Portraits

Vignette camera on the Droid

| maggiebird

image

I just put the Vignette camera app on my new smart phone. It’s really fun to add all the funky effects to make it look like—gasp!—film. I expect apps like this will dislodge a smart phone-powered avalanche of arty photos that look like they were taken with an old Diana or Holga camera. I never had one of these when I was a kid, although I believe my little brother, always on the cutting edge, and freer with money than I was, had some kind of cheap camera bought from an ad in the back of a comic book. I remember he was a superstar for a while, because he had a camera, and took arty photos (even at 9 years old, he was a creative genius). I was jealous, fit to beat the band.

But now I’ve got a smart phone, and I’m going to be playing with the camera function like I’m in my second childhood. (Crazily, when I first wrote this post, I kept writing “phone” instead of “camera.” Since we all now take photos with our phones, will the word camera drop from our vocabulary?)

I love my DroidX, although I don’t like the name. It sounds like a robot. Who wants a robot except for testosterone-flushed young male gamers? I’d rather have a puppy. I expect I’m more the type for an iPhone, but there was the AT&T issue. So far, Verizon has been expensive but great.

So my droid is known as the blue puppy (it’s dressed in a blue silicon case, until Otter box finally starts making Droid cases). Then I think I’ll call it the gray dog.

Man. Can I waste a lot of time on this phone, and I don’t even play video games!

Return of the prodigal blogger

| maggiebird
Joe Pastel on Canson Mi-Tientes paper. I'm not yet finished with this. I have pages and pages of notes from Christian and Rob. Corrections like: make the background distinct from the foreground, dull down the "heavenly light" in the background, get rid of Joe's "mohawk." And lots more things to work on. Whew!

I’ve been letting this blog slide the last couple months, as I’ve been busy with other projects, plus a camping trip to Nevada.

I’ve been trying to finish up my projects from my fourth year at the Atelier (At the top of this post, you can see the last portrait I made in June), and then, just when the school year was finishing and I thought I’d have some time to rest, Christian Fagerlund (the teacher who’d taken over the last few classes at the Atelier while the usual teacher, Rob Anderson was away), offered a portrait painting workshop—6 people, 8 classes, twice a week—during the month of July.

Christian is a wonderful painter, and a brilliant teacher (I’ve been so lucky to have such wonderful teachers: Rob, David, and now Christian). Taking his class has been worth the exhaustion of driving to the East Bay twice a week during rush hour traffic. I’ve learned so much; I can feel my brain fizzing and buzzing like it’s full of 7-Up.

Now I’m taking a much-needed break from classes, and will practice what I’ve learned. That means discipline to work at home the same number of hours that I worked in classes (plus those two extra hours I spent driving to Oakland!).

I also want to get back into the swing of blogging again. I wish someone would give me a push, but alas, in the blogging world, you really have to learn to swing yourself.

A sleepy list

| maggiebird

Katherine Langrish at Seven Miles of Steel Thistles has a lovely blog about The Pillow book of Sei Shōnagon, a very old book in which the author sometimes makes lists. Lists of depressing things. Lists of adorable things (duck eggs!).

I love this idea. Don’t we all love lists?

So here’s my list for tonight at bedtime:

Places I love to sleep

  • Stretched out on the front seat of my car at lunchtime
  • In an upstairs bedroom
  • In a tent by a lake in the high Sierra
  • Under a mosquito net in Mexico
  • On the deck of a sailboat on the Caribbean Ocean, under the stars.

What’s your list?

Portrait on the clock

| maggiebird
Pastel sketch 8.5" x 11"

I started this painting when I was all buzzed from a video by Alicia Sotherland, a portrait artist I quite like. Likeness eluded me for this drawing from a photo. I find it much easier to get a likeness from life. But, after all, I wasn’t trying for likeness.

I had budgeted one hour (which expanded to two) to get as far as I could, and as close as I could to a likeness. But my main goal was to  force my hand and brain to believe that it is okay to have light values in the lit area of the face and dark values  in the shadowed area of the face (I’m always surprised that this is such a difficult concept for my brain to believe). And I was to  use color values for those lights and shadows rather than monochromatic values. You can’t see it in the scan, but the highlight on the nose is cool—a light blue.


Gaining knowledge in the intimate presence

| maggiebird

I’m reading Robert Henri’s The Art Spirit. He says, “I think it is safe to say that the kind of seeing and kind of thinking done by one who works with the model always before him is entirely different from the kind of seeing and thinking done by one who is about to lose the presence of the model and will have to continue his work from the knowledge he gained in the intimate presence.”

He thought that the latter artist worked with more mental activity; the artist always “studies for information.”

I drew this portrait with this quote in mind, and in 60 minutes (3 20-minute sets) I got enough information down that I think I can bring it further along without the model. I also had my color chart with me, but in the hurry of trying to capture her likeness, I wasn’t able to make good color choices. I can see that I need more oranges and reds to make the flesh look less “dead.”


Klezmer Festival!

| maggiebird
I was lucky enough to have a front row seat and plenty of light, so out came the sketchbook. How much happier could I be than to listen to amazing music while drawing the amazing musicians making said music?

Last night we heard the trio Veretski Pass play their Klezmer Shul, a beautiful piece of music that combines Jewish sacred and secular music of Eastern Europe (and maybe some “co-territorial” music from other cultures).

In a talk with the audience after, the fiddler Cookie Segelstien (oh, alright, she’s a violinist, if you want to reference her work in the classical world. As if being an amazing Klezmer fiddler isn’t enough) told us that there used to be, a long time ago, special shuls (houses of worship) dedicated to specific tradesmen. There were shuls for builders, and tailors, and, they think, there were shuls for musicians. Cookie said, “we asked the question, in that light, what kind of music would Klezmer musicians jam on?”

The music was terrific. It was haunting, and joyful, and all the things you’d expect from three amazingly gifted musicians mining the very roots of their musical souls. The Klezmer Shul is what happens when classically trained musicans cross over into folk music and create something new and wonderful.

I loved what I heard last night, but it was more academically inclined (not that this is a bad thing, mind you). It’s just that the kind of music in the clip below makes my heart dance. This video clip is pure Klezmer.

I’m hoping we’ll have some of this music in the house soon. My own fiddler has been away these last two days, attending Klezmer workshops at the KlezCalifornia yiddish Culture Festival at Congregation Etz Chayim in Palo Alto. I would have loved to join in the fun, but I just can’t take on another hobby right now. But I’m hoping he brings home some tunes.


Teatro Zinzanni

| maggiebird

Mat Plendl of Teatro Zinzanni

It was one of the best Christmas gifts ever, a family outing to Teatro Zinzanni in San Francisco. The  tag line is “Love, Chaos, Dinner.” And it’s true.

It’s like dinner theatre/circus. Every act is spot on, funny when it’s supposed to be funny, amazing when it’s supposed to amaze, and always entertaining. All this and they feed you too!

Marina Luna

There was juggling, trapeze, singing, dancing, clowns, even hula hooping. All the artists were phenomenal. The professionalism, energy, and grace with which they performed was amazing. It was so enchanting and fast paced that I didn’t have time to do any sketching, so I had to sketch from memory when I came home.

My favorite act was Marina Luna, an aerial artist who has a terrific dance on the rope. I would love to sit and draw her as she worked on the ropes, and would love to get her to model for a portrait.

If I were younger, beautiful, and talented, I’d run away and join a circus.

Mikado abridged

| maggiebird
Yum Yum and Nanki-poo

Some of the funniest entertainment at the Great Dickens Christmas Fair is in the Victoria & Albert Bijou Music Hall. This year they’re performing the Mikado in an hour, and it will make you laugh.

It’s like a send up of a Victorian Thespian Society putting on community theater in their bathrobes. Most of the voices are Gilbert & Sullivan worthy. Yum-yum can hit those high notes and be heard in the next county. Nanki-poo has a smooth tenor. But even if the actors don’t have an operatic voice, they are still fun to watch. Ko-Ko, the Lord High Executioner was very fun to watch as the actor (what are these player’s names anyway? Is there no cast list anywhere?) played a slightly nerdish Victorian banker-type who’d been cast into the role because he was just really funny. And the Mikado is as pompous as any businessman playing an emperor might be.

The Mikado and Ko-Ko, the Lord High Executioner

Plus, the play was a great sketching situation, as I could get a grip on what each actor looked like and have plenty of time to do gesture drawings as they posed and sang.

The Great Dickens Christmas Fair

| maggiebird

We kicked off the Christmas season with the Great Dickens Christmas Fair Sunday. It was delightful and entertaining as usual. Dickens and the Victorians practically invented my idea of Christmas, and I love the play-acting.

This year I went prepared to sketch with a Tombow dual brush pen, a Niji waterbrush, and several Staedtler pigment liners. I used the same 7″ x 7″ hard-bound Daler Rowney I used last year for my first foray into public sketching. I have to admit I still haven’t finished that journal, and besides, I thought it a proper and fitting way to round out the year.

I decided that I’d do at least 10 pages of sketching. I counted journal pages, and put a big number 10 on the tenth page so I’d know I’d reached my quota of sketching for the day.

And I did it.  Some of my pages aren’t anything I’d want to show anyone, but oddly, the least successful as sketches have the most possibilities for future projects. I’ll blog about the completed projects later.

Sketches I will show you

Polka at Fezziwig’s Dance Party

Fezziwig’s Dance Party was as fun as always. In fact, it was more fun this year because the players asked us to dance, and then they taught us to waltz.

Waltzing with someone who knows how to do it is an experience verging on the sublime, and I recommend you run right out and find someone to teach you. In fact, any of the old-style dances are barrels of fun, and I think everyone should try them. Fortunately, the Bay Area has a lot going on. Try the Period Events & Entertainments Re-Creation Society  (Peers) website. They sponsor scads of events, and their links page gives even more info on other local and national period reinactments and events.

Irish Step Dancer

The Siamsa le Cheile dancers put on a terrific exhibition of traditional and modern-style Irish, Scottish, and Cape Breton dancing. After all these years of being involved in the music and dance, this stuff still makes my heart stand up like a 4-year old kid and whirl around till it’s dizzy.

The Dark Garden window displays seem like a perfect spot to draw, since the models hold their creative and cute poses very well, and let’s face it, just about everybody looks better in a corset. Unfortunately, the windows are also a perfect photo-op, so there’s a lot of jockeying for position with photographers. Also, people do love to look over your shoulder and comment on your drawing. Maybe some year, when I’m more confident sketching in public,  I’ll get a hoop skirt, set up my easel, and become a part of the show.