Value Checking

Here's a progressive of the sketch I'm working on for the festival. After working on it for a while, I needed a bird's eye view, and a clue as to what values to put where. My scanner cropped off the two edges, so imagine there is more there. I will tone down the vividness somewhat, but I love the juicy colors and utopian feel of fruit crate labels, and that is the look I am going for here. I noticed (after scanning) that she reminds me of Toni Braxton, whose "Unbreak My Heart" I used to play endlessly!

Since I'm doing this sketch in Prismacolor pencils, I have to put the colors on opposite how they go in Pastel. Light colors go on first here, but on the street, colors will go dark-to-light.

Face on newsprint

I'm using newsprint to practice making quick, large drawings. For some reason, the colors are really wonky when I use my digital camera instead of the scanner. It's too big for the scanner.

Since they seemed to have either a blue cast or a yellowish one, I set the camera on "sepia" and gave it a brown cast.

Really though, it was just plain pencil on newsprint.

Spirit Bird

Even though I swore "no new drawing" for the street painting, I am designing something specifically for a 6 x 6 foot piece of parking lot. I drew while on vacation ( we went to the mining & ghost town of Jerome north of Phoenix.) I drew these on the trip. After working up the figure (left) I felt her arm was all wrong and should be bent. Then I couldn't decide what to put in the hand. Finally chose a bird, but not a solid one. I may draw it last, transparent so her hand shows through. Did I get the idea from being in a famous ghost town? A spirit bird flying from her hand? And, there's not enough water at the bottom and side . . .the fish are supposed to have more room. Really, I have a lot of figuring to do. Next time I won't draw on lined paper, which just confuses things further!

What I look forward to immensely, is sitting in a big black square, with time to draw! It feels like magic drawing living things, right on the street! I've always enjoyed the idea of making something from nothing.

Asking

This figure's supposed to be reaching out, but I ran out of paper before the hand, and it was too late to change scale. I like the idea of the hand in back supporting her though. I've had figures with the supporting hand in front too, and like the way it anchors a figure and makes it seem more solid. The background went badly and I could not rescue it. Oh, well.

I will be away for a few days, but I promise I'll be drawing every day and I'll post when I can.

Practicing with this Tutorial

Here I'm working out the kind of details I'll need for the upcoming street painting fest. This eye is utterly without subtlety but it's an eye... and I need to keep practicing them. I want to create a figure whose expression pulls the viewer into the piece. This one looks merely startled. There's also the problem of overworking - I did that between the eye and brow here.

Melanie has a really good tutorial on making effective eyes. She also demonstrated at last week's workshop. One useful tip was that, on black, the base color for the white of the eye should be gray. This fact alone was tremendously helpful because once you introduce white into the picture, you can't seem to ever get rid of it. This is a nice steel gray pastel paper.

Mendocino Fernscape

I recently played around with this book cover art to make a digital art piece. I had photocopied the cover, and held the photocopy up to my window with the ferns underneath it. The ferns are pressed from a trip to Mendocino, California 2 years ago. I digitally manipulated the colors to create purple on the trunks. Then I added a block of green at the bottom and drew in the moon in Photoshop.
This kind of art is complete escapism, and a wonderful way to relax.

Shadow of the Moon

Even the shadow of the moon could not make me sleepy last night ! But a little cooler than it has been when the sun goes down. This artist has invited us to draw every day this month of October. I have the upcoming streetpainting festival on my mind (October 18-19) and this shadow sketch is a reminder not to take my chalk art so seriously, and to paint on a street, or my driveway or the patio just because I can.
Another artist , an expert in tracing shadows, is the impulse for this. Then I added little text in Photoshop. The following morning I snapped it by daylight. I really would love to do a seated person this way. In Arizona, drawing shadows in daytime is just too hot. Only nighttime shadowstalking is cool enough.

Pastel and California Shiraz on concrete.

Chalk Art on the Street

Our community will finally have it's first Street Painting Festival! I have jumped on board. (Over 10 years back, I did a festival in San Rafael, and really loved it.) I've always dreamed of a chance to do this again. This morning about 20 (out of 150 total) artists met to discuss tips and techniques for the event, then met in the parking lot to practice. Artist Melanie Stimmell is shepherding us along, and she's been really generous in sharing methods, photos, and generally helping pull the event together. Melanie does street painting all around the world. If you've never seen her wonderful work, there's lots online, including video of her at work on really large pieces.

To see other street painters, search under madonnari.

One of the tenets of doing street chalk art is to accept the surface, and work with it. Melanie showed us ways to minimize holes or dips in the pavement, and how to make cracks work in your favor. She showed how to layer chalk without drowning in powdery residue. She demonstrated blending thin layers to create an underpainting, and when to stop blending. It was soooo much fun!

One thing I learned today was to build my design with larger images.

Rough texture can make delicate rendering pretty difficult. The close-up test drawing shows the problem I was having. My actual square will be 6 x 6 feet, so there should be no problem in upping the scale. This face was about 8 inches chin-to-hairline. I'll need to make the main figures larger than that I guess. Haven't decided on the image yet.

She Waits

This idea might work as a mural. I need to develop it a bit more. The bird is supposed to be a gull, but doesn't quite make it. As usual, the wrong paper was at hand when the idea arrived. Even so, I kind of like her.

Late Night MeetUp

Driving home from working late, I notice the street light with its halo of moths. I invented the people and the barrel because the light all by itself didn't seem "lonely" enough. (I'm sure there were people there earlier, so I put them in.) Maybe they are ghosts.

"On-the-Fly" @ the Library

Like many of you, I sketch in random moments. At the library, when a book isn't in the system but we need to check it out to somebody, we catalog it "on-the-fly"- a phrase I like. It sounds so liberating. "I am on the fly!"

Wish it were that easy with people, to let ourselves be on the fly when the day just isn't working out for us.
Time once again to scoop up these sketches and share them.

Sunday Inversion

I've been visiting Margaret's blog and watching her adventures in inverting images. Here are two of my products from this fascinating procedure.

I have been wondering how it would work, to create a drawing in exact reverse colors, so that when inverted it would create a positive image. It seems as though this would be a good exercise in color theory, understanding a color's complement. It also tempts you to think about the sense of "oppositeness" and what that means.

Sometimes life's dramas have me imagining some other-world running parallel to this one, all the time. We can step over into it for a completely different perspective on things. Inverting a drawing in Photoshop is just a metaphor for that.

Screen Capture: Edward Olmos

This sketch was drawn from a freeze-frame while watching Battlestar Galactica. Edward Olmos was pondering something in his good, steady, patriarchal way and made a good subject. He has a wonderful face for portrait studies because it is so irregular and craggy and human. This doesn't really capture him, (not enough crag) but was a good exercise anyway. I cannot help it: I love that show.

Haiku Lady

Sometimes I just don't want to finish a sketch if it feels nice in an early stage. This little sketch is lime green Prismacolor and a bit of crimson pastel rubbed in. Just for a change, I'm posting it and then I'll post a couple of progressives until (hopefully) I haven't ruined it. That is a definite possibility. But...ruining things helps artists learn too, right?

At this stage a haiku seems appropriate but I don't know any. Do you?

How about this one?

"Pale springtime sketch

Famous drawings crowd my mind

I drop the chalk"

A Word About Wordle

I felt like doing some blog housekeeping, and like hanging a few pictures over the sofa, I used a program called "wordle" to arrange the words in my blog introduction. Allowing the randomized text to sort itself over and over is interesting, and I tinkered around with the black and white one in Photoshop to make it seem hand lettered... well, sort of. Try Wordle yourself.

To save it as a JPEG is a little tricky, but it can be done.

Zohreh in Orange Chador

While reading The Saffron Kitchen, I couldn't resist a takeoff on the beautiful cover photo by David Vintiner. Mine looks a little empty because the book title goes in the archway. I added a misty distant building - perhaps a mosque - instead. The book's setting is Iran and London.

Young girls are told a cautionary tale about a beautiful "wild girl," deaf and dumb (read: heedless of her parents wishes). ..who becomes pregnant. In various tellings of the tale, she is summarily stoned with the help of the village elder or escapes and has her child, or even gets revenge on the cruel village by summoning an earthquake upon them. Everywhere in the world, such tales are told to young women for caution or for subjugation. In the story she has wild hair and green eyes. Since she's turned away, I gave her a rebellious orange chador instead.

If this book appeals to you, here's a synopsis and reader's guide too. Now, to get back to that story...

Futuristic Doodling

Our library keeps reinventing itself, with mixed results. Lately we've been learning to use (and market) various book technologies to the public. The latest is downloading all sorts of books or movies or music. No need even to come to the library. I've been working up a few sketch ideas relating to people, print and mobility. It seems like everything is becoming more mobile, faster, and throw-away. The audiobook I downloaded last night to my Zen Stone MP3 player will expire and disappear all on its own. This paper airplane guy is taking the entire matter of books (as objects of reverence) very lightly.

I tried doctoring the sketch in Photoshop, and liked the one filled with a gradient tone. I added the other 2 for comparison. The one on black is sort of like what the kids used to draw on the blackboard when the teacher had his back turned.

The Hangout

At the library, this twelve-ish girl waited for a parent or a big sister. Claiming a chair near the entry, she casually hung, curled and draped herself in it's cozy arms. Flipflops and backpack went everywhere, just as if she was in her own livingroom...

Oh, I never did "live" in the library as some kids do. But I always, always found one in whichever town we lived. There I found books to carry back in our room or wherever we were staying while traveling. One summer when I was about this girl's age, we spent in Roseburg, Oregon in a small apartment across the street from the rail station. All night long the locomotive engines kept idling...and I read and read and read. It was a waiting summer, and at the end of that long summer we found a place in Ashland and we stayed there until I left for college. But I always remember that summer, and being that age, and the waiting for something to happen.

The Longing to Be Perfect

How many of us there are who build ourselves on a fresh scaffolding each day, hoping each time that what we build will withstand the deluge. The following is from a book by Don Richard Riso

"I now affirm...
that I am independent and capable.
that I can keep my own identity in groups and in relationships.
that I have faith in myself, my talents, and my future.
that I meet difficulties with calmness and confidence.
that I am secure and able to make the best of whatever comes my way.
that I am understanding and generous to all who need me.
that I act courageously in all circumstances.
that I find true authority within me."

Enneagram Transformations Release and Affirmations for Healing Your Personality Types Houghton Mifflin Company, 1993, 129 pages

Boxes

Most of the time I'm glad I get to work in a library. It brings stability and structure to an artist's life. Library work is a little anchor dug in, that helps me manage the rest of my life. I'm not any better organized, but I can separate out logic and illogic from each other. Even the touch of books is interesting: the covers, papers, and other people's great illustrations! And of course all those words. Maybe it's like sending the adult to work and then the kid can play with a camera or pencil or idea. Sometimes I play at snapping interesting photos before we open or sketching intriguing people or poses on scraps of paper at the desk. It's fun to describe someone as they walk through the lobby, noting things like clanky chains, exotic hair: all the ways people are interesting.

But the work can drain the heart out too. Some job I didn't do well enough (for me) or maybe good intentions that vanished into office politics. The structure of organizations like mine puzzles me sometimes. "Policy" can drain all the color and liveliness from a job, and regulate the creative spark so closely folks can barely breathe. People start feeling wingless and rooted to the ground. Today I rushed home to pour several pages of words onto a notebook, and then drew these two sketches. I tried to show my abstract feelings with the bird drawing, but then the other one, the figure in the box came. She probably comes closer to the truth.

Dreaming Peace

Lately, life has been getting me down. I seldom remember that expressing something...anything...visually can be a way to clear out the mental clutter. Sometimes creating a visually chaotic piece helps, or expressing a state of mind. Last night I found myself doodling an ideal world in which peace pours down on us like the wings of a dove - or in this case an arctic tern. Far below, velvet folds of earth flow into an unreal river. Tall spires of evergreen surround the bottom. Everything in this world is stable and at peace. Even the square format reinforces this. Haven't you ever wished that time could stand perfectly still for just a bit so you could rest and collect yourself? I remember in one of the Chronicles of Narnia books, there is a pool where people stop and sleep beside the water. While they sleep, time has stopped and any worries or consequences are suspended in time for them. At least this is how I remember the story...

Morose

This sullen figure sort of drew herself. Maybe she's out of my subconscious, because I started out to draw someone merely tired after a long day at work. Instead I get this. Hmmm. She can only be described as morose. If her eyes were downcast, she could perhaps be merely thinking.

Two Looking Up

It's very hard for me to "get over it" and post work in progress. Doing so makes me feel vulnerable because the finished idea is not yet in sight. The drawings here are part of an idea I've had for a while: someone looking up and shading their eyes, or the shadow of an airplane falling across various things (including someone's upward turned face.) I drive back and forth under the flight path of our airport, and love watching the underbellies of jetliners slip overhead with their mighty roar. I AM that person looking up, even though in reality I must keep both hands on the wheel and most of my eyes on the road. Sometimes I pull off the freeway and drive along side streets where I can pull over and get out of the car. I know eventually all these goofy sketches will enable me to nail the exact feel I am searching for. In the meanwhile, I trust you with less than my best art.

Lighting the Torch

I found it impossible not to respond to the Olympics images on TV last night!I especially liked the torch lighting sequence. Something about that dreamlike runner treading air around the rim of the stadium appealed to me. I liked the blending of the surreal and impossible with those images from history rolling out behind him. It did feel like the person who conceived it was telling about a dream; perhaps a national dream or a dream the human race as a whole is dreaming. Even though the first day was marred by tragic events and international conflict, I will remember the torch lighting. Actually, I was sitting in the same spot on my sofa where I first watched the World Trade Center attacks and that coincidence crossed my mind. Looking at the sketch here, I realize it reminds me a little of aboriginal rock art I've recently seen in the BBC production of "How Art Changed the World." That's a wonderful series by the way and I recommend it.

Also, here is a link to a video recording of the part of the ceremony I used for this drawing.

More Square Stories

I was thinking the other day of heated discussions I have with my Life Partner about doing art and whether I am mistaken in wanting to sell the work in order to feel successful.

These little windows or stories-in-a-box may not mean anything, but they are satisfying to make. You take one particular feeling and just express it simply. I think the urge is to be understood, and selling somehow implies that someone somewhere does understand. At any rate the buyer has seen something in your work that struck a chord.

The girl read the book and became engrossed in the writer's words. His story has grabbed her imagination.

The other figure is filled with the frustration of not being heard or understood. The feeling of speaking one's piece alone in the wilderness is a scary one: like the un-heard fallen tree.

Working in a library, I see how much reading means to people. As an escape, as inspiration, for insight into one's circumstances or life path. I don't think people go to art in this way, expecting instant gratification. It's easy for people to talk about books, hard to talk about art.

Hot Summertime Blues

I was out today in the heat and hating my hot car, the errands I had and the constraints I was feeling in my life. I turned on the car stereo to "Beautiful Day." Thought then how this current life I'm in and this exact routine I was so hating would seem a thing of beauty tinged with nostalgia if - in some future I can't see - I had no sight, was injured, had lost family, job or any of the simple freedoms I was enjoying today by driving to the store and paying for things. There are so many things to complain about in the physical world if you let yourself.

The fact is, I have let myself drift away from daily art again. All last week though, each night after work I made myself draw a square and put something in it. These drawings have accumulated, and here are a few of them.

My intent was just to express one simple concept about life or work or change. It's so different than drawing from life or direct observation. You know it's right when it feels right rather than looks right. The top one is based on a view of Jericho from a video I love, "How Art Made the World". The figures are thoughts about power. I've never focused on blue before, but it was the pencil that came to hand, and it is sort of interesting. These hot summertime blues.

Dreams and Fears

I have been away for a while, not doing art but doing photography. It's a wonderful release of stress and so immediate: that little camera goes everywhere and takes no time at all to grab a moment. I miss drawing though, and lately images have begun to haunt me. Some of them have come out of dark feelings and even from dreams. This one was originally on white paper, but I couldn't resist the inverted image. The original is at the right, for reference. (Flickr link)

Do you also see your fears and dreams more clearly when you put them on paper?