Projecting vs. Drawing

To draw or project ones subject on paper…ah, that is the question?
I see nothing WRONG with projecting a photograph taken by the artist. Sometimes a very complex subject, that requires accuracy, requires one to project the image. Restless subjects, such as children, also require the use of photography. However, projection has major creative limitations over drawing.

Drawing helps one familiarize oneself with the subject, its structure, value patterns, and shifting planes. It also permits time to think about how one might manipulate color, edges, etc. to help express what it is about the subject that made one want to paint it in the first place. Drawing requires us to pay attention! It also permits time to simplify and exaggerate a subject and build, for lack of a better word, a ‘relationship’ with the subject that will continue during the painting process. Even if one needs to project an image, I think there is real value in re-drawing the image in order to move things around for the sake of improving design and making it our own.

Here are some additional “up sides” to drawing. You can take a pencil and paper almost anywhere; the more you do it the easier and better it becomes. One cannot help but have very individual art if it is drawn and not projected. There is an incredible sense of satisfaction in “pulling from your depths” an image. Drawing takes time and therefore helps us overcome the ‘tyranny of the clock’ (Art is not about creating production line items. “Quality” art takes time to develop and paint.) Finally, drawing provides more creative flexibility… you cannot project what is in your imagination.

Some art forms are built around photography (transfers in collage for example) but, generally speaking, (and I have heard this from many artists we have filmed) learning to draw well is essential to art, and I would add, a whole lot of fun.
~Lynn~

PONDERINGS

This weekend Ted Nuttall, a wonderful portrait artist, was here for a visit. He’s toying with the idea of doing a workshop with CCP. He does not want to film a workshop that is only about technique, but rather something that gets to the HEART of portrait painting. I’ve spent the last few days trying to figure out what exactly that ‘HEART’ is. Can it be defined? Can it be conveyed in a film?

I see art as an endeavor wherein true excellence entails several critical elements. The first is a mature relationship and proficiency with a medium. One doesn’t necessarily need to have conquered their medium, but an artist does have to be at the point where working with their materials is almost ’second nature’ and they need to attain confidence enough to permit some risk taking.

Secondly the artist must have ‘a handle’ on design. They must have an understanding, intuitive or otherwise, of the impact altering one part of a painting has on the ‘whole’ of the universe within the frame. (I’ve noticed that knowing design and having an ability to draw seems to help make risk taking less risky.)

And the third element is the most ambiguous part that Ted, Virginia Cobb, John Salminen, George James and many more artists I respect all talked about. ART asks us to know ourselves… and I think that is why it has such power for those who pursue it. Art is a visual expression of the journey. It is a snapshot on the path of an artist meeting themselves. ART is the counter balance to today’s age of electronic clutter where the ’self’ can be quickly lost. In good art we find real human expression.

Cheng-Khee Chee said that every painting is a reflection of the artist. I now more fully understand what he was saying. We all have had the sense of knowing someone through their paintings. We can even know masters long departed by studying their work. It is a glimpse into their personality, struggle, and times.

How DOES a teacher create sign posts on the path of self discovery? Now that’s a question worth asking, and it goes far beyond art.

~Lynn~

It Doesn’t Have To Be Difficult To Be Good

Some days things click and I was long over due for such a day. Carla O’Connor once said to me, “You never know what small thing you learn in a workshop that will pay off,” and she was right. Years ago when we were just getting started, I took a workshop from Alex Powers (no relation… darn). After observing my struggle he said, “It doesn’t have to be difficult to be good.”

Yesterday the staff here at Creative Catalyst ‘kicked me out’ to go paint. There is a regular Monday morning group that gets together to paint a clothed model, a woman I have known for years. I began in my usual way and realized that my painting was not expressing what I knew about her, her personality and quirky style. I was not in the mood to have ‘one more bland painting’! I permitted a discussion to take place between me and my painting.

It went something like:
(Me) “What do you need to express what I know about Laura?”
(Painting) What do you most enjoy or notice about Laura?
(Me) Her angular features.
(Painting) So why not accentuate or exaggerate those features.
(Me) Because it won’t look like her.
(Painting) How do you know and why do you even care? You have at least five paintings that look like her. Why do you want one more?
(Me) But I might ruin this one!
(Painting) Forget that. You’ve ruined paintings for far less reason.
(Me) Okay… here it goes….
It was scary… it was fun “¦ it was easy “¦ it was hard edged “¦ it was how I felt “¦ it is how I’ve seen her for years and never had the nerve to paint! I was so jazzed and I’ve been happy ever since.
~Lynn~