Sketches From The Morning After Drawing Group

Another sketchbook page, and some drawings from my Tuesday drawing co-op. The five scratchy figure/portrait drawings are each from two-minute poses in a figure-dedicated sketchbook. I used an ultra-fine Sharpie, as I did in my free association. The other life drawings are charcoal pencil on Strathmore charcoal paper. Both papers are 9x12, with minimal cropping in PhotoShop.

Constant Blues and Battling The Art Of Portraiture

I haven’t posted for more than a week, the reason, either a case of the late winter blues, or one of being utterly spooked by LeBlanc’s Constant Battles. I took that sumbitch back to the liberry, leaving the last chapter unread. I did read the last couple of pages, so I know there’s no surprise happy ending.

LeBlanc is an academic, and the book, for him, is a way to show us what we’ve overlooked in studying our ancestors. For me, their benighted behavior is an allegory for our own, and it makes me think of something fictional adventurer Travis McGee said to Meyer, his economist sidekick: “Right now I’m...trying to work out a jigsaw puzzle where every piece is square, and when I get them in the right places, they make an abstract painting. But they also make an abstract painting any way I fit them together.” McGee settled on the right arrangement, and it was dangerous. For me the peril implied by our history of perfidy, is compounded with irritation. Where do we go from here? Not being able to solve the puzzle bugs the daylights out of me.

Enclosed, some recent drawings, good, bad, and promising.

The nice clean portrait of the young man with the soul patch, I did for the first of what I hope is a series of short newspaper pieces about busy and interesting neighborhood residents. Eric is a guitar teacher at the park building, with a plan to provide music instruction, something being scaled back in the financially strapped schools.

The double caricature is one whose subjects asked me to draw it. First iteration. The drawing of the man is on the money, the woman, recognizable, but hmm. Men are easier to caricature than women, because -- feminism notwithstanding -- even comical renderings must render them as desirable. How do I get a likeness of Lila that is as lush and alluring as she, and still a little goofy?

I think the messy one is the most exciting. I like the textures and contrasts. It is, in a word I have begun using to myself, painterly. On the other hand, I traded the clear and articulate quality, that I can get with simpler means, for excitement. I hope that the former will gel from the latter.

Beats Golf

This is a detail from a two-hour drawing from Monday night. The whole page wouldn't fit on my scanner. What I cropped were odds and ends from the studio floor, and my black-and-white rendering of a large abstract painting by Lisa Colwell.

Members of this co-op rotate modeling duties, with new members beginning in front of the group. Models are always clothed, which I value, since there are plenty of opportunities to draw nudes, but not that many to study clothing. I value narrative and anecdote, and the way we costume ourselves has meaning for me.

Shading and shadows are stamp-pad ink, applied with my fingers. I told another artist, Emma, that I did it so there'd never be any doubt about who had drawn this portrait.

The Feminist Artist And His Model

There’s a drawing I’ve seen reproduced once in a while. It’s a figure study, and I think it’s a Poussin (Nicolas, French, 1594-1665). The artist has rendered a seated female nude very solidly in black crayon or chalk. It’s startling, because the model is blindfolded, and the blindfold is itself a beautiful little drapery study. Of course the blindfold is there to maintain the model’s anonymity, but the state frequently binds the condemneds’ eyes. Am I asserting my values too absolutely by wishing that, three or four hundred years ago, a man whose business was to convey meaning with images, noticed the resonance, and felt a trickle of compassion for the anonymous woman he was drawing?

My models are comfortable being nude, and with their occupation. I know their last names, and if Barbara and I bumped into one, waiting in line for a movie, I would introduce them, and we’d chat. In a past post, I mentioned a model’s full name, and went back a few minutes later and removed the second half. As obscure as this blog is, I would hate to have some local idiot read that one Gudrun Q. McGillicuddy poses naked for artists, and take that as indication that he would be welcome to track her down and make a pest of himself, or worse.

As per usual, Tuesday night I was the only man in a room with five women, one of whom was sitting very still with her clothes off. One of the other artists skipped the five two-minute warm-up drawings to leaf through a book of Beatles photographs, and we gossiped about the love lives of people who are now old or dead. “Talkin’ ‘bout my g-g-generation.” There were pictures of Patty Boyd, who became Mrs. George Harrison, and Lisa, the model, mentioned that she had just watched A Hard Day’s Night, in which Patty Boyd appeared. I tossed out that Ms. Boyd did so in a very fetching schoolgirl uniform, and Lisa said something about men and their fascination with schoolgirl uniforms. Point to Lisa.

I wasn’t on top of my drawing. Lisa was sitting on a blue sheet, sometimes draping it over parts of her body. There were a lot of complex folds, and I was tired. Some of my drawings were okay, and some were b-b-bad.

After we had finished drawing, our hostess Betsy turned on the television to catch the election results, and it turned out that the Republicans had won the gubernatorial elections in New Jersey and Virginia that were supposed to be a referendum on the Obama presidency (Democrat Bill Owens, whom Republican Dierdre Scozzafava had endorsed upon leaving the race, did prevail over whatsisname in New York’s 23rd Congressional District). Betsy was distressed, and railed against bigots in general and Republicans in particular. I was standing in the door at this point, and Lisa squeezed by, so I said, “I’ll walk out with you.” Truth be told, I would have enjoyed staying and exchanging views with Betsy, and I wonder if she took my departure as abrupt or pointed, but it was late.

When Lisa and I reached the street, Lisa said she’d see me around, and turned left. I said I’m parked on Thirty-sixth to explain my turning left as well. I could almost hear the wheels turning in Lisa’s head, as she wondered if she had acquired an unwanted admirer. Drawing somebody’s naked body for two hours isn’t arousing. I’ve tried, experimentally, to work up a little arousal while drawing, but I always come back to the problem of translating what I see into marks on paper, without noticing when. People are real. I’m real. Lisa’s real. I’m not going to violate that.

As we walked under one tree, it was like walking on bubble plastic. Something was snapping under foot. I picked one of the things up. It was a pale orange fruit, bigger than a cherry, but smaller than an apricot. I tasted it, sweet but cheesy, sort of like Parmesan sherbet. That was way too goofy a thing for a lecher to do. If Lisa wasn’t convinced then, she was when I got into the car in front of hers and made a u-turn onto 36th Street.

Life Drawing Group

Tuesday night is drawing co-op. Ten or so middle-aged artists hire a model each week and take turns hosting, with wine and snacks. It’s sort of like a book club, only with nudes instead of literature.

My degree, such as it is, is in art, and I’ve been part of similar drawing groups before. My drawing is pretty good, although my hand isn’t super-steady. I’ve always had a kinesthetic sense of which direction my line is going --not just right and left, and up and down, but in and out. I like a sense of space and volume. Besides having a good sense of space, in the last couple of years I’ve gotten pretty good at proportion.

Making pictures is fun, but it’s always in the back of my mind that my art is subordinate to something else, describing a better way we could live. For a while I was drawing from a model three times a week, all day on Wednesdays, and wishing I could find two more sessions. I was working mostly in charcoal, trying to develop a style similar to Henry Yan’s. I was also interested in a Russian-New Mexico contemporary of Hopper’s and O’Keefe’s, Nicolai Fechin. I kept doing the same things, not making progress, and forgetting that I was learning this skill to communicate. Stony, a friend from another co-op was pretty skeptical of art’s being able to influence history, but that’s another discussion.

Tuesday is my only group now. I enjoy my friends’ company -- they came to my birthday party -- and a weekly workout helps me remember how to draw. It ain’t exactly like riding a bike.