This is a study for a larger work that also features with roses, watermelon, green grapes and tiger lilies. I thought I ought to be familiar with some of the basic parts before I start on the larger chaos.
Tea Pot Study, 14" x 14", pastel on board
Posts Tagged ‘drawing’
New work
Friday, July 2nd, 2010Celebrating the return of images
Monday, March 29th, 2010with new work. This is “Watermelon and Pears”, pastel, 24 x 18 inches on board.
I have one more drawing planned from my set-ups in the hoop house over the summer. The light in there is diffuse and very white. I plan to start the 2010 flower season by constructing a table-top in the house to take advantage of a large south facing window for compositions with bright slanting planes of lights and shadows, yellow highlights and winking green glass bowls. I’m looking for an abrupt transition from Renoir to somewhere past Janet Fish – can’t wait!
Jerusalem Airlift
Thursday, March 11th, 2010Jerusalem is an adjective in my family; it denotes a similarity in a New World object to something from the Old. Jerusalem artichoke (Helianthus tuberosus) isn’t even remotely related to an artichoke, but the taste is similar. Jerusalem Cherry, (olanum pseudocapsicum), is a member of the nightshade family with poisonous fruit – small, round, bright red fruit that look something like cherries. The Old World names were good enough, but the distinction had to be made lest you make a fatal pie out of New World cherries.
My family wrote hundreds of letters when I went away to college. Going away to college was new, but they’d had experience with going away to war and that’s how they approached it. Hundreds of letters about food. About their lives back home, actually – but I’d never realized that food was so much the overarching motif of those lives. I’m working the letters up into a collection. The Old World sent food, but the New sent a facsimile – a Jerusalem Airlift.
Mary came back to the Firehouse after, and we arranged platters of meats, breads and salads for 100. They gave us much more and also sent a beautiful whole ham for Mother and Ben. Dad cut it in chunks last night with the big knife so it could be divided easily. Mother froze the bone for soup later on. PS Thought I’d send nuts – maybe you can use a hammer and something for a pick.
It is supposed to snow this afternoon 2 – 8″ stopping around midnight. I am working overtime tomorrow, then on Sunday we are having your father’s birthday party. He wants that coconut pineapple cake of Doris Watkins’. It always falls apart, but he always asks for it.
I have plenty of excerpts to work with, and hope to begin setting up material to draw as illustrations. (I’m going to skip the ham.) A perfect frontspiece for the book, I think, will be a picture of me standing ghostly in the back yard, holding a layer cake.
New work
Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010
Louis Harrison Barnard’s Japanese Tea Set, with cosmos and calendula blossoms.
New work
Saturday, February 6th, 2010
Birch St., Bangor Maine
Study on Jacopo Carucci Pontormo
Tuesday, January 26th, 2010
“The Deposition”
And now, for something completely different, my warm-up page for this drawing. Sadly, I didn’t get to use the hat.
Study on Rubens, via Loomis
Wednesday, January 20th, 2010Andrew Loomis wrote a lovely, useful and rather dated book entitled Fun with a Pencil – How Everyone Can Easily Learn to Draw. It’s a wonderful book, and he’s not lying. “Start with a circle”, he says, “it doesn’t matter if it’s as lopsided as the family budget, it will work”. He continues to chatter and encourage through nose lines and foreshortening, mocking up whole interiors in two point perspective and illustrating types through racial stereotypes. His books are a rare sort of useful fun; a combination of how to draw big ears and freak hats with accurate information about how the human body hangs together – and how to draw its shadow.
I took a few nights off and drew exercises out of the book. When I’d had my fill of bushy eyebrows and huge ears (Loomis is inordinately fond of drawing old men), I tried a study of Rubens, “Rape of the Daughters of Leucippus”. Sisters Phoebe and Hilaeria were abducted by Castor and Polydeuces, and of course their cousins Idas and Lynceus avenged them, killing Castor and starting the chain of events that led to the Trojan War. This is the most popular scene in that long chain because it involves beautiful half-draped women being swept up on horseback, or grappled with, or clinging to, swarthy men. I think this Rubens is the most intimate interpretation: note how Hilaeria’s and Lynceus toes are rested together, and her hand on his foot. In many places the participants are locked together like puzzle pieces, trapped by the horses rearing dangerously close.
The painting suited my purposes nicely – all that force and direction expressed in twined limbs and rounded flesh is the perfect exercise for the theory that all animal action can be drawn from a foundation of spheres and dissecting lines. So, Rubens via Loomis:
The one that got away, part 2
Monday, December 21st, 2009
Land O’ Lakes Iris and Sunflowers 18 x 24 pastel 2006
The “one that got away” series is all about work on its way to the dumpster. I have one more chance to record the remains, and this is it. “Land O’ Lakes” was my first pastel after a long period of working in oils. My schedule does not allow long stretches of time to set aside for painting and I was continually grousing about dry paint, dry canvases and ruined brushes. My husband, and fellow painter, suggested I try a medium that was dry to start with and eliminate the problem at the root. I love living with another painter – it would have taken me another year to figure that out.
“Land O’ Lakes” was named for its resemblance to the actual lakes and not the butter. I have another yellow iris called “Evening Sky” – it’s very confusing. That pale blue translucence makes a beautiful flower but a very difficult drawing. And there are other problems: the composition is large and sprawling, the figures complex and the color range much too close for my inexperience. Also pastel is very fragile, even on the very forgiving surface of the Ampersand board. You’ll notice the turquoise vase is looks flat and unconvincing because I added layers of chalk to get it right. Doesn’t work, does it?
Another day, another drawing to Strawberry Hill.
New work
Monday, December 14th, 2009
Fortunately, I live with someone who can code, heck, someone who speaks DOS. Not that he needed much of his expertise to show me how to link the small image above to a larger version. It was actually pretty easy with WordPress. Go ahead, try it out – this little 9″ x 12″ drawing can be seen almost full size, with all it’s marks and faults in evidence. Yikes.
Still life painting is a wonderful way to interact with objects. The fruit, or flowers, or dead birds and whatnot are certainly vital – a way of demonstrating the passage of time and fleeting nature of existence. The vase, the plate and the Mason jar represent the inert – rocks and earth – and provide contrast to petals and feathers. I use old things; dishes with chips and huge antique sugar bowls with brown spots and worn handles, slumped glass and pewter. The willoware plate in this drawing is so old the decals have flowed together to mute the edges of the pattern. It has endured a century of casual use and outlived all its set-mates to end up in a painting – fragile yet enduring.
New work
Sunday, December 13th, 2009
Hansa Roses, 18 x 24, pastel on board.
Rosa ‘Hansa’ Rose 7×7′ Unknown parentage. Schaum and Van Tol, Holland, 1905. Large 3″ very fragrant full (25-30 petals) purplish-red flowers bloom throughout early summer with rebloom in fall. Large vigorous vase-shaped mounded shrub. Glossy dark green disease-free foliage turns yellow-orange in fall. Prolific large showy red-orange hips. Hardy to Z3.