This is the stage of a drawing when the positive fights the negative, being and non-being begin to jump back and forth for attention – and which area identifies as which is entirely up to you. One just has to trust that everything will find its place in the end. An end that is coming right up – I don’t go back.
Sometimes, you have to stop right in the middle of something because the front door blows open (lots of snow in the living room!) and the lights flicker. I have the woodstove cranked up and a flashlight in my pocket, and I’ll just have to redraw some of what I did tonight in tomorrow’s episode. Now, a break for shoveling.
This is the second installment in a series of photos of a drawing of St. John’s Day asters in a blue Mason jar. This record of work-in-progress is more interesting than I had anticipated, well, to me anyway. I’m conscious each night as I go to work on the drawing that there will be a particular geography to what I can get done – it’s very odd to see those boundaries recorded permanently in these photos.
Session Two:
Grape jelly in the cool winter light of the hoop house. Pastel on board, 16 x 20.
Life has been pretty creative, lately.
Strawberries and Grapes 20″ x 16″ pastel on board
Hansa roses and a sterling tea set on a sunny summer afternoon. Pastel on board, 18′ x 24″.
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
with 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!
Louis Harrison Barnard’s Japanese Tea Set, with cosmos and calendula blossoms.
This another post about a lost painting. Parts of it are quite lovely, but the situation has been lost and “the center cannot hold”. For some odd reason I feel better about these failed efforts if they can make one last blog post on their way out. I grow zinnias, french marigolds and cosmos every summer; perhaps I’ll even find the green globe vase and try again.
