The Joy of Drawing

I did this small drawing (6×10) yesterday from fast poses, about one to three minutes.  Now, a day later, it reminds me of Matisse’s painting, “Luxe, Calme et Volupté,” 1905.  Not in technique, but in the sense of pleasure that it conveys.   In the Matisse painting, as in my drawing, the nudes are at ease [...]

Read Full Post »

Life Drawing–Stabilo and Water

The Stabilo pencil is aquarellable.  That means water-soluble.  After I have some lines down, I like to make them bleed by running a water-loaded brush along them.  In that process, the brush will pick up some pigment, allowing me to continue sketching with a very pale wet line.  If I go over or through those [...]

Read Full Post »

John Marin at the Art Institute of Chicago

John Marin (1870-1954) painted his courageous watercolors in New York and Maine.  I always think of the moders as courageous because they were born into the staid, cluttered, dusty, repressed mores and fearful aesthetics of Victorianism and managed to break the bars of that cage.  They thumbed their noses at stiff conventions and instead duked [...]

Read Full Post »

The Pen is Mightier than the Boot

We have three-hour class periods.  That’s standard for art schools.  In a painting class, students count on a painting taking several class periods, maybe a total of fifteen or more hours.  But in a drawing class, the general assumption seems to be that you can finish a drawing in one three-hour session.  Well, sometimes you [...]

Read Full Post »

BEGINNER’S MIND

“I want something to look at,” she said, “and I want to spend time painting it.”    She wanted something close to Joseph Raffael’s watercolors, (>) though certainly not as huge.   She came to my plein air landscape class with the expectation of  spending  a couple of hours working on one watercolor, layering and slowly developing [...]

Read Full Post »

Watercolor

The popular misconception about watercolor is that it’s easy. How hard can this be?  You only use water, no complicated smelly toxic solvents.  All you need is some paper, some paint that comes neatly in small tubes, some brushes and the old pickle jar to wash your brushes in.  Phhfffffrrrhhh. Think again.  Watercolor wins hands [...]

Read Full Post »