More Abstract Expressionism

Playing around with ink and paper, and enjoying the lack of control. Most of them weren't fit to post. I always wish the gestures you can catch with spontaneous art processes could be controlled. Like writing and many other creative acts, you just do more of it and your percentage of successes goes up. Or you definition of success changes, perhaps.

This one reminds me of barbed wire I've photographed recently. I like it better than the first one, and I'll bet Gottlieb did a lot of clinkers too before he hit on a composition he liked.

Red Moon/Dandelion Sun

When I was studying art, I used to love Adolph Gottlieb, whom I emulated occasionally. I was taking calligraphy at the time, and we used to refer to his style as "Those Suns and Calligraphy like Gottlieb." While doodling past midnight a while back, I encountered this memory. I did the lines by marking across the edge of a piece of card stock, and continually changing the angle of the card. It's hard to explain, but try it some time as a way to fill the paper when nothing else occurs to you. Then the sun (or moon) seemed like the next step. You could do calligraphy in place of lines, but it would be more like a poster then, and the message of the words would predominate. Since the moon is full right now, maybe it's time for a mini-series in homage to Gottlieb. On reading his bio, I learned the following:
He was born in New York City, left high school in 1920 to work at odd jobs while taking night classes at the Art Students League with John Sloan and Robert Henri. He learned of the revolutionary breakthroughs in European painting & took a disappointing trip to Paris, (he met none of the French artists he had heard about.) Returned to the US to finish high school and continue painting. By 30's, Gottlieb exhibited regularly with "The Ten," a NY group of avant-garde painters. Around this time he also participated in the Federal Arts Project . After he moved to the Arizona desert in 1937 his work became more Surrealist and back in NY two years later he met European Surrealists who introduced him to the concept of the subconscious and the importance it can play in one's work.

Tree Poetry: More Experiments

I'm trying to learn more about Photoshop, because it takes my random works of art and gives them...stature. This is a photo of Eucalyptus leaf and bark, placed over the blue fabric photo I used under yesterday's "dancer". The third layer and the poem are on top. Trying to put it together was strange, because everything Photoshop feels so theoretical rather than real. You can create results you can't undertand, or don't see how to reverse, or in a format that seems to exclude certain uses of the image. But I still think artists can rejoice that there is such a good tool available to manipulate and multiply the uses of our images. Now, if I can just learn how to bend it to my will without letting it humiliate me too badly.

The poem, by the way, is one I started using for calligraphy practice so long ago, by Karle Wilson Baker. Whenever I set out to do lettering, this one creeps back out of my memory and onto the page. It's nice, though. It goes on for four more stanzas, but I always liked the first and third. Maybe I'll use the whole poem sometime.

Desert Dancer

I've set myself the task of learning a bit about using "layers" in Photoshop. The image in black and white is a sketch of a statue outside the Phoenix Art Museum. The Blue image above it is a snapshot of a beach wrap I picked up last summer at Venice Beach. The combined image at top was created (eventually) but I'm not sure how. I think it was necessary to save the blue layer as a PDF in order to add it to the drawing which was a JPEG. Then the whole thing was locked together but when I tried to add it to the blog, it was still a (forbidden) PDF, so I had to re-save the final image as a JPEG again. Oh, well ... I'm just glad I have something to show for my first attempt. Enjoy.

The Blues on Sunday

I was in a blue mood today, decided to take a walk around the lake down in the park. Fresh air, happy families, people fishing, ducks...

I ran across the above musicians practicing beneath a ramada. He was playing his upright bass while she leaned against the side, singing blues songs. I sat on the grass & from a distance drew these sketches. Back home, I arranged them on one of the backgrounds I have been experimenting with. This one is Speedball brown waterbase blockprint ink, swirled on with a paper towel. It reminds me of the color of a bass violin. When I was done, the paper plate I'd used to mix the paint looked interesting- so this abstract doodle in Prismacolor is the result.

I've been going through my sketchbooks, covering all the empty pages with different tones to make them more inviting. My tendency to use printer paper for art is a serious bad habit that needs to be corrected.

Hand, mine

What shall I say about this hand? It's holding a pen. When it writes (this hand), it pours out a great deal of nonsense, and a few marvelous insights. Sometimes it will neither write nor draw, but only hold a book to read. It works hard all day doing repetitive tasks and sometimes lifting heavy things, or sorting them. It likes to drive cars, stroke animals, pick up rocks. Yesterday afternoon it tapped nervously while waiting for something. Today it held onto a camera and took some wonderful pictures. Now it's typing up this note. Here is my hand.

If There Were No Lines

http://www.lightmanifest.blogspot.com/

There seems to be an engine that starts me seeing and wanting to draw. I've found a powerful one in my little digital camera. For years I "saw" but had nowhere to put the intensity. After a while, I learned to draw in my mind what I had no time to really draw: at various jobs, while raising kids, while remodeling houses, etc, etc.- all the things we do. Now making up for that is a big priority. The little camera, like a net gathers up all those fleeting impressions and saves them valiantly for me to process later. Framing things in the LCD monitor trains me, and this helps to decide what is interesting and worth further investigation. Learning from so many wonderful Flickr photographers is like being in a worldwide school. Here are three of my captured "sees" and what they led to. Using light and tone rather than line is very satisfying. It's a good reminder that most lines, like the boundaries of nations, are created in our minds.

Lines on Paper, Fallen Leaf

The most interesting ideas come when one has no intention of doing anything serious or "postable." I like the left side of the lettering, and with work, may be able to get the slant of the letters consistent. The graphite drawing was starting to smudge all over, so I laid a bunch of prismacolor on top in a warm cream shade, and then re-drew into that. Liked the texture of drawing back into the waxy pencil and it seemed be creating interesting effects. The leaf and its shadow was the first thing, lettering was an afterthought. I'm using that technique whereby you tie two pencils together and use that for calligraphy effects. My calligraphy skills, obviously, are rusty.