't bring myself to do it. I still attended my extra night classes, but otherwise felt burned out.

I spent a lot of the break doing little that I could call productive... in retrospect I think I felt a bit stifled by the daily academic coursework. Don't get me wrong--I love it, but there is not a great deal of room for creative exploration and experimentation. As creative as I am daily, I felt completely the opposite. And as much as I craved something different, I was slow to get over my general fatigue.

But the time was not completely wasted: I created online book marks for web sites of artists I like, and discovered a few new ones in the process; I checked out library books on wood engraving, sewing and jewelry making (and yes, Rembrandt and Durer and Michelangelo); I organized and rearranged the house (well, somewhat organized); I went for long walks ("long" for March in Minneapolis) and visited thrift stores and book stores.

I am back in school now and feel energized to complete the rest of the semester and am already thinking ahead to summer projects. Lots of painting and sketching. And definitely more jewelry (see my first two creations below).





Jeff has been searching for the perfect necklace for years. I took a chance and created one for him.




Created as a birthday gift for my sister Mindy. The pendant is a fossil from Morocco (ammonite).

The Buddha Loves Baseball

Here's my latest painting. The photo isn't the best (that's a dark shadow in the lower right corner, from what I don't know) but it'll have to do!




After painting in black and white I decided I wanted to paint white objects in color. I'll try to get better close up photos so you can see how much color actually lives in the objects. I wanted to paint another cast and I wanted to do something for Jeff... and baseball is very zen-like: a lot of non-action. The original plan was to use a neutral background but one teacher encouraged me to do an exercise with a lot of color, and the blue really popped other color in the objects.

I started with a color study, during which I realized that the flowers to the right of Buddha were a bit unnatural looking. I changed them and then moved on to a charcoal sketch of the still life. I transferred the sketch to canvas and stared painting.






Here's the basic set-up in my studio:




I have to say I eventually just decided this painting was done, without being satisfied with it. I learned a lot and am ready to do something new, but there are certainly areas that could be improved upon. I've moved on to another painting and will post it in a while. It's very different from this one--all earth tones and muted colors, pottery and wood. We'll see how it goes. Let me know what you think!

Nude isn't new--but I love it!

(Sorry, but despite my enthusiasm, no photo will be accompanying this blog posting.)

I began posing nude last week. I do it once a week, for a night class of about fifteen students at my school. I know about half of them from school and the portrait class I posed for last semester. I was more nervous about getting up in front of them and appearing nervous than actually nervous itself. I'll tell you a secret: I have always had this thought that people might be disappointed if they saw the real me. You know how it goes--we all hide our flaws with the clothes we choose to wear.

Well I am flawed. And I love posing nude. It is liberating.

I love that I can get over myself and conquer silly fears.

I love that as much beauty as I find in others, I can find in myself too.

I love that I am a living part of art history. Not only am I learning to be a great painter, inspired by masters such as Rembrandt and Repin, but I am also experiencing a part of what inspired them in their training and work. And posing is giving me a better sense of what the body does, how it feels, and what is going on inside the form that I want to capture in my art.

I love knowing that I am contributing to something beautiful, something wonderful: the development of artists. Not just art, but artists. I get up on the model stand, drop my robe, and within seconds am lost in my head, see myself as "a figure model" like so many that I have drawn. As an artist, you see only lines and curves, value and volume. The nude part of it doesn't even enter my mind.

I chose a difficult pose to hold: standing, with a bent knee and most of my weight on one leg. I did so purposely, wanting to provide something beautiful for the students to work with. Many models request a seated pose, but as an artist I know what it's like to be excited by drawing a standing figure. My foot falls asleep by the end of the night, but I like the challenge. It's worth it.

This class lasts fifteen weeks. But it won't end for me there. I plan to do a lot more of it.

The New Reality

Even my art is excited about Obama! (This is digitized--not original art.)

Starts and Finishes

I finished this painting over the holidays. Next step: painting still life in color.






Before moving on to still life painting, my teachers asked that I complete a color exercise. I set up a small still life and spent the first two days doing a color study. I then did a one-day color study of the same still life, followed by another, then finished with two studies in one day. The point was to see color and get as much information down as possible within the allotted time. Exact replication of the objects wasn't necessary (and I was taking mine down each day, so the set-up varied somewhat).

This exercise was also a great boost to my confidence. There are aspects of each of the studies that I find appealing. It was initially pretty tough switching to working with color, and tough to move fast. But by the end of the week I was having a lot of fun. A couple of days ago I did a one-day color study of a more complex still life (I'll post it in a couple of weeks--I don't have a camera here now) and it never entered my mind that I wouldn't be able to get it done--and done well--in three hours. That's progress!


Two-day study:




First one-day study:




Second one-day study:




Two studies/one day (1.5 hour):




Two studies/one day (1 hour):

I'm posting a few photos of works in progress before I head to Denver for the holidays:



This is a large charcoal drawing I work on three mornings a week. I still have quite a bit of work to do--the finished drawing should be pretty polished. I'll do another one of these beginning in January and then hope to move on to painting the figure in black and white.



This is the set-up for my cast painting. I work on this five afternoons a week, and hope to be finished just after getting back from the Thanksgiving holiday.



Here's a better photo of the painting itself. This image is slightly darker than my actual painting.



This is a three-hour figure exercise we did a few days ago. We normally draw a model in pencil twice a week, but deviated from the norm for this one. It was great fun.

From Leaves to Roses

This morning I was stirring a pile of rose petals strewn across my tabletop. Jeff brought them home after the Obama victory last week -- we're living in The After now, and roses seemed required -- and I've decided to extend their life by making potpourri. Their soft and dainty colors and the smell that settled in the air as I moved them reminded me of an artist and painting I was introduced to a year ago and was simply amazed by.

Have you ever seen paintings by Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema? This painting's story is rather brutal -- Roman Emperor Heliogabalus is attempting to smother his unsuspecting guests in rose-petals that drop from ceiling panels. But the work is magnificent -- capturing that trail of petals as they drifted down through the air! He worked from life on this -- I've read that for four months he had roses delivered from the Riviera to his London studio on a weekly basis.

Be sure to click on the image to get a closer look.

The Roses of Heliogabalus by Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema

On Seeing Leaves

I've begun reading Harold Speed's "The Art and Science of Drawing." I've been trying to read a borrowed copy, but finally bought my own--I take such pleasure in the act of underlining and starring sentences, of jotting down notes on the page; I connect with what I am reading and I remember more.

I've barely finished the preface and introduction and my mind is already swimming with ideas about what art is and what I am trying to do. A big part of my journey as an artist is seeing the extraordinary in the ordinary and feeling something in connection to it. I often take mental note of things I encounter and have surges of emotion in response to things I see, but I rarely record them. This is an enormous resource to draw from in my artistic development, and is equally important as the drawings and paintings I produce.




On Monday I walked home from my evening drawing class, sometime after ten. The streets were empty, the night was crisp and sky clear. A layer of frost covered the thousands of leaves that crept up onto the sidewalks and spilled into the streets. The ground moved with me as I walked, the leaves sparkling with a multitude of tiny reflections of the moon's bright light.

Last night I walked home from posing for the evening portrait class. It had been sleeting on and off throughout the day, but a softer snow fell as I walked. I paused to catch a snowflake on my tongue, and became attuned to a quiet rush of sound. Snowflakes were hitting the leaves on the ground in such a melodic way that for a moment I thought I was walking close to a cascading river.

This morning I sloshed to school through the slushy remains of about an inch of snow. Many of the leaves laying along the sidewalks, in the gutters and streets had nearly disintegrated. Stems and thin membranes colored brown and yellow and mush stuck to one another in thick piles. I imagined myself wading through a leaf stew that had been cooking for too long. I feel for the squirrels. Winter has announced its arrival.

At home in Minneapolis

Well, it has been a while. I've turned over a new leaf--or perhaps an old leaf I have turned before but somehow left to get blown about and land however it chose. I am no longer going to go through life apologizing for the intermittent updates to blogs or phone calls and email to friends and family... this is just one aspect of my personality that we will all have to learn to call "endearing."

Life seemed to take a sudden and rapid turn this past summer, and I now find myself living in Minneapolis, MN, studying full time at The Atelier. The condensed and drama-defused version of events is that there was what I assume to be financial mismanagement by the administration of the Colorado Academy of Art (who knows where the money went), and the school closed its doors last July. It is a shame to see the school go--the teachers and program were wonderful and the program had great potential.

There had been indications of cash flow problems and rumors floating about the school for several months, and after consulting with close friends and my lawyer/father-in-common-law, it became quite clear that I needed to form a Plan B and get out while I could. One of my teachers graduated years ago from the Lack Atelier in Minneapolis and is good friends with the directors of the newer incarnation of the school. He suggested that if I would be willing to pack up and move--and live with the cold, cold winters--I should send in my portfolio. Dave Larsson is a fantastic teacher and person in general, and I thought that if the teachers at The Atelier were anything like him, it would be the place for me. So here I am.

The program is four years and the focus of year two is still-life, year three is portrait, and year four is portrait/interior scenes. I've got class drawing from the model five mornings a week and then working on my own projects in my studio space each afternoon. They've started me out doing a couple of projects that I did last year; the directors want to be sure I'm not missing anything they teach first year and want to get to know my abilities and drawing/painting techniques. I'm currently painting a large cast of an ecorche face (a sculpture of a head with no skin that shows the muscle structure) but should be painting still-life in color by the winter break.

That's the latest. Did I mention that I love the school? And that I have a studio space with a window and work by natural light? Oh, and that I LOVE IT?! I'm set up for success and just have to keep moving toward it!