Quick Studies

Time does fly. I've been busy, but not busy doing much painting. I suppose I've been busy with life issues and self-discovery. And trying to make a bit of money proofreading. Right now I find myself anxiously awaiting getting into my studio -- an old warehouse is being renovated and I was hoping to get in by April 1, but it looks like it will be two more weeks. I'm eager to break bad habits and establish a good work pattern. Leaving the house and having a dedicated space will do wonders for me. And the familiar sound of a train rolling past (my windows are directly across from the national rail line) will bring familiar comfort. I can't wait!

In the meantime I am finding it hard to start anything substantial. So this week I told myself to keep it short  and sweet and simple. I attended a one-day figure-painting session last Saturday, and then did three small self-portraits this week, spending 2-4 hours on each one. I experimented with taking certain colors off my palette and painting freely with no preparation. These are rough rough rough, and I promised myself I wouldn't go back to correct them, but would use them as learning tools. (I'm going to continue this for a while I think, until I get settled in the space.) I am happy to say there is something good to say about each of the studies, and I am pleased that I pushed through. Here they are:

Painting my portrait: things I know on some level but have to experience to internalize

I've spent the last several weeks working on a self-portrait on and off. I started with a realistic goal: do a small head study. But before I knew it I was creating the first in the grief/end-of-life series I've been planning to paint for years, developing a 20x30 charcoal drawing of me hugging my arms to my chest. Hey, sounds tough, but I can do this, right -- wish I'd done a few more of those memory drawing exercises. I'm getting close to the end now, and this is what I have learned about the process (outside of physically putting paint on canvas):

1. When you reach a certain point in the charcoal drawing that looks good, but not totally accurate (especially when that imperfect area is a hand and then particularly the hand you are painting with), IGNORE THE IMPULSE TO TRANSFER THE IMAGE TO PAINTING. Take the time to really work out the problems in advance. This will save you grief, I promise. I've found myself scraping paint off the canvas on more than one occasion, and completely reworked the same area three times.

2. Sitting close to the mirror may be necessary to see detail -- standing would be easier because you can back up more easily -- but affects perspective and our ability to accurately judge what we are seeing. The angle from elbow to elbow appeared different from just slightly above than when viewed from a distance, and I spent three-fourths of the painting time with one too-long arm and not understanding how to fix it. It's hard to get distance to see the whole, especially when sitting. Taking a photo from a distance and then flipping it in Photoshop so you are seeing what you see in the mirror makes a good reference to give you that whole/distant view from time to time. I recommend doing this in the beginning rather waiting until well into the painting. :(

3. Lighting has been a HUGE issue for me. First, my windows face southeast, so the sun moves across the sky as I paint (which wasn't that much of a problem earlier in the year, but now the sun is so low that it shines in my eyes). Second, when I began there was much more daylight, so I was painting in the afternoon. Sunset is at 4:05pm today, and by 2:00 it is really either too dark to paint comfortably and get good color; OR the sun is shining through a second window that I generally only keep a white-colored (or no) curtain over, and then all my lighting is off -- or more accurately, ON. Also, I put the easel on the left because I am left-handed and it blocks the lower half of the window I am sitting next to, but on dark days -- of which there seem to be many in London -- I have had to use a daylight bulb (screwed into a bendy desk lamp with a piece of paper taped about it to direct the light, and attached to the easel with a giant clamp) or shifted the easel to the right side. I could face the opposite direction with everything, but then the mirror is getting more light than I am. It's a regular circus act. Solution: (besides don't set up something this complicated going into winter) stay flexible or go to artificial light?

4. Doing extra reading/sketches/research as I've been painting has been really helpful. I've started a file of large-sized images (love the Google!) of paintings I like, and periodically go and stare at parts of paintings in museums. I'll pick a topic like eyes or expression or shadow colors, and then only stop in front of pieces that show me something I like about that particular thing. I've spent a few hours in a coffee shop reading about and copying sketches of hands. I've stood in a bookshop and read entire chapters of a book on facial expression. I've brought home dozens of library books and always have a small stack on hand to flip through. I never schedule or force these things, they seem to come out of frustration from not being able to capture on canvas the thing in my head. Perhaps it would be wiser to schedule them, but I never know what the next challenge will be. What did Cyd always say? The eye sees it, the mind understands it, and the hand paints it. The research part of things has really facilitated my understanding of things.

5. As much as I would like to think about what the finished product will look like, I really really try to let myself go and focus on the here and now. Who cares how it turns out or if it will be show worthy (I say in a faltering voice -- hey, it isn't easy to do)! Take the time to learn and let yourself screw up, to push things too far. Maybe this painting won't make it into my series, but the next time I work on  this theme or another portrait it will be that much better. It's tough to let go, but things move along much faster. No fear of "ruining" things.

6. I had hoped to have the painting finished today. But that was working on the assumption that I would stick to a schedule and did not include days off due to lighting issues or a myriad of other (sometimes plausible) excuses (in my defense, it took a while to sort out the daylight bulb thing, especially trying to avoid the cost by piecing together my own system). Truth is, if I had a regularly scheduled model, I'd paint rain or shine and work with what I had. It would be better to treat myself as a model, stick to scheduled appointments and even give myself 5-minute breaks within the time slots.

Whatever the end result, I will unveil the painting in the near future. And I'll be so much better equipped the next time around. I'll keep you posted!

Finding my way...

I've been avoiding writing. Not purposely, but on some subconscious level I didn't want to face up to the reality versus "the plan" of my arrival and work in London. But while on a recent trip to Morocco I had a lot of time to think about the way I was going about the transition from school to being a working artist. This is what I came up with:

I am only now, as I wander lost through the world, making peace with myself since the upheaval of leaving my school and the art family that came with it, landing in London (and not immediately loving it) and trying to move forward not as a paying art student -- although I will always be a student -- but as an artist. I am learning how to move slowly, to take time and take things in, without feeling the need to be fully productive every minute of every day.

I have not been productive in the way I imagined anyway -- I cringe at the lists and schedules that now lay forgotten in my sketchbook. But I have been maneuvering the London art scene in a sense, and figuring out where to go for what and why. I've had and given up a shared studio (and now paint in my room). I've visited museums and attended lectures, and finally attended a local life drawing session. I have written a first draft of a story, researching picture book illustration, and began working out the illustrations to go along with it. I have painted two small still lifes and one has made it through the first round of a competition (sadly, not the second). I'm currently working on a larger self-portrait -- part of the end-of-life series I plan to create. I'm finally doing color charts. It all sounds good, I sound busy -- but I've found it hard to keep my own schedule and it has been a struggle the whole way.

But as I sit here I realize that transitioning from school to independent artist, and from the U.S. to the U.K., is not unlike cleaning house: It takes a while to dust off the cobwebs and sweep the floor, pull down the old wallpaper and wash the grime off the windows. Things must be collected and sorted and rearranged and put away. And in between all these things there is a lot of sitting. At least that's how I clean. Frequent pauses to survey the mess and wonder how I'll ever sort through it. But somewhere in that process, the true nature of the room comes forth. These past few months have been a lot like that for me. I've been doing an internal cleaning of sorts. And it takes time. And downtime. But my nature as an artist is taking shape, and not a moment -- seemingly productive or not -- has been wasted.

Knowing Things

I wrote this in April 2009 but for some reason never published it... I don't remember what events led to its creation, but I came across it this morning and really liked the ideas...




It is amazing that you can look so intently at something, absorb it in all its lines, shapes and colors, reproduce it even, then come back the next day and see that this is smaller, or this is larger, this angle is too steep or not steep enough, the dark here isn't as dark as the one there. I'm working on a still life drawing of two bowls and a small pot, and at the end of each day I leave the studio thinking things are right. Then I show up the next day...

This morning I was thinking about some friends and I made the connection that people too are not as easily understood as one would think, their true and accurate form not known. You can study their lines and movements, follow the trail of their actions, watch their expressions and listen intently to the words coming from their mouths--you come to believe you have them figured out, but you don't. You put your own interpretation on their thoughts or actions, see them through your eyes and coming from your experiences, not theirs. And although we think we know one another, most of us know only the person presented to the world. Even with family. Or perhaps especially with family, because we presume to know them better.

I don't think this is a bad thing. It is what it is. We are each the sum of our own experiences, and most of the emotions attached to those experiences bloom from within and for reasons we may not even know ourselves. You have to physically be a pot and hold it's memories to truly know it.

We should continue to study nature--pots and people--and remind ourselves that life is a series of corrections, both as an artist rendering a subject faithfully and as a person remembering that in our interactions with others, the good and bad, we are only human.

Pencil Sketches

Every morning students stumble into the main figure room, a large room with a central model stand under a big skylight, with eighteen easels forming a semi-circle wrapping around the stand. Five days a week we draw or paint the figure from nine to noon. We have three long poses (one 15-week, one 5-week, and one 12-week) throughout the course of a year, and numerous 4-session pencil poses on Tuesday and Thursday over 2-week periods.

The pencil drawings below were completed in either three or four sessions each. If I were to remain a student at the Atelier, I would really start to focus on my line work and hatching; till now I have been focused on trying to achieve accurate renditions of the anatomy and values I am seeing. The sketches are each approximately 8.5" by 11.5".

I will be trying to post all of my recent art work over the next several weeks. Be sure to check back!

Pencil sketches from 2009-2010 (click to enlarge):

Married!

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.