In most normal parts of the world, when children graduate from their local middle school (also known as intermediate school or junior high school), they go onto their local high school. Their school choice is pretty much set by their address. New York City, however, given its position as most extraordinary city in the solar system, has to have a far more complex and stressful solution.
Jack, who is now 13, has to submit almost two dozen choices for school next year.
First of all, we had to decide if he should continue to go to private school or return to the public school system. If we had chosen the former, he’d have to take a very long multiple choice math and reading exam, then write essays and be interviewed at however many schools we had visited and thought good candidates. Then, if we he was accepted at one, we would spend over $100,000 to make sure he got a high school diploma.
Because we’ve opted to send him to public school. his choices are multiplied. First we had to go through a directory of NYC High schools that is over 600 pages long, listing choices from the FDNY High School for Fire and Life Safety to the Urban Assembly School for Careers in Sports, from the EL Puente Academy for Peace and Justice to the School for the Future.
Patti, Jack and I, collectively and separately, have gone on scores of school tours, grilled acquaintances for inside info, read books, articles and websites, and finally narrowed down on our list to the mandatory top 12 schools. That’s right — everyone who applies to NYC public high school must rank their top dozen choices to get into even one.
Some of the schools are really amazingand we are so lucky to have them as options (we visited one that just got 12 million bucks from Bill and Melinda Gates, another which takes the kids on trips to Europe) while others are scary and ringed with metal detectors and classrooms full of hooligans and pre-cons.
There’s more. New York also has a group of “Specialized” High schools that includes schools like Stuyvesant and Bronx Science that are among the very best schools in the country. To even be considered for admission to these schools, Jack had to study for several months and then, last weekend, along with 25,000 other students, took a three hour test with a few insanely hard questions (in helping him prepare for this test I have had to take a nightmarish stroll down memory lanes to my dusty repository of algebra and geometry, knowledge I haven’t accessed once since Carter was in the White House). He also took yet another test for entrance to Bard, which covers all of high school and the first two years of college before the students turn eighteen.
If all all of this sounds like I am a neurotic, over achieving yuppie parent, I promise you, we are merely average in this city. As soon as you enter the maelstrom of high school selection, you inevitably are faced with all these choices and feel you must at least do what you can to give your kid the best options. And, because you have to rank those twelve schools without knowing whether your kid will get his first choice or his twelfth, you must get somewhat involved and get the lay of the land. Every one does it, from bus drivers in Staten Island to investment bankers in Brooklyn to short order cooks in the Bronx. If you can make it here, you’ll make it anywhere. Otherwise, move to New Jersey (shudder).
Alright, I hear you wondering, so what does all this have to do with drawing?
Well, about a dozen of the schools in town are art schools of one kind of another. Most seem to be training people who will end up in making mechanicals or painting signs, anything to divert talented kids who would otherwise be spraying graffiti everywhere. We checked out a couple of these schools and they seemed quite grim, with lousy facilities, unimaginative teachers and slack-jawed students. One school, however, LaGuardia High School of Music and Performing Arts has been top Jack’s list for a while. The guitar player from his band was admitted last year and he raves about it. LaGuardia was the basis for the movie and TV show “Fame” (“I’m gonna live forever…) and it full of amazing singers, dancers, musicians, actors and artists. Each year thousands of the most talented kids in the most talented town audition for entry. Less than 10% get in.
Jack has been working hard on his portfolio for the art program. He has to submit fewer than twenty mounted pieces and then take a test: drawing a figure from life, a still from memory and a pastel painting form his imagination.
Jack loves to draw and had filled many sketchbooks with masterpieces. However, he has never really taken much in the way of academic art and usually resists formal teaching. For his application, however, he has had to sit down and really concentrate on the sort of art neither of us particularly love to make. He has drawn long careful portraits of Patti and me, has drawn a range of still-lifes in various media, had drawn urnban landscapes, done some watercolors and has even attended four hour life drawing studio classes with me, sticking it out for the whole session (no nudes, alas).
I am amazed at his commitment and at the strength of his drawings, I had neither the ability ntr the commitment at his age.
The question of course is, will he get in? And the next question is, if he does, should he spend this much time on art? That’ss an interesting question coming form me — I have always bemoaned my own lack of formal training and would personally love to go to art school. But Jack is also a very good student, getting As and B+s in every other subject and we are concerned with whether the academics at LaGuardia will be enough. The fact is, other schools offer better social studies and writing and math programs, no question. But he loves to draw… Well, we’ll see what’s what this spring when the decisions are made by the Board of Ed and we learn the options
Meanwhile, I am posting the pieces he has made for his portfolio. Would you accept him?
A Personal Journey from 6H to 6B
It may seem hard to believe, upon looking at my current bloated form, but there was a time, years ago, when I went to the gym and lifted weights every day. Seven days a week for over a year, I reported to the gym every morning at 7 a.m. to strain and sweat. I had no Schwarzeneggerian ambitions, no need to pump myself up and strut around the neighborhood, rippling and flexing. No, instead I was driven by a certain degree of self-awareness.
I determined that if I gave myself any wiggle room, I would break my habit. I had to be iron-clad in my commitment in order to persevere. I’m a creative person and I knew that I would easily come up with all sorts of imaginative excuses for quitting so I vowed to deny myself any sort of exit and, rain or shine, I would be at the gym doors at 7 a.m. and do my best to combat gravity.
After several months, my sister noticed the change in my belt size and asked if she could join my Spartan regime. For a while, she showed up daily and grunted and strained at my side. Then, one February morning as I awoke in the dark and listened to the sleet hammering against the window, my sister phoned and suggested that it might be okay to skip a day. In a moment of long regretted weakness, I agreed and rolled back under the blankets.
I never went back to the gym.
This is a scarily pathological story, I know. I think I have mellowed since those muscle bound years and am a little less inflexible in my commitment to developing myself. However, recently, in a moment of self-assessment, I had to ask myself if I was truly as committed to creative freedom as I claim to be in my writing here and in my books. Am I really open to anything? And why, when I give others advice, do I assume that they need the same short leash I do? I am afraid that I hand out far too many ultimata and that my last book, The Creative License is far too rigid and dogmatic. I wrote it assuming that it was for people who needed a friendly but unyielding guide to getting started on the road to self-expression and frankly a little ass-kicking. Since its publication some readers have balked and complained that I am hypocritical in simultaneous claiming to be a cheerleader for creative exploration while laying down all sorts of rules and systems. The thing people rail against most loudly is my insistence that they draw only with a pen rather than a pencil. I have urged this suggestion on readers time and again because it worked for me, strengthening my conviction in how I see and draw, the quality of my line, my confidence in what I am making, and more. But some people don’t like pens and resent my dogmatism.
When Roz Stendahl sent me a handmade book bound with soft, ocher Rivs BFK paper, I decided to challenge myself with a new direction, at least for the length of a single book. The paper is far too soft and absorbent for pleasurable ink drawing and so I decided to fill it with pencil drawings. I bought several boxes of Derwent pencils (12 each of Graphic, Drawing, and Graphitint), a pencil sharpener, and several types of erasers.
Erasers are a new tool for me and gave me the most cause for concern. In ten years of drawing, I have avoided equivocation; if I make an inaccurate observation and lay down a line I can’t take back, I just go with it. If the face becomes lopsided, so be it. I let the initial error mold the lines to follow, telling myself that it’s okay, it’s my style, it’s human. This is how I have always drawn; it’s an anxiety that keeps me on my toes, that is my drawing experience, like a small animal in predator-country, a little wary, senses finely attune, knowing one mistake can lead to disaster or flight into unfamiliar land.
I began with a few drawings around my house, mainly of my sleeping dogs. I started with harder pencils and drew with a light sketchy line, the same sort of pressure I use with my Rapidograph. I did some cross hatching, then added a little color from one of the Graphitints, a sort of soft, muted color pencil. I also avoided erasing, not really thinking of it most of the time. The drawing looked small, crabbed, dim and anemic.
Then I drew some pictures when we attended the Dalai Lama’s lecture in midtown. As usual, when I am listening intently, my drawings were crappy and unpleasant to make.
Then I collected some photos and began to draw portraits. Each evening after work I did a couple, getting bolder and more confident with my lines. I erased a little bit, but not much. Occasionally I would do a straight graphite sketch to note the landmarks of the face then I’d go over them with color and really lay it on.
I began to feel more free as time went by and my drawings became more aggressive though probably les accurate. I felt a little more happy, laying on more and more color, making lines that varied in strength, expressing my feelings by pushing the pencil harder and harder against the page.
After a few weeks of pencil drawings, I stopped and looked back.
I saw several things as I flipped through the pages. For one thing, there is enormous difference in the expressive qualities of different hardnesses of lead. I thought I’d like the “H” pencils for their clarity of line like my pen. However, they don’t work especially well on soft paper. They also leave a faint line that seems uncommitted. I was initially averse to the softer pencils, disliking their tendency to smudge and smear. But there is something quite satisfying about a creamy “B” pencil line gliding often paper with a little tooth; it’s almost like drawing with a lipstick.
Another revelation was the way in which I tended to express light and color. I usually work in two pretty different media: pen and watercolors. With the former, I love doing intricate crosshatching to express shadows and highlights and creating varying patterns to suggest different colors. In water coloring, I like to layer transparent paint and build up tone with many applications. With pencil, I found myself tilting back and forth between these techniques. Harder pencils led me to build up line patterns rather than varying the darkness of the image by using pressure on the lead. With softer pencils, I would layer color upon color, cross hatching one way with one hue, then another way with a different shade. I avoided smearing my lines or softening them in any way but still the effect was more painterly than linear.
Perhaps with more practice I could resolve this schism but the fact is … I really don’t want to.
By and large, I don’t love the way pencil drawings look. They often seem grimy and overworked, smudgy from the artist’s palms. There is a sketchy quality to soft pencil drawings that I don’t like either, a certain lack of clarity that bugs me. Oh, there are exceptions galore of course. I could mention any number of artists whose pencil drawings are masterpieces but I rarely see once I wish I’d made. I had more and more disdain for the pencil drawings I’d made. They were just ugly and weak, and I rarely found even a section of a drawing that I thought was interesting.
Last weekend, I went back to drawing with pen and ink — and what a relief it’s been. I have done dozens of careful ink drawings since, all pen with just a touch of ink brushwork on a couple of images. I felt like I do after coming home from a lousy vacation, eager to return to my familiar old armchair and enjoy a cup of tea as only Patti can make it.
I realize now that I draw as I do not because of inflexibility but because it is me. I can walk a mile in another man’s shoes but it gives me blisters. However, I am glad I took this trip through the land of Graphite. It is wonderful to unstrap the lead and splash free in pools of ink once more.
If you’d like to see selections from my experiments in pencil, visit my new Pencil book gallery
The Giant Sketchbook
http://blip.tv/scripts/flash/showplayer.swf?enablejs=true&feedurl=http%3A%2F%2Fdannygregory%2Eblip%2Etv%2Frss&file=http%3A%2F%2Fblip%2Etv%2Frss%2Fflash%2F430708&showplayerpath=http%3A%2F%2Fblip%2Etv%2Fscripts%2Fflash%2Fshowplayer%2Eswf
Art-alternatives.com sent me the biggest sketchbook I have ever seen. It is almost 700 pp. long, weighs 8 lbs, and is quite spectacular. We made a little film to show you what an effect it had on my family.
By the end of the week, the book will be available online from Artist & Display or by calling 1 800-722-7450. It will also be sold through art stores — for the nearest one, look at the dealer locater on the site.
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Not giant enough? Check out this one!
School for Evil – exploratory
Toward the end of Fall semester of my sophomore year, I found a small reading room deep within the bowels of my college library. It was called “The Somebody or Other Memorial Hunting and Fishing Library” and was almost always unoccupied. Its walls were lined with glass cases of leather bound editions of Izak Walton on angling and assorted dusty memoirs of African safaris and was furnished with a few oak table and soft-bottomed leather wing chairs It was a hidden treasure, my very own study, and the perfect place to while away the winter evenings. Like much of the school, the Hunting and Fishing library was criminally overheated and, after a day of lectures and an evening of French irregular verbs, I would often nod out against the comfortable soap-oiled embrace of the armchair.
One afternoon I awoke from a sweaty dream to discover that my sanctum sanctorum had been invaded; several other students had crept in while I was dozing. Embarrassed at being discovered in oblivion with my head thrown back and my mouth open and drooling, I pretended to have been lost in thought not the arms of Morpheus, grabbed my notebook and began to write the first thing that came to my pen.
This proved to be a story called “Under the Awning,” a funnyish and appropriately surreal tale of a man and a girl sheltering from the rain. Ten or so pages tumbled out of me in a flash and was published, unedited in the school literary magazine. Rereading it now, I am surprised by the unfamiliar voice of my deep unconscious and the carefree turns of phrase and plot it took.
Early this June, while walking up Ninth Avenue in Chelsea, an idea whacked my brain with the same sort of thunder bolt immediacy. It was a title of a novel, The School for Evil” and the essential elements of its plot. The whole thing struck me as from the clear blue — I haven’t written much fiction since I was in my twenties and the the idea was so developed already that I decided to pursue it. Over the next nine weeks or so, I wrote a couple of drafts of this 200 page novel, polishing it off by Labor Day.
Part of the idea was to write short chapters — fifty of them in all — and to illustrate each one with an ink painting. I drew the first ten or so and showed them to some friends. At the time, I thought the book was for children, probably ones a little younger than Jack, and wanted it to be a little shocking, a little brutal (think Edward Gorey, Lemony Snickety, Roald Dahl), and as funny and absurd as I could make it. I showed the drawings around to friends and the first ones were judged to be a bit scary — some people thought that was a fine thing, others felt they were too edgy for pre-teens. I took a second pass at the drawings and this time made them cartoony and a bit silly. I went on to make a couple dozen in this style.
While I rather doubt the book will ever be published, the process was very interesting and informative. Working from my imagination rather than just my experience was a refreshing change; writing fiction and then drawing made-up scenes was so far from the documentary journaling and non-fiction work I usually do and it opened new hidden doors in my head.
Brush Twice a Day
Maybe I’m my own worst enemy. Or maybe I just love being a novice. Or maybe I’m bored too easily. But if I gaze back on the course of my passage across the infinite drawing landscape, I look like a veering drunkard, swerving between POVs, pens, paper, subjects, experimenting like Dr. Hyde. When I talk to people I know who are successful professional illustrators, they seemed to have done all this experimentation back in art school and then settled on a style, a technique and a set of tools long ago, so their work is predictable and knowable — that’s what make it commercially viable. When it comes to tools and techniques, I tend to be a serial monogamist. For a while I was madly in love with drawing with grey markers and white pencils on butcher paper. Then I was passionate about using the teeniest possible Rapidograph point on watercolor paper in the smallest size Moleskine, colored with water colors. I went through a period of just doing comic strips in pencil and shades of grey ink. I have always liked the effect of rough, indifferent or spidery marks, splattered with ink, grubby, and wild. In part, that’s a necessity because I am impatient and incapable of neatness. But I like it in others too, from Ronald Searle to Francis Bacon.
My newest journal is big, about 8″ x 12″. Normally I would never use such a large journal because it’s too big for my scanner. Now I’ve decided not to care. Its paper is pretty crummy, too, just ordinary stuff you’d cram into a Xerox machine– the ink easily bleeds through it. And I am not using a pen — just a plastic brush which I dip in a bottle of sumi-ink. It’s a waterbrush but it’s too clogged for the reservoir handle to work properly so I dip it in a puddle of drinking water which I pour on the pavement in front of me. And instead of writing careful, ornate captions with my dip pen I just write some sort of crappy looking note with the brush on the opposite page.
As I describe all this, I wonder is it a matter of some sort of artistic self hatred that’s making me work in this slovenly way? Or am I bored? But no, I really like the feeling of freedom I get from slashing at the page in this way. The drawings have yet to reach any sort of aesthetic that I am completely pleased with but I feel nice and loose and unfettered. I don’t care if the pages are perfect ( I had been becoming so anal in my last book that I was drawing less and less, rarely having the time or mood to be so deliberate) and I like how they are warped and winkled. This may be a summer fling but it’s already forming sweet memories.
Unpacking the Impressionists
Last night I woke up way too early, at 5 a.m. and ended up watching TV. PBS was broadcasting a program that dramatized the lives of the impressionists. It was like the O.C. except about 19th century French painters. Cezanne was a miserable wretch who never sold any paintings and had impregnated his peasant model and had a son whom he kept secret from his father who was forever badgering him about getting a real job.
Cezanne: But, Papa, I am redefining the relationship between color and form! Papa: Zut! Does it pay well?
Monet was embroiled in an affair with a married woman who refused to divorce her husband for Catholic reasons. Manet was dying of something throughout the episode and finally croaked. The most outstanding aspect of the show was the various artists’ looks and cool facial hair. The young Monet had a long, wild goatee and then grew and enormous bushy white beard. Renoir had John Lennon- style round dark glassses; Cezanne had a Gen-X scruffy beard and wore wild hats and berets.
Oh, and there were a few paintings tossed in for good measure.
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P.S. Apparently it’s for sale on DVD here.
Comic 'Cavation
April 16, 2007
My approach to drawing these is a little unorthdox. I whack the page into shapes I find interesting and then just draw one thing sitting in frontof me after another. Sometimes I write down what people are saying, sometimes I make it up. Sometimes I only come up with an idea days after I’ve done the drawings, generally because the blank speech balloons are annoying the hell out of me. 
I was also a little inspired by the master, Hergé, whose Tintin comics have been tantalizing me since I was a wee one. Oh, and I drew these in a bigger watercolor moleskine. Sume ink, blah, blah, blah.Making Today Matter
I drew this comic and then, without thinking, filled in the balloons. Somehow it seems right to me but it may just be crap. Whatever.
I am far away from home and have been for ten days. I am also working on a project that is loaded with stress; it is very important to my client and to my agency and I am working with people I haven’t worked with before. It also involves a lot of thorny technical issues, an obscenely large budget, and despite our tests and research, we are none of us sure exactly how it will turn out.
So much of what I am doing is tied up with the issue of trust, with how I perceive how my colleagues are doing their jobs. As we all proceed on something that none of us has ever exactly done before, this group of strangers, charged with something that, reportedly, could cause many people to lose their jobs if it fails, we are all a little tense.
A lot of the time, I worry I am falling apart. I thought I had congested lungs at one point and bought an expectorant. I thought I might have a sinus infection but the pain and stiffiness kept moving around my skull. I have had a burning stomach, sleeplesness, a sore ankle, a sore knee, a pimple, and a two day headache that keeps clenching the left side of my neck and the back of my skull.
My hypochondria has been pretty much in remission for the past six months or so, but in the last week it has given me a heart attack, cancer, diabetes, Parkinson’s, mellanoma, an ulcer, and a knee replacement.
One of the people I am working with told me, “I have a copy of your book and I can’t get past page two. Every time I pick it up I say, ‘Who is this person who wrote this book? He bears no resemblance to the person I am working with’.”
This is the picture of a person who has done one drawing, a small one of a video camera, in the past ten days. Instead of my usual five mile walk, I haven’t had the time to walk more than a block on my own. The primary moments of brightness I have each day are when I call home and speak to my wife and son. Otherwise, it is a seven-day-a-week ordeal, usually a dozen or more hours a day and then room service and bed.
I’m sure by now you are sickened and repelled by this vision of me. Why am I sharing it with you? Why am I painting this extreme and unattractive portait of myself?
Perception is not reality.
I’m not sure what is. I can see myself in this way –tense, lonely, mortal –and as I contemplate it, it manifests more and more. Everything is seen through this aperture, everything is about extremes and burden.
But I can also take a bath, some Extra Strength Tylenol, a Heineken, some La Boheme, and the knots uncoil, and I luxuriate in the moment. I am not lonely but alone, master of my own schedule and more importantly, my own perception. The air outside is warm, the night is still, the beer is cold, my headache has been replaced with a calm buzzing as my neck grows smooth and limber. The pain is past, the tension not even a memory.
My mind is so powerful.
It colors my world, sometimes blue or black, sometimes yellow or rosy pink. It sees what it chooses to see. It can reduce a day to a battle field or reveal the lifelines in a wilting lettuce leaf. My mind is my spiritual guide and my most savage persecutor.
When I draw, my mind sits at my elbow. It wants to comment on every line and angle, pointing out the flaw, expressing skepticism about how the whole will come together. It can tell me how much worse my work is than that of anyone I admire or how far it falls short of the goals I set.
But with a certain stoicism, born of experience, I can muzzle my mind. I can grow deaf to its judgments about the line I’m watching my pen make. I can postpone any verdict, until I have capped my pen or until the ink is dry, or until I’ve seen it again the next morning, or in a month, or never at all.
My ego is vast.
It is rippling with muscle and micro-controlling. It helps me pass verdict on the work I am doing and those who are working for me. It is being paid to be here, or so it tells me. It has been given the responsibility for keeping my project on the rails. That judgment is so critical, it tells me. There is no time for laughter or frivolity or any sort of looseness –so much hangs in the balance.
And yet, despite its good intentions, my judgment is flawed because it is so unyielding. There are no absolutes, there is no reality, there’s no such a thing as great commercial, a great drawing, perfection, just moments in which this judgment prevails, moments which can pass and be replaced by other opinions, no more absolute, no more perfect.
What matters is Now, not what we imagine will be.
Do I want a Now that is gripped with tension, with fear of failure, with crippling judgment? Or can I just enjoy the sensation of being Me, of being Here, of doing Right, of being Alive?
This is reality. And now it’s passed, replaced with another. I can only live here, despite what my mind, my ego, my fears may tell me. I can only be here, now. It’s a small, achievable ambition.
And now my headache is gone.
Written and not re-read under the influence of a Heineken and a California moon.
Jack Ckomicks
My comic drawing style is still developing. I’ve given myself three handicaps: I’m drawing small, with a brush, and from my imagination. Despite my reservations about my drawings, I do like the look of these wee moleskine pages filled with greys.
I have also set myself another task. Every day, Jack tells me some story from his day and I try to turn it into a comic. I am working to develop a Jack-like character that I can repeat frame after frames, story after story.
How to avoid having your Creative License revoked.
In the EDM group, a member recently posted the following:
” … I recently read, I forgot where, that gimmicky [drawing] methods, e.g. left hand work, blind contours, upside down, etc, is a not legitimate way to produce a finished, repeat finished, work. Meaning, I can understand
It is a great practice skill sharpener. And yet I would probably be willing to agree that unusual limiting techniques are a bit gimmicky for finished art. But yet, some of the great pieces of history appear exactly as though one were altering his or her usual perceptions and ability. So how do you do produce unusual art? Without gimmicks?”
–Michael, Boston, MA
To which I responded:
Dear Michael:
I believe that you are referring to the Artists and Illustrators Code that was recently revised in the MCLXII International Convocation of the Art and Creativity Authority (CACA) held in The Hague last November.
In Section 73B, article 14, it clearly states:
“…gimmicky methods, e.g. left hand work, blind contours, upside down, etc, is a not legitimate way to produce a finished, repeat finished, work…”
It goes on to stipulate:
“All drawings must be made in spiral bound books clearly labeled on the cover as “Drawing paper”. They may be made only with a lead pencil, not to exceed 3H, and erasures must be neatly and completely done.”
“Any person or persons working with art materials must work only with in the domains of their licensed class:
To wit:
Doodlers: may only draw with ballpoint pen on lined paper intended for class or meeting notes.
Incompetents: may not draw anything ever.
Sunday painter: may only work within the confines of authorized painting and drawing classes in a local junior college, community center or otherwise sanctioned facility and overseen by a bad-tempered and inattentive disillusioned Class 3 watercolorist.
Art School Graduate: Must have completed certificate and must then have spent a minimum of five years working in an art-unrelated field: video store, coffee shop, falafel stand, ad agency. Many not produce any art of any consequence ever again.
Genius: Must be represented by a major gallery, have been on the cover of Art Forum at least twice, and been interviewed by Morley Safer at least once. Must acknowledge and yet in some cute and non-threatening way challenge the current Art establishment. All works must sell for a minimum of five figures.
All works not adhering to these regulations may not be sold, framed or enjoyed in any way under penalty of law.”
I assume that all members of this group are aware of and operating within these international authorized rules. Failure to do so will mean immediate and humiliating expulsion from the community and confiscation of all art supplies.
Thanks for your continuing cooperation. These rules are made for the enjoyment of all.
Your favorite art authority,
Danny
Danny Gregory 