Art

Into Pergamon with Rob Anderson

| maggiebird
OH_AEGINA2444sm
Drawing by Rob Anderson

Last Saturday we went to see the show Into Pergamon by Rob Anderson (my teacher at the atelier). The show centers around a collection of drawings he did of the Great Frieze of the Pergamon altar that’s now in Berlin.

This is great stuff! His work is subtle, seemingly delicate at first, the charcoal like feather marks on the paper. But the longer you look at it, the more you see the strength and internal integrity of it. It comes into focus suddenly and forcefully, and simple charcoal and chalk drawings on brown handmade paper come alive with the clash of giants and gods at battle.

In his bio, it says, “He [Rob] did not in a moment of inspiration walk into his studio to spill out these skillful drawings in a fit of artistic passion. It didn’t take him a day to complete these works, nor did it take several days, or even weeks, but months of tedious and arduous work.”

It struck me that the time he took to make these drawings is almost as powerful as the drawings themselves. In our instant-society, where we expect everything to get done in less time than it takes to cook Uncle Ben’s minute rice, this kind of focus and dedication is rare.

And it makes me wonder if the new direction fine art will take will be back towards craftsmanship, back towards thought, and planning, and effort.

There is a movement, to be sure, of artists who want to study realism, but the big guns, the critics and columnists, the editors and galleries, don’t seem to value this, calling it a “populist movement.”

“Sheer draftsmanship,” they sneer.

But draftsmanship coupled with artistic vision…doesn’t that put a drawing or painting squarely back in to the realm of fine art? It becomes something that is valued not just for the thing itself, but the thought, dreams, and desires, and the time that went into the making.

Into Pergamon is at Ohlone College in Fremont until February 6, 2010. Give yourself plenty of time to see it.

Medieval art and me

| maggiebird

Cloisters

The-Virgin-Of-Chancellor-Rolin
The virgin looks great, but who told the chancellor this haircut was a good idea?

I am afflicted with art attention drift. After years of loving 19th-century realism, suddenly, after a first visit to the cloisters in New York City, I’ve become enamored of Medieval art. And not the later stuff, when artists were working out the rules of perspective and the craft of realism and coming up with beautiful renditions of the Virgin and baby Jesus blessing some guy with a weird haircut.

No, I like the early work, the cartoony figures, the lack of perspective, and the patterns. Lots of patterns. Because if they couldn’t draw a figure worth a damn, at least they could make beautiful patterns, compulsively covering church walls and painted parchment with animals, people, flowers, leaves, stalks, and bibs and bobs and swirling loop de loops.

James Gurney says this is called Horror vacui, the fear of open space. I don’t know if folks in the middle ages were particularly fearful of open spaces; I’m thinking it might have been more a function of some rich guy saying, “hey, Duke Weligsburdof in the duchy next door has half a wall that’s got paintings all over it. Be cool to have one of those too. I’ve got an empty castle wall here, and the son of the serf in cottage #5 is a pretty good painter.  Let’s fill this wall with pictures so it’s even more chock-a-block full of weird creatures and lovely maidens than Weli’s wall. Then we’ll have a dinner party, and we can all look at it. That’ll make Weli green with envy.”

It was a sure-fire way to impress the guests. In those days, painted, carved, or cast images were rare; there was little to look at other than the pile of garbage outside the south castle window. And church services were no doubt interminably long with that guy with the funny haircut droning on and on and on in Latin. All those intricate portals and tapestries, the crenelated baptismal fonts, the fancy work and bible stories in stone must have been like television for the Medieval man or woman, entertaining their brains while fueling them with stories and propaganda.

Today we are awash with images. We’ve got so many images, so much clutter (in the 21st century, society at large is suffering from horror vacui) that it’s a sign of wealth to have spacious houses empty of all but some uncomfortable furniture and an ugly rug. But nearly every household in America has a television. Sometimes every room in an American house contains a television.

And I suppose, like the complicated designs of Medieval art, television fills a vacuum in folks’ lives.

The practice of music and art

| maggiebird
Pastel pencil on colored paper
Pastel pencil on colored paper

This is a small drawing I made of my friend Cyndy. It’s from a photo taken as she was sitting around a campfire, playing tunes with a group of musicians.

I know Cyndy’s present teacher. He’s told me that she’s the kind of student a teacher loves to have. She really thinks about the music she plays, and she makes him think about it too. And she practices!

She’s passionate about her fiddle in the way most of us are passionate about a new romantic partner. But, come to think about it, I know a lot of musicians who are married to their instrument, and playing music is simply part of their everyday experience. I also know artists who feel the same way about their art. (I’m torn between the two. Do I play tunes, or do I draw? Tough question, that.)

Sometimes playing music or making art becomes a stale thing, or a stressful thing, fraught with needs and cravings that block the joy of our passions. But if we really think about what we’re doing, and lose ourselves in the process, suddenly the work becomes play, and we amaze ourselves at our success.

Shannon Heaton, one of my favorite Irish flute players, has a terrific blog at Whistle and Drum called The Inner Game of Irish Music about practicing the music. She’s talking about Irish music, but she could be talking about drawing, painting, old time music, classical music, dancing, or even just plain-old, everyday work.

Framing the figure

| maggiebird

BoyonTrainThis drawing I completed after visiting the Vermeer Milkmaid exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. What luck to be in the city while the Met had a special exhibit about Vermeer. I was able to study the paintings in real time, and try to understand what made them work.

I wish I could live in that museum (I loved From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler when I was a kid), but, alas, they will not let me. So whenever I visit New York, I spend as much time in the museum as possible, sketchbook in hand, trying to infuse my brain with master works. I don’t always understand what I’m learning while I’m at the museum, but somehow it ferments in my brain and bubbles to my conscious mind later.

One of the things that I noticed in Vermeer’s work was how he often framed the figure with geometric shapes. In A Woman Asleep, he frames the face of the young woman with a gray square. He often uses a wall hanging of a map as a geometric element that frames the subject—look at Young Woman with a Water Pitcher, Woman with a Lute, and Woman in Blue Reading a Letter. (Incidentally, if you’re interested in Vermeer, The Essential Vermeer is a terrific online resource.) But it really didn’t make a big dent in the attention I was paying to Vermeer’s color and brush technique.

But I must have filed this bit of framing arcana on top of one of the piles of information cluttering my mind, because it surfaced later that evening. After a three hour stretch at the museum, I tiredly took the train back to New Jersey where we were staying. I sat across the aisle from this young man who was trying to sleep, and took out my sketchbook to capture his lanky pose.

Suddenly I realized that it wasn’t his face (I could scarcely see it), or his figure that attracted my attention, but rather, the way he was framed by the dark of the window and the back of the seat. Light bulbs went off in my mind. This was what Vermeer was talking about when he use a shape to frame his focal point!

It’s a simple sketch, but it pleases me because it reminds me that I’ve discovered a new way of seeing.

Visiting Olana and the Hudson River

| maggiebird

OlanaWhile in upstate New York, we managed a quick visit to Olana, the castle-like home of Frederic Edwin Church, the 19th century landscape painter.

I’ve long admired the Hudson River School of painting, a style that celebrated nature, and especially the landscapes of the New World. During the 19th century it was hot stuff, but it fell out of favor when those darned impressionists brought their pastel-colored personal impressions to the art world. Fauvism (along with modernism) has ruled the art world for the last 100 years, but I think people are rediscovering the realist painters of the past.

Church was one of the most famous of the Hudson River School, known not just for his famous iceberg paintings, he but also paintings of the dark brooding Catskill forests and luminous skies reflecting in the shining Hudson River. Alive when artists could attain rock star status, Church was a box office draw. He also came from money, and had wealth at his fingertips.  So he built a beautiful, over-ornamented home on a hill top overlooking the river valley.

OlanaDetailOlana is a sort of homage to a Victorian-era Persian fantasy. There are Middle-Eastern motifs everywhere you look, right down to fake-Arabic script on the wall panels. Once breathtakingly colorful (Glittery silver and gold decorative painting on the door! Bright yellow drapes! Burgundy and green velvet furniture!), the colors have faded to the muted tones we associate with old photographs.

I have to admit, it’s a little like visiting the Winchester Mystery House in San Jose. It’s a bit over the top, and it’s hard to imagine people actually living and visiting amidst the ornamentation. But how prejudice against decoration are my 21st-century eyes, having been trained and honed by the naked lines and sparsity of mid-20th century modern?

The Victorian era was all about ornamentation, and Olana is a tribute to that design ethic. But more than that, the house is a series of frames for the surrounding landscape. Church wanted the house to frame his beloved Hudson River Valley, and every window and door opens on some incredible view (Unfortunately, a storm obscured the vistas when we were there, and so we only had more intimate views). Even the ornamental balustrades frame views in miniature.

OlanaFrame

It’s something I need to learn more about, this framing of the landscape. Too often I begin drawing before I’ve properly figured out the design of the landscape I’m trying to paint. Then I am overwhelmed by the whole thing and my painting (and my mood) falls apart.

Vacation journaling in a sardine can

| maggiebird

InsideAirplaneThis was done rapidly in pencil on a packed cross-continental flight for New York. You can barely draw on a flight like this. There’s no elbow room at all; there’s barely room enough to get your pencil and sketchbook out. There’s not a centimeter of extra space for your sketching arm.

Airlines have been packing flights full these days and I guess to make up for the relatively inexpensive airfare, we had to pay by sitting arsehole to elbow with the 169 passengers that a 737-800 seats.

2 bathrooms for those of us in steerage…I mean, coach. The passengers in first class had their own bathroom. Hidden behind a drawn felt curtain, they might have been engaging in the kind of rich people-on-an-airplane debauchery that those of us mashed into the rest of the airplane could only fantasize about. Like getting up and going to the bathroom when they needed to, rather than  planning ahead as if going on safari.

But in the back of the plane, our 2 bathrooms were fair busy. And 20 minutes after the flight attendants bustled through with the refreshment cart, doling out fizzy drinks and weak coffee, it got worse.  Imagine roughly 140 people hearing nature’s call to action in the same 10-minute period. At times, the gotta-go line stretched more than half-way down the aisle.

And that aisle was narrow. Exceedingly so. And here, dear reader, I’d like to make a plea.

People! When you’re waiting in line for the potty on an extremely crowded airplane—and believe me, I know it’s exhausting. I’ve been in that line too. But I don’t care how tired you are—please don’t rest your huge squishy bottom on my shoulder. Don’t rest it on anybody’s shoulder. Especially if said bottom is clad in a worn pink sweatsuit.

And if you do, be aware that some of the folks you’ve rested on might not be as polite as I am.  Some might be inveterate sketchers,  and upon seeing  that expanse of faded pink jersey, might possibly be overcome with the urge to sketch. The person on whom you’re leaning might just whip out their Tombow brush pen and sketch a little scene on your rear end.

Fear of sketching

| maggiebird
Sketch from Good Old Fashioned Bluegrass festival. While I was sketching, the woman sitting next to me struck up a conversation, and told me how much she enjoyed watching me draw!
Sketch from Good Old Fashioned Bluegrass festival. While I was sketching, the woman sitting next to me struck up a conversation, and told me how much she enjoyed watching me draw!

WordPress somehow keeps track of search terms folks used to get to my blog. One of the most frequently searched terms is fear of sketching in public.

I’ve written about being afraid to sketch in public before. I am constantly trying to overcome this fear, and apparently, I’m not the only person shy about public sketching.

I’ve been working on solving this problem, because one of the things I really want to be able to do before I die is sketch freely in public, with no shame. If that’s your goal too, here are some suggestions that have helped me.

  • Take some classes to improve your skills. This is top of the list. I’ve studied figure drawing with Rob Anderson at the Atelier School of Classical Realism for 3 years. It’s improved my skill level to the point where I can sketch people and have them look like people. That has allayed my fears incredibly.
  • Plan your sketch trip as if it were an expedition to an exotic country. Expeditions are hard. They are arduous. They can be dangerous. They are adventure that takes a lot of effort, so think ahead. Select your materials with care. Decide where you’re going (make a map if it helps you). Know how you’ll provide for your basic needs (what you’ll eat, where you’ll be able to go to the bathroom.) Once you’re on your expedition, be curious, look around you, document the expedition with sketches to describe the customs of the natives.
  • Choose places where you can sketch in obscurity. At first, it helped me to sketch in large public places like parks, where I could sit on a hillside with my back against some bushes (so no one could creep behind me and look over my shoulder at my drawing). I drew people who were far away, so they didn’t get self conscious that I was drawing them. I could have been drawing them, the view, anything. And I did draw them, the view, anything.
  • Pretend you’ve got no choice. When I went to the Good Old Fashioned Bluegrass festival, I pretended that I was on assignment for a brutal editor and had to come away with ten sketches. I just didn’t have any choice. I had to do it. The sketches didn’t have to be particularly good, but there had to be 10. That worked for me, as I’m used to deadlines and assignments.
  • BassplayerKeep it simple. Don’t try to create a masterpiece. That’s way too much pressure. Draw stick figures if you must. Anyone can draw a stick figure. Try just to get the action or composition down using stick men as shorthand. Stick figures are amusing, and a low commitment for the artist. Later you can hang skin and clothes on the little figures in a place where no one can look over your shoulder and criticize. Same with a landscape. Just try to get the bones of the landscape. Don’t worry about drawing every bush, tree, or leaf.
  • Remember that people don’t see your work the way you do. We artists tend to be our worst critics. We see flaws; others see beauty, or effort, or the coolness factor that you’re an artist.  They may even be thinking, “gee, I wish I had the courage to do that.”

A fiddle is only as good as it plays

| maggiebird

VuillaumeBack

This  fiddle I saw at the Good Old Fashioned Bluegrass Festival. The lady bought it in the 1970s. She thought it was a Vuillaume. Maybe.

VuillaumeBackCl

The name Vuillaume could mean anything. It’s like finding a fiddle in your grandmother’s attic, peering through the f-hole and seeing a  Stradivarius label. Probably not a real Strad. Lots of people have made lots of money selling instruments with phony labels. And musicians tend to give their instruments distinguished pedigrees.

VuillaumeScroll

But whatever this fiddle’s ancestry, it is a lovely piece of work, with a beautifully carved scroll, and cunning carved corners on the back, and Celtic-looking purfling. The scroll does place it sometime during the 19th or early 20th century—a time when ornamentation was popular on all things, and ornamented scrolls decked out many fiddles.

I’m not a violin connoisseur, so I didn’t know enough then to look closely at the painting on the back to see if it is inlay, painting, or both.

The most important things about a fiddle are how it feels when you play it, and how it sounds. An instrument can have the beauty of Grace Kelly, but if it shrieks like a toothless angry old witch, then it’s of no use.

The owner of this fiddle treated it with the casual attention you’d give a favored pet. It sat next to her as she sat listening to the music. She carried it around, cradled in her arms. She loved it. She said it had a great sound.

That’s all that’s important.

The long pose in a fast world

| maggiebird
SeatedLongPose
Pastel pencils, charcoal, chalk on toned paper

This pose, drawn at the Atelier School of Classical Realism in Oakland, took about 10 hours. I still have a few hours left (without the model) to “finish” the picture.

It’s very difficult to find a long-pose life drawing session that I’m able to attend the Bay Area. Most evening life drawing session poses max out at 20 minutes; a pose that lasts many hours, like the pose I drew here, seems to interest few evening artists. In our hyper-cyberspaced out world, even artists rush around like roadrunners on amphetamines.

And this style of drawing is unpopular these days. In my head I hear an art teacher I know saying, “your drawing is too fussy, too lifeless.” And on some levels I would have to agree with him. But during the course of this long pose I learned so much about color, form, proportion. It gives me a foundation for the next long pose, and hopefully that one will look  more free and less precious, because of the long pose, and not despite it.