Almost Full.

I have a "half-full cup" feeling about this drawing. On the one hand, I am pleased with the way there is a semi-abstract, gestural quality to the finished piece: you know that it depicts rushing water, but the cropping and aspect ratio keep it from being recognizable as a specific vista. On the other hand, what is on paper does not match what was in my mind's eye as I was creating the drawing. I have decided to not be overly concerned with this, and continue to let the drawings "flow" and evolve, letting the marks fall as they may. OK, maybe "three-quarters full".

This drawing is a touch different from previous works in that it is multimedia. I started in the usual manner of blocking in areas of color in pastel, but then added some sprayed watercolor to increase the depth of color. There is also some fain line work added in in pen and ink, followed by heavier areas of pastel, and the highlights are pulled out using the eraser. Some of the fine squiggly highlights were achieved using an eraser stub clamped in the bit of a 1/4" drill.

The Beginning and The End.

This drawing marks a beginning of a new series that I hope to complete this summer: my first series of land-inspired "scapes". I do not want to brand them "landscapes" because they are not derived directly from visons or images of the the land or sea, but rather, are based on impressions of land, sea, and human events that intersect. I want to avoid the "horizontal view of the nice barn by the tree" type of thing and create a image that evokes an emotion derived from a place or event, and subject-free.

The recent horrible and damaging events of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico provoked me to thinking about creating images that are triggered by events in, by, and on nature, both man-made, as well as part of the natural process of the planet evolving.

POSTSCRIPT: Tentatively titled Hubbel, this was inspired by a photo taken by the Hubbel Telescope: facinating that space can be colorful and complex. This drawing took a while to reach conclusion. It is not that I had trouble with certain areas, it just, well, took longer to reach an end than I anticipated. I am not sure the reason for this, or if this is actually an "issue". Nevertheless, it is good to get this one off the easel and on to the next.

Necessity is the Mother

A while back, I needed to protect a lower area of a drawing when heavily scrubbing in black chalk on the upper area. I work in pastel, standing up, the paper mounted on a large easel, and one of the by-products of pastel is fine dust. Combined with gravity, this can be especially problematic as the dust tends to settle down on the lower portions. Dark color, black chalk in particular, is hard to remove without smearing already-drawn sections. I used paper to mask off and protect these lower sections of that drawing and when I removed the paper was struck by how the tone differed in the areas I had just drawn.

I decided to work in the use of some masking in my most recent drawing. While still abstract in the sense that I wasn't working from a subject, or preconceived plan, I noticed how it was looping back to a more recognizable shapes and forms of my figure drawings. For the time being, I am not sure what to make of this and will just let it be.

Is Horizontal Necessarily Landscape?

Long before the computer print settings of Portrait and Landscape, for vertical and horizontal respectively, modern art grappled with whether or not the orientation of an image carries a particular connotation. It is for this very reason that I often chose to work in the square format: preconceived connotation, if any, is eliminated. There will be those who look at this drawing and swear that I have done a landscape drawing, by the very nature of its horizontal aspect, as well as components that could be interpreted as earth, water, or sky.

When I began this drawing, nothing could have been farther from my mind. I was working in my current method of letting one stroke and color lead to the next. Additionally, I wanted to employ a technique that I had used in many of my figure drawings of scrubbing out the highlights with the eraser, and erasing areas so that only the barest hint of color stained the paper. Only when I finally stepped back and surveyed the result did it dawn on me that I may have drawn a landscape. For the record, it is titled Sunday Morning.

Finding the Edges

This drawing was a joy to complete, with each area coming together effortlessly. The inspiration for the palette came from the color of the water surrounding Hawaii, and in particular, Kailua Beach. I am pleased with how I found the edges of each shape, in hindsight perhaps too much so.

It was recently mentioned that I appear to be going somewhere with this series, but have not completely arrived. I sense this as well: what I am striving for is how those edges blend into and emerge from the overall color field, creating a constant, vibrating rhythm.

First One, Then The Other

I used the first drawing shown in the previous post as a catalyst for this second one in the left panel. I positioned a second sheet to the left of the first, and started off again, one color leading to another, one shape after another. In this drawing, I wanted the black to be less of a "background" and more of an active, integral foreground component. Whereas I cannot completely agree with Renoir's statement that "black is the queen of all color", I wanted to work toward balancing black against the others. I am not completely pleased with how the black works here, it is still lingering "behind" and may use a more monochrome palette in future drawings until the balance of foreground and background is to my liking. Nonetheless, I am quite pleased with working abstractly, as the pure joy of drawing colors and shapes, unweighted by the pressure of an representational image, is exhilarating.

Something Different

"Make a mark, do something to it, do something else to it."

--Jasper Johns

Or something along those lines. As mentioned in previous posts, I have been wrestling with a couple of different approaches, trying to work through keeping drawing from stagnating. After the last multi-panel drawing, I stepped back and decided to give figure drawing a break for awhile. I want to concentrate on the act of drawing itself, without being encumbered with a subject. Frequently I find myself concentrating on getting the figure/subject just right, rather than enjoying drawing.

The right panel of two, built of one stroke of color after another, just letting the drawing evolve on the page.

A Look at the Whole: Final Thoughts

After the last row was completed, I taped all nine sections up on my studio wall, and stood back to view the final for the first time as a whole. I must say I was quite struck by the scale. I knew how big the final was going to be (each panel is 20" wide), but until I saw them all in place up on the wall, the drawing didn't have a "wholeness" or sense of space.


Some other thoughts that come to mind: does the individual tiling effect add or subtract from the whole? Other than the drawing experience of working incrementally, focused on individual sections and not concentrating on the overall, is this sectional drawing method any better? And does it matter? One thing I can say is that it is a very valuable tool for me, allowing me to intently concentrate on process rather than product, and if that is the sole by-product of this exercise, then it has been valuable.

The Bottom Three

I finished off the bottom row of three in much the same manner as the others: all in one pass, working directly in colors with no under drawing, focused on each section rather than the overall. One of the byproducts of this method is the unpredictability. This can be easily seen in the lower left panel, which is noticeably out of proportion/scale with the middle panel. Interestingly, I do not find this objectionable, it lends a degree of randomness fitting the overall working method, and certainly helps me be comfortable with "happy accidents", as an instructor once called them.

The Middle Three: Subtle Drift

In a flurry or work, I have laid in the basics for the middle three drawings. As I work on each panel, one thing that I am aware of is drift. With each drawing, I let the previous one lead. I become more interested in softness, the colors undulate up close as I draw, Rothko-esque as it were.The effect is ever so vaguely like writing repetitive sentences on a page, and each subsequent line slightly droops as it is written. I also am less focused on the final outcome. No telling what the final product will yield, but the process is invigorating.

The First Third

Drawings Two and Three follow to complete the first third of this nontych, if the jazz parallel of a nonette applies. I'm am trying to keep in mind the previous drawing when completing each subsequent one, but not comparing to the point that I am sacrificing uniqueness for continuity. There will be dissimilarities with each component, that is the point. Individual portions combine to form a composite that exceeds the parts.

Moving on to Something Bigger.

After breaking for the holidays, developing some marketing materials, and updating my website, it is good to be back at the easel. During the process of reviewing images of my last six months work, I realized that I needed to loosen up a bit. I took a break from nude figures and did a series of drawings based on images pulled from current events. I focused on being gestural and less planned, with little or no under drawing. While I was not satisfied the final drawings, I was pleased with the way that I was drawing.

Two aspects that have been in my mind for a while are scale and series. I work at a four foot square easel and have been looking for a way to produce bigger drawings, without having the paper flop over the edges and become creased and stained. One solution is to break the final image up into sections of manageable size. An interesting by-product of this process is that, by working on portions of a drawing, I am one more step removed from the final image, less likely to be focused on "getting it just right" and more attentive to the act of drawing itself.

The latest drawing will be composed of nine sections, each measuring 20 inches square, and will yield a final that is five feet square: my largest drawing in over 30 years! Here is the first panel, and subsequent posts will detail the progress.