EDM #36: Draw out in public

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Jack and I went to draw on 6th Avenue in the Village, sitting on the steps of a sandwich shop to draw the Jefferson Market library. I began with what one could charitably call preparatory sketches but which I refer to as false starts or disasters. I was just not seeing the whole and was locked into tiny details of the tower. So I tried doing a quick contour drawing (in the lower left), just following the edges of the building without looking at my page, and that began to feel like the way to go.

I drew the whole building in under ten minutes, barely looking at the paper. Then back in my studio added some gouache to the sky and some watercolor to add dimension. I’m pretty happy with the results and surprised I got here from where I started, It has a nice rickety, energized feeling that captures my inner state.

EDM# 35: Draw a bicycle or a part of one

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I painted this yesterday but tried to take my time in developing it rather than rush to scan and upload it. I made it with gouache and drew (most of) it freehand with a brush.  I am replacing my habits developed over years of watercoloring with the approach I used when I was a teenager and first started painting in acrylic. I find gouache quite challenging because I can’t layer color which so often helps me hid my mistakes. With this opaque medium, I have to lay down the color and be satisfied with it before adding the next and it can be quite annoying. I’ll try to explain more about this by showing you a couple of steps I took.

First I painted my vestibule, using flat colors and with little indication of lighting. This was fairly straightforward once I had  a grip on the perspective and I just mixed up a color and then created  a lighter version to make the lighter part of the wall or floor. Probably the hardest color to mix was the parquet floor in lower left just because I had to figure out how to make a darker brown using only yellow and an ochre and blue.

When it was good and dry, I lightly sketched in the bicycle. Then I painted it in with black and white gouache. As you can see, the red wall started to leach into the white of the tires, so I let it dry and added another coat of white which helped a bit but not completely. I wanted to add a bit of the shadow that the bike threw on the wall but  didn’t want to paint around the bike to add a darker red so instead I tried to lighten the rest of the wall with a bit of watered-down white.

I don’t know if this painting is done completely. I should go in and erase the white pencil lines, darken the tires and hit the white one more time to get rid of the pink — and maybe I shall. I also fought the impulse to scrawl a caption on the floor with my dip pen (both Jack and Tommy Kane urged me to just leave the damned things as it is) and I remain of two minds about it.

Before I began painting, I spent a fair amount of time looking at the work of Taliah Lempert, an artist I have always admired, who does nothing but drawn and paint and make prints of bikes. Her work is really lovely and instructive.

EDM #33: Draw an eye

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When I was ten and lived with my grandfather, I remember pouring over his medical textbooks, engrossed in the excitingly horrific illustrations that exposed the inner workings of our viscera. Sliced open chest cavities, skulls that doffed their caps, cross sections of reproductive systems, all depicted in airbrushed perfection and meticulously labeled— they were my first form of porn.

I made this particular drawing during my lunch break, in my meeting notebook, with ball point pens, crayons, highlighters and a Sharpie. It’s the sort of violent image that’s still quite deliciously enticing to the prepubescent boy crouched inside me, snickering. I probably drew the same sort of thing in my fourth grade notebook.

EDM #32: Draw something metallic

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This is the work of my fine Lamy Safari and a hint of sumi ink. But most of the credit goes to  patience, to slowing way, way down and just enjoying the calm that enveloped me and my desk. I drew this last night as Jack was at a concert in Brooklyn and my dogs were working on rawhide bones at my feet. The Dixon Brothers (Howard and Dorsey) sang about Jesus, whiskey and penury from my speakers and the air conditioner hummed in the corner. I studied each reflection in the corkscrew, breaking it down to three or four tones and carefully recording them.

I knew where I had fudged a line here and there, despite my care and slow pace, and I could still here that recriminating voice muttering in a corner of my skull. Whatever the hectoring spectre was that hung over me recently (addressed so lovingly and helpfully by all of your comments about my last post), it was still lurking when I recapped my pen so I started drawing a grid in the background and then filling in squares. Still unsatisfied, I pulled out my calligraphy nib. Then I just left my book on my desk and went to bed to read. I’d enjoyed the process but was still unsure about the drawing. And the muttering.

This morning, I passed through my study on the way to get some iced coffee and saw the page and thought “not bad.” Maybe some shoemaker’s elves worked on it over night or maybe the self-doubt has lifted.

In your comments, some of you suggested that the limitations of the EDM Challenges could be to blame, that having proscribed assignments was making me stiff and restricted. I think that’s probably true but it’s also part of the process. For me, now, being forced to work on one mundane drawing after the next is driving me deeper inside drawing, making me do something specific each day, filling the page, making marks, and thinking about art each and every day. Sometimes it’s painful and raises demons, sometimes it’s a mess, but I think it’s the only way to fight back the excuses and just keep at it until I breakthrough to something new.

Watching the Olympics is reinforcing my commitment. Imagine working day after day since you were a little kid on balancing on a beam or running 100 meters and then having all of that work and sacrifice come down to a single instance on a  single day in a far-off land in front of billions of eyeballs. It’s pretty extraordinary. And the miracle, the fluidity of the moment is only possible because of all the discipline, the repetition, the working through pain and boredom that preceded it.

We all want to be able to draw beautifully every time. The myth of ‘talent’ is that we are either born with it or not, just like sprinters are genetically determined to have long legs, swimmers to have broad chests, hurdlers to have elaborate hairstyles. But the fact that I will never be Michelangelo or Picasso or Phelps isn’t going to stop  me from being Gregory, from being as good at being me as I can be. Greatness isn’t necessary to proceed. And the occasional low score from the judges wont make me hang up my leotard.

I’m not going for the gold. Just for the stainless steel.

EDM #31: Draw something you collect

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I got my first piece of taxidermy when I was a teenager, a moldering old fox head. Over the decades my collection grew; Patti and I gave each other stuffed dead animals for birthdays and anniversaries until we had a full-blown Adams Family effect. I have culled our collection a bit but there are still snouts and beaks peaking around most corners.

These guys fill the wall of my study — five calm sentries watching over me while I type this. I have drawn them many times as they are interesting from every angle. This time I tackled them with a Faber Castell PITT pen with an XS point. It was a frustrating reminder of why I love my fountain pens. While the PITT doesn’t stain my fingers and has a decent black line, like the specimens on my walls, it dies all too quickly. Sure enough, midway, the pen began to cough and splutter and finally gave up the ghost as I drew the last antler. I finished things up with my Lamy, a dip pen, and a brush with a  bit of sumi.

Let me be honest about something—while I have drawn every day for the past month and some, I can’t say I have done more than one or two pieces I actually like. This one again is not one of them. I need to do some soul searching now that I am back from vacation and figure out what is up. Is it the pace? Is it the hour? Is it the subject matter? The materials? My brain? There’s no question that its a good thing to sustain the habit of drawing each day but I would like to be more pleased with the results.

 

EDM# 30: Draw a chair. See a new place.

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Jack and I are back from our visit to the Crooked Trail of western Virginia. We drove 1,400 miles in six days, visited six states, heard a lot of music, ate one salad, did a small amount of drawing, and had  a great time.

We saw beautiful places like Mabry Mill in Meadows of Dan, Virginia.
We ate lots of interesting Southern vittles.
We were sorely tempted.
We visited the phenomenal O. Wilson Link Museum, the coolest thing in Roanoke.
We visited Roadside America in Shartlesville, PA, the world’s coolest miniature village.
Seriously, the coolest. This is not one of those tilt-lens pictures that make reality look like a miniature. It’s a miniature that looks an awful lot like the real thing.
We got bossed around by signs a fair amount.
This was our trip credo.
We saw some fantastic old time music shows, like this one in Floyd VA’s Country Store.
And this one at the Carter Family Fold, the Mecca and Ground Zero of country music.
We visited a mess of log cabins.
And hung out at Appomattox, where the Civil War ended in 1865.
The mountains were smoky. We had rain, fog, but mainly lovely sunshine.
A spooky moment one night in Floyd.

And I drew a chair. Or two. And some hungry musicians.

I prepainted the page in watercolor before I left, then knocked out this Safari sketch and tinted it with sumi ink and a white pencil.

You can see more of my photos on my tumblr.

EDM #17(better late than never): draw a musical instrument

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I missed doing this challenge a couple of weeks so, when I saw this wall of guitars in Roanoke, I had to draw them in the semi-darkness as we wolfed down groaning plates of ribs.

EDM #29: draw something architectural

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I looked through some of my old travel journals and realized that what I have been missing in my recent drawings is the interaction between different drawings, the flow of events as I capture them, different drawings done in different places butted up against each other. I’ve been doing these morning edm drawings in a specially designated book, one per page and I have lost a lot of that antic energy I like. So on our trip to Appalachia, Jack and I are both drawing in smaller moleskines and I’m using a smaller pen (usually a PITT XS). I have my super tiny paint set and a water brush. It’s a whole new set of challenges using a finite set of art supplies and tiny ones at that and it is making things new again. All that is of course multiplied by being in a new place and seeing things through fresh eyes.
Some of it is very annoying, particularly trying to use my phone, my iPad and any available wifi to post these drawings to my blog but it’s all party of the adventure.

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An introduction

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A new member to the EDM group on Yahoo wrote a lovely introduction I wanted to share:

Hello,

I’m writing from Italy, a small city from the south of Italy.

Arts or the thousand ways to make arts were always inside the genes of my family. All my uncles from my mother’s side were almost pro music players. And I played a lot of jazz and the bass.

All of them were having also some strange genes and i have cousins that are chefs, my mother is superb in many crafts, my sister try to work in USA as comic colorist. She was lucky to attend an art school, so she is great.

I started doodling since I was a kid going around in the garden scratching my legs. In my adolescence I stop drawing and I attempted to be a professional painting restorer and I studied arts. I always collected art materials and so my lovely wife. I’m lucky she’s my first supporter.

But the ways of life are so strange and I became something else, dunno if more rewarding but currently I work for an international organization.

It was down there this fire, buried, my will to make some art as pleasure for myself. In the meantime, due my work, my missions in Africa I felt alone. very alone. The work was and it’s still very hard. The heat the humidity and mosquitoes can stress any people, believe me.

But I love my job… but sometimes get stressful shades.

My only relief in missions was only my wife’s voice on the phone and a sketchpad with a pencil. I made a lot of ugly drawings, some designs. Doodles. Lines with the will to be something more.

It was funny to see how time was passing with some good music. And i felt good if not better.

Months after I blown more on that fire burning inside me, and It was like to be rebirth, seriously. My wife also gifted to me a new bike.

Bingo. With the excuse to go to buy a toothpaste I go around my very small city (yes also to buy the toothpaste… :))) and I stop where I find something interesting.

My goodness, I feel everything interesting. Even if I stay at home I can draw everything is inside in an infinite doodle or in a lifetime long drawing. I feel and I like to draw everything from the lips of my wife to the coffee machine. From the ears of my cat to the old dustbin on my balcony. I can sit in the living room as drunk and I can pass any minute of my Saturday night with ease without even touching water, drawing and painting with a smile.

I can draw the toilet paper or a bowl of fruits or an ugly portrait of soap opera character with the same happiness.

That simple, I will never get bored. Something like a drug, an obsession for every single dust of the life.

So very later on I made also a blog where I show some of my crude sketching.

And I called everything is worth to be sketched because to me it’s like that. Apart from the results… eehehehehhe

Thanks to the fate I met also some inspiring books for myself mad thoughts. They are the books of Danny Gregory, all of them, that like a bomb exploded freeing me more and more. Me and my lovely wife. So grateful.

Thanks to letting me in this group, and sorry for the long presentation.

Cheers,

Stefano
Visit his blog here

EDM # 28: Draw an appliance

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I laid down this base color in tribute to avocado green, harvest gold and almond, the kitchen colors of my youth. Now everything seems to be black, white and stainless steel. Drawn with a bamboo pen and india ink.

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Jack and I are heading out on a road trip along the Crooked Trail today.  I will be drawing on the trip and hope to continue tackling the challenges each day but I doubt I’ll be able to scan and upload for the next week or so. If I get decent wi-fi, I’ll try, so stay tuned.