Portraits

Poor little rich girl, in my mind

| maggiebird
Graphite sketch after Reubens on Strathmore Smooth Bristol Visual Journal

The model was clearly upset. She couldn’t sit still, let alone maintain a pose. It was wiggle, sift, sigh, and sink for the entire time.

Graphite sketch after Reubens on Strathmore Strathmore Smooth Bristol Visual Journal

It wasn’t my place to ask her to leave, and besides, I think we were all trying to be kind—she seemed to be roosting in a nest of problems—so I had to just deal with it.

It’s hard to keep my imagination down (I can imagine 20 ridiculous  things before breakfast!), so I ran with it, and pretended I was commissioned to draw a portrait of a rich, troubled, doomed girl (Paris Hilton came to mind). My imaginary patron was her doting Fortune 500 daddy. And I tried to find the things that a daddy would love in his wonky daughter, and express them in the portrait.

By the end of the evening, I was ready to return the hypothetical advance to the hypothetical daddy, and my heart was aching for this poor, clueless model.

James Gurney has a good post on activating your imagination while creating academic models. I loved his suggestion: add wings!

Drawing the portrait: Week 3

| maggiebird
Week 3: portrait in charcoal on rough newsprint

Week 3 of portrait drawing class and I am still struggling with the materials of charcoal on newsprint. I’m also tusseling with drawing  the features, particularly the eyes. Eyes are the hardest feature for me to put down correctly.

I think it’s because we see each eye as an individual element, when really, they are part of the same feature. Yes, there are two eyes, but they are connected by the brow line (you know, as in “the artist’s furrowed brow”). But grrr, making that connection in a drawing always stumps me.

Felicia recommended looking for the rhythms of the face: how the features are connected by arcs and circles. And that was my “aha!” moment for the night.

I know that progress on this point will come slowly, but now I know it will come.

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Charcoal portraits: lessons learned

| maggiebird

These pictures, the first two I drew for Felicia Forte’s portrait drawing class, should have gone with the post Drawing the portrait: week one. But they didn’t make it, so I’m showing them now.

Week 1: Charcoal portrait on rough newsprint

After 4 years learning to draw at the atelier, I can hit a likeness pretty well. But although this first drawing (above) might resemble the model, it’s not hanging together drawing-wise. Too many scratchy lines and no clear shadow pattern. I know that. I knew that when I drew it. But I’m afraid of making those kind of marks. I don’t know why. Sometimes as artists we fear unreasonable things.

Week 2: Charcoal portrait on rough newsprint

This second drawing is better. Felicia stopped me midway through and said, just draw the shadow pattern around the eyes. Don’t worry about the eyes themselves. She was right.

Getting caught up in details right away doesn’t improve a drawing. Lesson learned on this drawing: Simplify. Look for the big pictures, the big shapes; the rest will follow.

 

Drawing the portrait: week one and two

| maggiebird

The portrait class (I told you about it last week) taught by Felicia Forte has been going well. Felicia is a lovely teacher; her classes are low key and she encourages students gently, without condescension or brittleness. Felicia does wonderful charcoal work; her drawings have the most beautiful soft but strong marks. They have an integrity that I’m striving to create in my own work. They hold together, you know?

Here are some things I’ve learned:

  • Make fewer lines and make them well. No scritchy-scratchy searching lines. Observe correctly and make confident, correct marks.
  • Draw the big shadow shapes first. Don’t go for detail right away. (And why, oh why, do I have to relearn this repeatedly? Will this ever become something I do automatically? Or will it always be my weak point, my charcoal smudged Achilles’ heel?)
  • Keep the shading simple. Use strokes that all flow in one direction so that blocked in masses don’t become confusing and distracting.
  • Think about design as you work. This is especially true for short poses during which we make four 5-minute drawings, all on the same page. This is probably the hardest lesson for me to learn; it requires not just observation and motor skills, but also really thinking and planning ahead.
  • Draw! The biggest, most important lesson of them all. Draw all the time. Then draw some more. Always  with an active, curious mind.
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Winter of the portrait

| maggiebird
Graphite portrait of a good friend as she told me stories of her life on the farm.

I love drawing and painting people. It’s a passion that runs contrary to my introverted character, but there you have it. Our brains don’t always behave in completely logical fashion.

The thing I love most about portrait painting is that I get to touch a subject’s stories. I touch those their tales with my ears and with my paintbrush. Above all else, I love story.

Last year was my Year of the Portrait, and I see no problem with 2011 being Year of the Portrait Part II. Wednesday I start a portrait drawing class with Felicia Forte, a teacher new to me. I am nervous, a bit (meeting new people is always out of my comfort zone), but looking forward to it.

Dream Time at New Year

| maggiebird

I don’t like to make New Year resolutions. For me, setting goals at the end of the Christmas holidays is an exercise doomed to failure. I’ve been on break, for heaven’s sake. For the last two weeks in December, the day job  was whittled down to giggly celebrations, vacation time, and three-day weekends. Visiting with family  and general laziness all ’round.

So I’m really in no position to decide on a regime of resolutions to follow in the year to come. Because when life returns to it’s normal race, I’ll fall behind on any resolutions I made during downtime.

I guess my only resolution is to keep to the usual goals: Draw. Paint. Try not to let life unhinge my self-discipline. (These goals never change.)

Instead, I dream on New Year Day. And this year, the biggest dream of all is to somehow have a painting studio. I do all my work in my living room right now. As you can see in the photo, it’s cramped, crowded, and a wreck. I have to clean it up on Sundays, so we can live in it the rest of the week. Some weeks it never gets tidied at all.

I’ve been told, put your dreams out to the Universe. Let It know what you want. So I’m going to do that, and put it out to the blogosphere. You never know what might happen.

What I wish for:

A garage, a room, a shack, near my home (this is important, because otherwise I’d probably never go to the studio).

It needs to be something that I can afford and be able to lock up when I’m not there. It should have electricity, heat, and light (Oh Universe, would a north facing window be too much to ask?). Big enough to have work table, easel, and a model stand.

There. The wish is out there. Does the Universe read blogs?

Christmas eclipse

| maggiebird

I’m dragging this morning, because I had to stay up (wa-a-ay) past my bedtime to watch the lunar eclipse. It was the first eclipse on the solstice in nearly 400 years, and that’s got to be portentous.

I didn’t think we’d be able to see it through the storm that’s been drenching the Bay Area. But at 11 the storm abated, and the clouds thinned. The moon flitted like a shy bird behind the blue-white skeins of stratus.

We sat in the backyard with the damp wind tugging at our hair, and watched the bright silver disk get eaten by the shadow of the earth. She turned dusky orange as scraps of clouds blew across her face. Wintery Orion and Gemini, growing more brilliant as the moon dulled, stood sentinel around her, Orion with his head towards her, and the twins, Castor and Pollux, facing away. She seemed well guarded in her moment of weakness.

A plane flew between the moon and a cloud, and the jet’s shadow was projected across the scrim of cloud, looking like a giant child’s toy.

Then the storm returned, and clouds hid the moon’s face as she regained her silvery self. Tonight she’ll rise at about 5:30, unencumbered by our shadow.

Happy Solstice.

What do your holiday parties look like?

| maggiebird

1867-1917-NewYearReaIrvin
Cartoon by Rea Irvin for "Life" magazine, ink over graphite underdrawing. Via reproduction online at Library of Congress website
Thanksgiving last night; the first party of the holiday season. And it was a blast.

Yes, we ate the required phenomenal amounts of turkey, carbo-loaded until our pancreases (pancrea?) screamed, and foundered on vegan chili and pumpkin pie. And while good food is always the center around which all great parties are built, what happened after the food fest was what made the party a blast.

It started with the mathematician and I playing some tunes. Normally, when we play tunes, people gravitate away, into the other room. “Oh, we’re listening,” they say, but they’re really not. The fiddle and whistle are loud, and make conversation difficult. Folks would rather gab.

But last night the other guests actually sat in the same room with us while we played! In between tunes, my dad and the host traded bad jokes about the Irish (we play traditional Irish music. These jokes go with that territory)

Boldly, we asked if someone wanted to sing a song. Someone did! A lovely piece.

Then, we asked, did someone else want a go?

The host didn’t bake a ham for that party; she didn’t have to. The room was full of hams!

The host’s sister and boyfriend dragged out a lap dulcimer and a ukulele and we sang Amazing Grace. A guest told a poem.The dulcimer and ukulele played Greensleeves. Someone told another joke.

It was fun, people! Nobody turned up their noses and sniffed. Rather, nearly everyone participated in some way; everyone had some sort of party piece that they could contribute.

That was a perfect party, as far as I’m concerned. No canned music, no artificial conversations, just folks sitting around, trading turns and entertaining the rest of the gathering, bringing their own selves to the center, then cycling out to allow the next song, poem, or joke.

 

 

 

 

Barn owls

| maggiebird
Barn owl
Pastel sketch by M. Sloan

It was late. Downtown. And a pale shadow soared silently overhead.

It was only the flash of unfurled white wings that caught our attention. We looked up just in time to see an owl landing on a parapet of city hall.

We heard small papery cries. Then, in another flash, the owl sped away. After a bit, two small faces looked down at us, as curious about us as we were about them.

They were baby barn owls, probably the most human looking of all birds. Right then and there I fell in love with them.

ARKive video - Barn owl in flight

Barn owls haven’t always been loved. People have believed (still believe!) all sorts of malicious things about owls: they’re harbingers of death, witches, and bad weather. Barn owls have screetchy voices that creep people out. They look like ghosts flying around in the dark. So we humans have hunted and persecuted them over the years.  We build cities over their roaming grounds. Like other animals that aren’t human, they’ve been in decline.

But they eat prodigious amounts of rats and squirrels. They’re good critters to have around. (I don’t know about your town, but in ours, we could sure use some help with rodent control.)

And clearly, barn owls will live in a mixed suburban setting (we’ve got lots of trees, and open space and green belts flanking the megalopolis).  But the birds need nesting places. I would love to put up an owl box in my garden.

Barn owls won’t steal your babies, your money, or your soul (I’m not so sure about chickens, though. Some say yes, some say no. Does anyone know for sure?). According to The Owl Pages, “the Inuit see the Owl as a source of guidance and help.” If you have to believe something about owls, believe this Inuit tale. And believe that barn owls are incredible creatures to see as they ghost their way through the night.

Other owl box sites:

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