Chrstmas Evening

Christmas Day. Merry Christmas to you. 

Wasn't feeling it this season. Christmas seemed like an obligation to be observed, not a thing to be celebrated. The scents, the tastes, the sights, the textures...that tactile qualities were missing, the warm sensibilities, and so too the spirit as well. I was happy with the way the tree turned out (the pic above doesn't capture the lights, at least 400 of them, red and white in equal measure), and I watched a few movies with nostalgic ties to the season which almost brought forward a sense of the holiday...but mostly it was a non-starter.

Haven't been able to force myself draw. Sketch, a little, but not draw. Depression has been manageable: present, binding, but it didn't drag me back into the well. Day's not over yet, and there's still New Year's Eve and January to go. My birthday.

I'm hoping to get hold of an external hard drive, as a few people have said they might hook me up with one. I don't know how that works, whether it will allow me to play DVDs on my comp and get screen caps again. Screen caps are pending for Pretty in Pink (bought a copy), Some Kind of Wonderful, and Weird Science as I want to sketch or draw her appearances in them..

I'll get right to it – I didn't hear from her. 2015 was my last shot, I got Dana's attention at the beginning of the year and the opportunity to finally  be heard, now the year draws to a close and nothing has come of it.   I dunno, maybe she has the same block that keeps her from reaching out, maybe she's depressed...yeah, and maybe I'm making the same damn excuses for her. Part of me wants to rail at her, to hope something sinks in and hurts her feelings – I need very badly to know whether she is capable of feeling anything. Thing is...if she's looking in to read it, then the chances are she doesn't deserve to be blamed. OTOH, if she really is that cold then it wouldn't register with her anyway – she doesn't give a fuck if she's hurt someone. Venting to release my grief is a bandage on a gut wound. I still need to, it just won't help. Nothing ever changes.

Drawing upon my own experience, the depression that kept me from writing to her for three years following high school...because I could see not see myself clearly enough to understand the problem, I could not explain it to anyone else. Certainly not to her. That added to the restriction, because how would she ever comprehend my avoidance of her? I was sure she wouldn't forgive me. She did, once it lifted, but I had realized that not only was I free to write to her but that what mattered more was that I make the effort for my own sake. Either she would understand or not, at least I finally did myself. It would be out there and no longer on me but up to her whether to respond.

From that, I would want her to know that I am not sitting here with a million questions she's required to answer. I just want to hear her tell me that she still thinks of me as a friend. As much as I want to know her story, as much of it as she can tell me, it matters only to have her friendship back. It means more to me that she might want to share her story with me than that I have explanations. Justifications aren't important. She is.

I would also have her know that if she thinks she's doing me any favors by keeping her silence, she couldn't be more wrong. I meant what I said before, that she has nothing to apologize for over what occurred between us. It's what she chooses now that matters...if she remains silent of her own volition now, it's the one thing I will never forgive her for.

Some Kind of Not so Wonderful

Made it through Thanksgiving okay, no lows. Mostly on autopilot. Not doing so well today, slow crash. Others are suffering fresh losses this holiday season. Trying to make myself work but heart isn't in it. Just a sketch or two, anything. Force myself. Won't be my bess, nothing inspires, but anything.

(a week ago, Thursday)

It's not difficult to do the work once it's flowing, but it's getting harder to make myself sit and begin. Tonight would be a prime example. It's half past midnight, it's raining...I ought to go for a walk. Nowhere to go, nothing is open. Honestly, mood I'm in I'd like to not come back. But since I'm not going to walk...b'oof. I'd rather just sit here and type out what I'm feeling. Well, hell, I'll hold that at bay. Dana used to call my letters books, and to me they were still short. She guessed that I was holding something back, which I was and thought it uncannily observant pf her...but I had no idea at the time that she had guessed wrong about just what it was I wasn't saying. What I'd just been through, mostly. And that I was in love with her. In hindsight, I realize she was expecting it was something very different but I had no way of knowing that when I was writing her.

I did that, though – copiously spilled my heart onto the net, I mean. I've had two prior blogs, both long gone now, into which I tried to work out my lows. One was anonymous, using no real names (not even my own) so that I was free to be open. A few people read it, no one who had ever met me personally. One person expressed astonishment...I'm not sure if he thought I was brave to be so candid or just reckless. The other blog I put my name to as I hoped someone would someday plug my name into a search engine and find me there...but that meant I had to rein in what I could say. It would help to relieve my heart in the short run, one post at a time, but it never helped me any in the long term.

I wonder, when abstract artists express intangibles like love and pain in a work, does that help them through it? I wonder. Maybe it doesn't matter that I don't do expressive work, maybe I wouldn't find respite there anyway. What about photographers, does their work serve to soothe their broken hearts?Sorry, I've got nothing right now per art or blocks other than “hard to overcome”. Not exactly news. I'm trying to make myself get to some work tonight. I should have stuck with acting.

I'm proud of Dana. I'm pretty sure she'd be baffled as to why, were she to ever learn that. And ya know what? She never will know, ever, because she hasn't the courage to ask. In many ways she's a strong woman, and I look up to her for it...but she's not strong in all ways. Facing the people who care about her is not among her strengths. Telling them that their concern for her, their love and hopes for her, their determination to stand by her side means anything to her...if any of this is anything she values, she keeps it to herself. I wish she would tell me, one way or the other. The not knowing is the thing that does all the damage. I'm afraid she's okay with that.

I have heard that she has a rep for being protective toward those around her. She is admired for it by those she allows into her life, and by me on the outside of it. It's one of the things I'm proud of her for. It's something I hold onto when depression sinks in and I wonder whether she has any feelings left at all for anyone. That's where I am right now. Anyone who acts on a protective instinct can't be completely unfeeling. Can they?

There was a lesson I learned once, with the second girl I ever fell in love with. The first, Kristina, I always knew I would never hook up with, but Diane...she was the first person who ever spoke to me as if it mattered to her that I was the one listening. She disappeared from my life without ever knowing that she mattered to me. That jaw-dropping moment when I suddenly realized I was in love with her, and determined to tell her...I wasn't aware that I had already seen her for the last time hours earlier. If someone means something to you, don't let the chance to tell them slip through your fingers.

(suddenly wound)

Huh.  Okay.  Wow.

I haven't had that happen in a long time.  I was just watching Pretty in Pink, kinda half-watching, and I think I just saw Dana as an extra.

Then again, I was called for jury duty last year and there was a woman in the reserves room who looked like her too.  Many years ago, I kept seeing her everywhere.

You've always been beautiful, Dana.  

Still

On one occasion in first grade we were instructed to write a short paragraph that began with the premise that we were ideating on our porches. The we were to commandeer the crayons and draw what we had written. When we were done, people marveled over my drawing for the usual reason – they thought I could draw well. There was another marvel for them in my work, which I have always felt mortified by, and that's my singular lack of imagination. Oh, they didn't see it that way, but...well, how could anyone not? They drew their dreams. I had drawn myself sitting on a porch thinking. That's some bloody literal-mindedness for ya right there.

I was told once by a teacher at Franklin that I fall naturally into the category of illustrator. I don't know how I feel about that, as I know intellectually it's not a bad thing. Most of the works that have spoken to me have been the work of illustrators whose voices I aspired to. Still, the comment brought up that shame over the grade-school assignment: I wish I was more creative, more imaginative.

When I read books, sometimes I try to keep that illustrator comment in mind. Does anything stand out as something I would draw were I to land that gig? I think I'm taking the wrong approach, as an illustration does not necessarily mean scenery. I could easily do objects, characters...but I always think scenery.

Actually, what I think is turning a book into a movie – literal scenery. I've been seeing them that way since high school...I edit them in my mind, direct the performances, decide which dialog to cut or change, what to do with the staging and cameras, the lighting, the score and sound terrain...I've been reading A Wrinkle in Time one chapter every few days to linger over it. In this book, characters “tesser”, that is they travel via tesseract. When I read Madeleine L'Engle's description of the first leg of the journey, I knew just how to direct that sequence to convey the physical experience of it to my audience. Shame I'm an not a director with the backing and standing to actually do it, that movie will remain locked in my head forever. No one will see it. Not that I've figured out how to convincingly put the major character of Charles Wallace on film...

But that gets to one of my major frustrations. I don't visualize in images, I see in movement. If I could animate with the same full detail and shading with which I do a single drawing, that's what I'd be doing. .Oh, how I would love to make my drawings come alive! I love drawing women, but if I could do a portrait with eyes that blink, or hair that subtly shifts – or wildly dances! A portrait where, if you look closely, you can see her breathing.

Where is the magic of Harry Potter when I need it?

Years ago I was entranced by Nadja Salerno-Sonenberg. She was regarded by her peers (the stuffy world of classical music) with some consternation and dismay, and I've heard some scorn, because she was not content to remain staid by her art. When NS-S played, she played to feel. She stomped and swayed, grimaced and wept, she let the music move her and those raw emotions were naked on her face. For the audience, that's powerful to behold. It's entrancing, exhilarating. She was often likened to a rock star of the orchestra.

I've always wanted to draw her playing, except...no single image does justice her raptures. It would take a whole series to convey just one brief moment of one of her performances. Her face...that's what entrances me most. She's like a woman having sex when she plays. It's astonishingly beautiful to behold her visceral responses set free, fully felt.

That's what I see when you lay out a blank sheet before me. I see a sequence of beauty that I cannot reduce to a still image.

************************

Jesseca has pointed me to a light-table that is easily accessible and large enough not to risk folding a page over its edges. It's my front window. As long as I remove the tape that held it up slowly, and not let the tape eat the paper, it works great! So, I'm taking my commissioned piece back to the point of a completed trace. That's not a real setback, and it gets me a clean drawing I can really be happy with. 

This doesn't the need for doing grids, I still need that process for enlarging, but it does mean the final piece will be free of  lines I couldn't entirely erase.  As much as I like the idea of letting some of the work show,  I'm not at all happy charging money for a drawing that has visible gridlines.

About tracing...I used to think that in order for a piece to be "honest", it had to be entirely by eye. Tracing was a cheat, I  thought. That led to any number of attempts abandined because something didn't line up as I needed it to, some detail out of proportion, etc.  Still, the mistaken prejudice persisted and that added to to the block that was building.   

 That's a  hangup and a misconception others aspiring artists may hold, so I want to say clearly to you: "it's bullshit".   Plenty of artists do this.  For my own particular work, trace lines are just placeholders anyway, to make sure everything is where it should be.  They get erased as I get around to each detail, and replaced with more nuanced shading.  I'm alwasy happiest with a detail when I can convey oit through tonal field with no contour line remaining at all.  But saying that sounds like I;m trying to excuse the use of  contour lines...and that re-enforces the misconception.  Your own art, your style or voice, may well incorporate contour lines.  There's nothing wrong with tracing!  What matter is what you do with it from that point.  

Let me be clear, though, doing the work by eye is indispensible when you're still learning - and you should always be "still learning", if that process ever ends you might as well retire. The point is to train your mind to process the visual information, to learn how to translate what you're seeing to the page.  However, once you reach a certain point it's okay to take shortcuts.  You''ll know where the real work is. I can't map out every thread of Jesseca's hat, but I can make it look like I did.  Place the drawing over the photo and you'll see discrepancies.  What matters is getting the feel of it right, and conveying the essence.

You do what the image demands.  Nothing is a cheat if it gets you there.

Filling in the Blanks

That's pretty much how I feel.  You can't post without a title, and I don't have one.
 
So.  It's the end of October, I'm well into my current project (per this blog) and am trying to get myself back into the frame of mind to write up movies (per the other). 

I cannot show you the progress I've made on my current drawing because it's a commission, and thus private.  Perhaps when I'm  finished my client will grant me permission to do so.  I will need to find a resource that can scan images of that size.  What I can show you is a selection of it that will demonstrate part of the process that went into its preparation.

See, I'm working on  an a tablet that's 18x24".  A tablet that size is a little unwieldy for my current messy work environment.  One obstacle has been transferring the image with its increase in size.  Umm - this might be a repetition of information I've posted earlier, so bear with me. 

First, my client wishes a drawing based off a photograph, which I have a hard print of and a scan of for my screen.  He is wearing a hat, which he wishes removed.  He has another photograph of a different size, resolution, etc., in which he is not wearing a hat.  It's close enough: with one of those graphics programs I'm not  a whiz at, I was able to isolate the top of his head (!), flip it, resize it, re-orient it, paste it, and make it a semi-transparent blend.  After that it went up on my 1600x900 screen and I copied it onto tracing paper.  With one of those lightboxe devices I traced it again onto a 9x12 page. 

Here's the tricky part, and time-consuming.  As I have no overhead projector, I was forced to upscale the image using The Grid Method.  Do artists call it The Grid Method?  I have no idea.  Fuck it, I'm going to.  The Grid Method is something I read about as a child but have never used before, and sounds  simple.  Basically, you map out a grid  over the desired image with a ruler, then create a similar but larger-scaled grid on the surface you'll be using for the actual piece.  Below is the donor grid over the initial  tracing:

Each square is a quarter of an inch, IRL.  I doubled that for the actual drawing.  Like I said, the above image is only a portion of the  actual picture,  it's been enlarged and had the contrast significantly increased.  Notice the lines are a little sloppy...that's not a problem, it's what's inside them that counts.  The bigger hurdle is erasing them once you're done with them.  I'm needing to get a sturdier eraser, if you look closely enough at the peper the final drawing is on you can still make them out.  Stand away from it and they  disappear, but I'm not happy with it yet.  Then again, I'm not done yet.  It will take practice and experimentin with other leads before I can draw a grid softly with ease.

Keeping track of the info from square to square also takes concentration.  It's not as easy as it looks if you've mapped out an extensive area.  All of the above process took some eight hours to complete, bringing me to the point where I could start in on actually drawing instead of prepping.

As I related in the  last post, my drawing of Jesseca  almost threw me when it came to capturing her facial expression - those changes in shading.  I believe what gave me trouble was the difference in luminosity between the screen and the hardcopy,  but  even so the wary  thought lingered that I was out of practice.  That has yet to pay into my current work - we'll see.  There are choices to be made in tones that I haven't gotten to yet.
 

****************

My friend Scott may have one or two commissions.  One is a photo in his possession, and another is one he wants to arrange. Both are family portraits.  I'm looking forward to them once the current one is completed.

Facebook is, I suppose, a necessary evil for getting me work.  Also, Jesseca shares fun stuff with me, as well as social content worth  forwarding.    Otherwise I try to stay off of it.  I had hoped  FB would help me reconnect with Dana, and instead it's turned out to be one more chance to get burned by her.  By this point she's read what I was trying to reach her with, and I have to conclude it didn't make a difference.  She might have said "please wait" or "I'm not ready to talk to you" or even 'I don't know if I can do this".  But she has said nothing and that speaks so much  louder.  More blanks  to fill in: what do I trust, the real-life evidence or my fading hopes, promising dreams that are months old and unrepeated?

The holiday season has begun.  Days in which I must fend off lows are increasing in number but not severity.  I'm getting by.  I have to steel myself now, though, against the certainty that it will have been another year I didn't hear from her..

 ****************

When I make a library run I always stop at Goodwill to look for DVDs, music, and books.  Today I picked up Madeleine L'Engle's "A Wrinkle in Time".  I read that and "A Wind in the Door" back when I was in grade school, and was taken with the soulful fantasy of them.  Now I see there's a quintet of books.  I'm hoping to rediscover some of that again, perhaps find some inspiration in it (or them, with luck).

Jesseca Trainham

I met Jesseca Trainham during the Silver Age. We were both into Dario Argento and had registered as members of the Dark Discussions cinema forums. Her nom-de-post was Stay Hungry and she had some amazing, wild critiques to offer on Suspiria and Argento's Phantom of the Opera.

The single happiest time in my life was the week I spent in rural New York with Jesseca. I arrived with an ear that refused to op from the flight, a knee scraped from a spill the day before, and a finger recovering from infection. It didn't matter, because I was in a state of grace. She met me at the airport looking like a folk-rock star wearing a smile as wide as her outstretched arms.

I've never known a soul more compassionate than Jesseca, more insightful, or as voracious with curiosity. She is a seeker of knowledge who goes right to the source, never complacent to be a blind complacent follower of teachings diluted and warped by orthodoxy. Her path is a wandering one that embodies that most essential but rarely enacted endeavor of human existence: she questions. 'Quest,' after all is, the root of 'question'.

Jesseca has been many things for me including my confidant, and we have seen each other through any number of personal crises. I'm damn lucky to have her in my life.

*

This drawing has been the most challenging that I've completed so far, and it taught me at least one valuable lesson and probably more. It was done on a Strathmore drawing tablet, medium surface, 8x10 inches, using my usual 0.3 mm mechanical pencil. The page has a nice cream tinge to it compared the the bleached white of some papers, though the medium surface did not afford me the smoother shading I'm capable of.

There is a quality to her expression that I didn't manage to capture entirely from the photograph, and I've not been able to pin down just where I went astray. You can see her intelligence, her humor, and her warmth, those come through, but there's also a joy that almost looks surprised radiating from her smile, the spark in her eyes. I think it's a matter of the job I did in shading her skin, but I'm not certain. I thought that was going to be the easiest element but it surprised me in being the most difficult. You see, I had to do some juggling with the tones that altered them for the blank page. In a photograph, you have skin tones that stand apart from a fully active background that are often darker than the subject. If you are only drawing the subject, then you have to make your skin tones darker than they are in the photograph to bring them to life against a blank white field. Her skin in the drawing is now darker then the reds in the plaid of her hat, where in the photograph they are significantly darker than her skin. You cannot stay a hundred percent true to the source, you have to make choices.

This is where the invaluable lesson came in. last Monday night I thought I was done with the drawing (that last session was much shorter than expected, only two hours) thus I made a scan. That done I compared the scan to the photograph on my computer screen and found I had done too simplistic a job rendering the tones of her face and throat. I then spent the next four hours repeating a cycle of correcting, scanning, and comparing. Now...scanning for details and comparisons to the source can be a useful tool just as spraying a model or sculpt with primer can reveal flaws in your work that need rectifying, but it can also be a trap. The more I corrected (I scanned her about eight time that night) the unhappier I became with the drawing. After awhile it was becoming muddy in my eyes the way overworked colors in a painting become muddy. Here's the thing: I was trying to get a scan that looked right. My estimation of work needed was based not on the drawing as it lay on the page but based on what the scanner saw and relayed to my screen. The scan is not the drawing. If the lesson needs stating plainly, here it is – let the drawing itself, and only the drawing, dictate what it requires. I had to force myself to stop, but after two or three days I was really happy with the results.

As I said, I had expected different aspects of this to be the more difficult than actually transpired. One thing that pleases me no end is that I can magnify the image many times over and the fine details still look good. The earrings I had to leave at 'good enough” rather than perfect, but that's a lesson I've already learned (learning is one thing, becoming comfortable with it another). The links of the necklace are almost impressionistic rather than detailed, but thy look right all the same. The butterfly pendant was surprisingly quick to manifest, and reasonably accurate. I like how her hair came about. That wonderful plaid hat of hers, now, that took forever! I had to map it out panel by panel, many times erasing entirely what I had done and starting over. This kind of detail is where it helps to have a large, detailed image on your computer to check your work by. Not only can you zoom in, the image onscreen is more luminous than a printed photographed.  The work paid off as the final result is the kind of tactile quality I strive for in every drawing.  Looking at it, I can feel how warn, thick, and fuzzy the real thing must be.  Her skin is soft and smooth, the glasses frames are study and clean, her hair full-bodied.

I'm often uncertain  where to lay the border of  the subject, under the throat.  I had intended to establish the necklace itself as the lower border for this image, but once I began shading her throat the drawing insisted that I continue toward her shoulder.  That was the  right call to make.

Brick by Brick

My failure to update is itself a useful commentary on the power of blocks and how difficult it is to overcome them. I've had more than one, not just artistic. In school I had a problem with written homework. Right after high school I had a block that made my mind go blank every time I tried to write to Dana or Akiko.

This blog threatens to become a wall of text. I promised myself not to post (much) without visuals, theory being to force myself to come up with some. It's been easier to work on physical projects, and while those have moved forward there's nothing yet worth showing. I have a commission now, though (a drawing, that makes two that are priorities), and that should help, and I've picked up some Mod Podge for an experiment involving colored foil.

(Oh – this morning I saw a PBS special about restoring the art in Buddhist temples in Tibet. The original artists used paint that was colored with crushed gem stones. How luminous those colors must be! I would dearly love to see those murals in person.)

It isn't the block that's sapping my will, it's the depression. This past week it's been pulling me back down the well.

I used to know someone who couldn't grasp that she meant something to the people around her, that her sudden unexplained absences always blew holes in people's lives and hearts. She didn't mean to hurt anyone, it just wasn't real to her that she did. I'm wondering whether that might be the case with Dana too.

Anyway, it doesn't mean anything to you, the reader. What I want to communicate to you is that pain distorts vision. Depression changes the way you see the world and your relationship to it, to the people around you. When you are in pain you cannot understand the world clearly, and that creates barriers between you and the people who care about you. It takes away your strength, and it is self-feeding. Therein lies the vital warning for anyone suffering depression: the more you indulge it, the more it alters your brain chemistry to take you entire. Trust me, I know from experience and I've seen it at work in people I care about. Be vigilant. Don't indulge your sadness.  When you catch  yourself thinking about it, force yourself to stop.  If you don't, you will tip further.

Dana...neither of us did anything wrong, and neither of us has anything to be forgiven for.  Dana was afraid that I thought the worst of her, yet she refuses to be told that nothing could have been further from the truth.  She won't hear that I admire her, respect her, that I care about her, and that I'm proud of being her friend. I was then and I am now. There was never a time that I was not on her side.  I'll stand by her anywhere.   But she's not having it. It's as if her imagined condemnation is her armor and lifeline, she can't give it up. She put up a wall and there is no way of knowing whether she wants to tear it down. She won't say.

Sometimes I wonder whether she is offended by people caring about her. About half the time I think she hates me. Honestly, I don't know that she doesn't. What I do know is that she's aware that I think this, and she goes on letting me think it. I don't know if she's aware just how much it hurts.

If she's worried I won't be able to understand her, well, silence is the way to make sure I never do.

Process, #1

The first two images were scanned before I had recovered the software necessary to calibrate scans.  They are much too washed out.

at 2.5 hours

at 4.5 hours

The progress scan below was made tonight, adjusting the DPI,  brightness, and contrast.

This is my dear, beloved, cherished friend Jesseca Trainham - muse, teacher, healer, confidant fellow artist, and fellow spiritual wanderer. 

Given what I said about the elements that ahve in the past shorted out my mental process, imagine what it's taking to map out the stitching in Jesseca's hat!  It takes a lot to psych myself up for the next session.  Fortunately I have not just a printed photo but also the same photo on the computer - obviously more luminous for the screen, and it's a nice big resolution so I can zoom in.  I need to correct some stitching, and correct the cloth  past the buckle on her hat - a detail the printed photo did not yield to me an was revealed only on the computer copy.

This is a current project, on medium drawing paper, 8x10.  As you can see by comparing to the drawing of Dana Cooper, this paper does not allow the smooth shading I prefer afforded me by the cardstock.  The tradeoff is that this paper is much more durable and will hold up to more intensive shading with the harsh point of a mechanical pencil.  I can get  good contrasts with both papers, but risk  tearing the shit out of the cardstock surface!  I can also erase more cleanly on the drawing paper.  I've another tablet of drawing paper.  At this point I'm just trying out grades of paper to see what I like best.

Here is a closeup so that you can see the pencil strokes, tace how the image is developing.:

Resources

Look for your resources everywhere.  By resources I mean everything that gets you there - inspiration, raw material, anything that helps put you in the zone.  Seriously, I'm half tempted to enroll in some night school classes just to recapture the environment in which I had my greatest advances.

Ideally, you should have a retreat.  Don't scoff, that's an invaluable resource!  Some quiet place that puts you at ease from stress, whatever works for you.  A friend of mine has The Grotto, an religious idyll.  It's quite beautiful there.  Me, I have no place like that.  It's one thing having to deal with personal stressors...it's another thing to be in a situation wherein you're not being allowed to deal with anything, not given the space you need to cope or work things out.  Putting it mildly...it's not conducive to work.

Legos blocks!  I have four siblings, they have kids, their kids have kids.  That mean there are always Legos around!  Not only are they still fun to build with, they are also a nice way to frame and support physical builds of all sizes and shapes.

Noted before, I'm running out of Woodsies - those thin dowels.  I can't get them in bulk from Amazon, and there I have to pay shipping - adding two or three times the cost of a bag off the shelf at Michael's!   Stirring sticks for coffee, OTOH, are free and available just about anywhere.  I'll be going over the whole thing with putty anyway, all I need do is fill in the structure.  That empty space in the center, that's where the dining room goes.

Kind of a "no duh", but the internet really is an endless resource.  It's getting me to put my stuff out there...or rather, it's getting me to make some stuff to put out there.  Next week I'll be meeting someone to talk about a drawing.  Through the local library's online catalog I can get books on all subjects for free, or order what I need.  The two art stores in my neighborhood that carried 0.3mm lead both closed, but Amazon has it which saves a busride downtown.  My scanner is almost capturing my drawings right again, now that I've dowwnloaded software to replace the old.

It's good for bumper-sticker inspirational thinking too.  These are hitting me lately:

So.  Flash drives are good too, as long as you keep track of them.  I saved a bunch of good stuiff to flash drive recently...and promptly lost the thing.  There was a progress collage I had of a drawing of Dana that I started a few years ago. It contained nine or ten scans of the drawing, each one two hours further along.  I can't find that image anywhere now.  Shame, it was  great illustration of my process.

As mentioned in an earlier post, my scanner washes out much of my pencil shading.  I've re-installed software to manage the scans, but it's limited to adjusting brightness and contrast...the image is closer to what I've drawn but the subtleties are still not there.

Dana Cooper

This is smaller than actual size, on  8.5 x 11 cardstock.

Also as noted before, I've encountered some difficulty finishing the drawing.  I was just then trying to get back into drawing, and I made some mistakes.  One, I didn't think to use a barrier between my hand/arm and the paper, so the edges have yellowed.  Some of that I can crop, and it will be okay though it does throw off the composition: the relationship between Dana and the space surrounding her.   It's not inappropriate...I think sometimes the world does close in around her, and once that was my own fault.  I'm sorry, Dana.

The yellowing on the right edge is too heavy to be removed, and I can only hope to disguise it with heavy shading.  Then again, I was never sure what to do about a background as the only light areas of the original photograph are her skin.  It's very striking, and was my original choice, but I love the flowing shapes that frame the bottom contours of the drawing.  So, unmarked space at the bottom...but that doesn't work well for her hair.  Her hair, that's where I have trouble...it's a small photo and the shapes in her hair are too difficult for me to map out. So I'm having to roughly recreate...ahm...not a duplication of what I see but the essence of it.  Block the rest of it in as you see  on the left, get a general placement of flow, then start darkening it.  At some point I have to put away the photo and see what the drawing itself needs in order to look alive.  it's  incredibly difficult to psych myself up to this aspect of this particular drawing. it's one reason progress has been so slow, added to the other technical aspect which was discouraging.

This is on cardstock.  Another difficult drawing I'm doing is on a page from a drawing tablet.  I'm finding that I vastly prefer the cardstock for it's smoother texture which captures my shading better, but that the drawing paper is less prone to tearing when I get heavy with that fine tip.  I am needing to experiment with using wider gauges of lead for heavy shading.

You'll have noticed that the shaded area of the background looks out of place.  That's because it was shaded with a  regular #2 pencil, and is only temp work.  If necessary I'll erase it before using a mechanical pencil, but I;m hoping instead to use the mechanical to supplement the regular pencil.  It's an experiment, I'm hoping to arrive at a look that looks integral to the texture of the whole but still sets it apart slightly from the rest.
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Laurie from Nike

This is the kind of texture I'd like to develop for hair.  I like this look a lot.  No contours, pure shape!  Very dynamic, lively.  

Lori Hamilton

Similar to the roadblock I faced with hair, I got hung up on every stitch on Lori's sweater having to be exactly right.   She doesn't entirely look herself in this photo, taken by someone else.  Pro photographer, I believe she said, Lori was posing for him at the beach.  The wind was blowing the sand into her eyes!

Putty in Your Hands

Just to demonstrate that I really am working on things, here's an update with one or more pics.  All stuff I'm taking my time on, it's getting easier.  I gave up sodas this month, and am finding a little more...what is it, drive?  Or is my ability to visualize a way forward loosening up?  I'm making progress now on things that used to leave me discouraged. 

And let me just say...I fuckin' love Woodsies!

The armature above is not set to an exact scale, being rather exaggerated in proportions, but close to 1/10th.  It is also not following any of the paper models I have built for copying shapes, but then again it's only one of several attempts I'm taking at sculpting the human form, all of them from a different angle. The models are mostly male fantasy exaggerations (hey, I didn't design them!)  , some anime-based, and a few that are more realistic - my personal leaning is to the more natural, so as I choose which ones to copy I'll be modifying the proportions.  This particular sculpt is based on an anime styled drawing. 

 I'm using 22 caliber floral wire from Michael's, binding Woodsies (see the thin wooden dowels?) to the armature with copper wire.  Aleene's Quick-Dry Tacky Glue to make them, er, tacky for the clay  Premo Sculpy) to stick to.  The  core of the trunk is bulked in with foil so the body is flexible for posing.  I needed to make the legs longer as she'll be wearing spike heel, but that's a good lesson - easily solvable when I get that far.  I'm using Sarah Simblet's book Anatomy for th Artist as a reference: indispensable book, must buy myself  a copy in hardback (it's running around thirty dollars used on Amazon last I looked).

I spent a few days drawing, and the works I chose are among the harder to deal with.  That was a mistake for trying to get into the zone and stay there.   It was too easy to retreat to other projects where translating tonal shifts from my vision to my hand wasn't the work needed.  So I'm going to choose one of the easier pieces I've prepared and go with those.  Those are less personal, but will be rewarding all the same. 

Must remember to find the manual for the scanner/printer...it picks up ink sketches well enough but not fine pencil shadings.  At the moment I cannot share what I finish. 

One of those drawing challenges has a tangle of fine details that have to be mapped out.  Lucky for me I have it as a large file on my computer, because the printed copy simply is';t as luminous as I need it to be and it had me on the wrong path.  One major detail must now be corrected...or just faked.    The other is a drawing based on a wallet-sized photo that was very dark when it was new, and it ain't so new now thirty years later. When I try to map out her hair visually it makes my eyes dizzy.  So...I'm blocking it in roughly, then at some point I'll have to set the photo aside and just see what the drawing itself demands in order to look integral.  That image has other obstacles, at least one of which is my own doing in trying to get back into it. 

Want to do some pen and ink but at the moment no imaged are coming to mind.

Oil paints, I have a dual image in mind but they need figuring out.  Monochromatic, primarily, one in red and one in blue.  Not my happiest stuff.

Bet ya don't know what this is:

 Yeah, didn't think so!  maybe you'll do better with this:

Waddya think, do ya know that one?  I'm using cardstock and Woodsies for the basic shapes, and will go over them  later with epoxy putty.  There's nothing else for the details I'll have to add, plus the versatility and strength it provides.  That would have been my medium of choice all these years, I'm good with the stuff.  Sadly, it's not good with me.  Found out long ago that I'm one of a rare few who are allergic to the chemicals in it.  I'm fine as long as I wear protective gloves, but they get in the way of shaping it, either too loose or too constrictive, and I can't  I can't feel the material through them.  Worse, I can't help absent-mindedly wiping at my face, scratching at itches, etc...and what this shit does to my skin, damn.  Eyes puff out and water, mouth dries to the point of cracking and bleeding.

Here, here's an easy one.

That one I know you recognized right away.

So it's two in the morning, listless night like last night, and today was a Reverse Midas: everything I touch turns to shit, nothing to do but ride it out.  Got a book to finish and return to the library, maybe I'll wait 'til I've slept before starting in on anything.  Weekend coming, my friend may want someone to vent to or commiserate with. 


Ooooh!  I wonder if I can buy Woodsies in bulk off Amazon?   I'm almost out of all sorts of supplies, musytmake a run to Michael's soon, and the wethaer is getting hot again.

Viedeodwome

There's TMI in Attics

(If you feel awkward about getting personal, or if you happen to be a member of my family, you would do best to exit now.)

Here's another typical artists' concern (there I go again, calling myself an artist. Still don't think I've earned it yet.). Is it editing or self-censorship?

I've already engaged in it my first night out. That debut post read that I'm seeking solace for a broken heart but then I changed it to “depression”. There's a delicate balanced to be maintained. Audiences want to connect on a personal level, but there's a risk of causing them to b uncomfortable with the things that are painful or boring them by being hopelessly miserable. Thing is, one of the reasons this blog exists is as a relief valve. I also hope she'll read it at some point – 'her' being my alienated friend. That's not an easy juggle. Communication has been the biggest issue of my life. I am not broken, but I am brokenhearted.

* * * * * * * * *

When I was little I was forbidden access to the attic over the garage the longest time. I can no longer recall what fascinated me at first when I was finally allowed up. Boxes of this or that, old photos maybe. At first it was good just to gain entry to a place that had once been forbidden. That's a drive, for me...in Vallejo just outside of San Fransisco we'd lived at the edge of a desert. You couldn't see it from my backyard, as the yard ended with a rise that blocked the expanse from view. I was never allowed to climb that incline but I kept trying. I was maybe thee years old. One time I fell in the attempt and my face came down on the rake, causing a cut to my nose and nearly putting out an eye. It didn't matter how often I was told there was nothing there for me, the thing was to find out for myself.

Later I would find adult magazines up there. Playboy, Penthouse, Oui. The first thing that struck me was how innocent and playful a lot of it was. That's my first impression of sex, with the tease of primetime TV of the '70s with sitcoms teasing nudist camp plotlines or dramas like Room 222 talking about gays and discrimination...I just...didn't get the hangups. They still baffle me today. I've developed a natural love of human sexuality and a fascination for the prejudices that failed to instill themselves in me.

Why do I relate this? It's a pivotal influence. It's one of the things I would like to be known for in my work if not my self. Sexuality itself, the female body and face, yes, and a visual aesthetic...I remember a Playboy pictorial on the lingerie of the 19^th Century that was wonderful for it's baroque textures and interplay with the body. More than that, though, the values it re-enforced in me and my view of this vitally integral aspect of the human condition. Humanism, love, passion, empathy, compassion, trust. I may find my way to producing that, I may not. We'll have to see where it takes me. I will have to be careful with self-censorship as well, and know that by sharing my values I may lose some of the friends who will not want to accompany me there.

In my last year of high school, with no plan what to do with my life, I seriously considered looking for work in porn as an editor. With my body there was no consideration of performing, and I'm no good with a camera. Editing I think I'd be good at, given enough training. In time I might have directed. Not a lot of people would have back me on that call, but I should have done it. If you ever find yourself denigrating people in porn simply because they are involved in adult movies, that's who you're looking down on: just anybody, just regular people like me.

* * * * * * * * *

We each find our own voice. I've always wished that I weren't so damn literal. I remember in 1^st or 2^nd grade, we were given an assignment that writing about what we would daydream sitting on the back porch. We were also to draw that scene in crayon. I was the one who drew a picture of myself sitting on a porch.

Surely communication has to be more than that.

How do I draw the smell of a hot attic in Summer? How do I visually put across the potent memory - the heady brew of dry air, cooked dusty webs, the rich aroma of old magazines, the scents of hot skin and sweat and cum? How do I covey the sense of discovery, of...of vindication, I think I felt, in finding this celebration of humanity as a sensual treasure not to be shunned or vilified but explored and understood, and nurtured?

Maintaining a New Balance

No images to share tonight, but there should be something soon. Give it a few days, if it's a sketch. Longer if a drawing.

* * * * * * * * *

I once met a Laurie who worked at Nike (she teased me for wearing a competitor's brand). This was in a life drawing class. I've known Lauries and Lores and Loris...and while I'm not certain that Laurie from Nike spelled her name that way, Lori and I decided from the photo that she looked like a Laurie.

I started that drawing, too, but got the space relationship of her pose wrong. Obsession with perfection, check.

That photo is tonight one in a file of photos I want to draw in the near future. Yes, still just copying other people's photos, but at least that's a personal one. Though I question the artistic merit involved, now isn't the time to fret over it. Lemme just get there again first.

I spent some time compiling that file and making preliminary marks on paper for placing my subjects. I'm nearly there, but it's three in the morning and I'm dead tired. Need to sleep. Today, most;ly I fought with placing a pair of eyes in a clay sculpture of a head, roughly 1/5^th scale. I've attempted sculpts before, but always the body. The results were like some mad scientists nightmarish rejects. This is my first head. I've amassed a number of paper models of figures for physical references of shapes to copy, and I've a book on anatomy that I hope will help. But I struggled today because that “nearly' 1/5^th wasn't nearly enough that the eyes I baked were large enough. Still, she does look...humanoid. Eerie, even, if she were a real person you'd stare and her with a chill down your spine trying to figure out what's so freakin' creepy about her eyes. They're just too small, that's all, and makes not place correctly wherever I situate them.

I also did a little work on a scale replica of a vehicle from an old science fiction Tv show. I've always wanted one and I like the idea of making my own from scratch. I'm using thin wooden dowels, cardstock, and balsa strips. Early stages, still just starting the structure. I don't have blueprints that are complete or accurate. Not a huge problem.

All of which is to say...well, hell. It takes less energy to do all of that than to sit down and draw. It's energy I didn't have today. I suppose mostly it's mental or psychological reserve I'm talking about.

There's a woman I have been wanting to reconnect with for the longest time. She means the world to me. I've been posting on Facebook since earlier this year hoping it would lead us to each other. Almost three weeks ago I sent her a friend request. I did get a response, sort of...she nuked her FB page. I can imagine reasons why that might not mean “go die”, like just making sure she has the space to process my suddenly appearing again...but that's ten percent hope and ninety percent recognizing that she's gone, and it's over. And...I'm doing what I can to deal with it. The wound doesn't heal, I can only keep the pain at bay.

The work can do that for hours at a time. I have good days, I can laugh with friends. I am not broken, but I am heartbroken and the idea of putting on a clown show pretending everything's peachy is loathsome to me. I can't vent on FB, no one there wants to hear it. It's drama. You didn't ask for it either but (a) it's apropos to the subject and (b) it's my fuckin' page!

I mean...that's kinda the point of the whole blog, not just resurrect myself but to stay sane.  And, maybe, give a little look at the process.  Dealing with emotional shit is part of it in a number of ways.  It can sap your energy (damn, does it ever do that for me!), but if you can find your way to the zone the work feeds you and helps to heal.  The more expressive artists find that emotional lows guide their choices.

So the only thing to do is to “Just do it”. Get on with it. That's what artists do. Don't think about it. Don't keep putting obstacles in your own path, don't complicate it. Don't obsess the details to the point it's impossible to continue. Just do it.

* * * * * * * * *

I will have images to post, soon enough, but I've decided that it's a bad move to rush a drawing or a sketch just to have something to post. There's a strong chance a commission is coming my way very soon, in which case everything else will be taking a lower priority. I'm ready for the challenge, I've bought plenty of 0.3mm 2B lead refills, will have to see what size drawing paper is needed (a break in the heat is expected this weekend so a run to Michael's is in the offing).

Carole Ann Ford

This is the sketch mentioned in the previous post. Carole Ann Ford of Doctor Who fame (Susan was the Doctor's granddaughter).  What makes ballpoint pen a good lesson is that every mark remains, including the mistakes.

I never used to be good at hands, but I've really taken a  liking to portraits that incorporate them.  It's so much more expressive.

I also like the line formed by her wrists across the bottom of the image.  Composition is another aspect I struggle with - I've seldom attempted scenes, only primary subjects.

Void Where Prohibited

The idea is that if you create a space you will feel compelled to fill it. Perfectly good theory, not a thing wrong with it. I think even my ascetic friend Scott, who wanted to join a monastery, does this: though he feels most whole with an absence of property, he fills his living space wall to wall with mystery. For most people the theory probably works in some fashion. Give a collector a cabinet and watch what happens.

It's not unknown to trouble artists, though. I have a bunch of notebooks, sketch pads, drawing tablets, even a few canvases bought over the years that are still waiting. It's a pretty vicious fucking block. For me it began with homework back in high school. I paid attention, I aced the tests, but set me down to a blank sheet of notebook paper and it becomes a staring contest that the blank page always wins. You're supposed to transform the sheet with the inner stuffings of your brain. Works the other way for me, run an x-ray on my head and you'll see ruled blue lines.

The problem is two-fold (at the very least). First, I have no idea what to communicate. Or, in the instance of my drawings, I do know what to communicate but not how to turn it into images. Simply, I trained myself as a photorealist and trapped myself by becoming dependent on photographs for my best work. Artist's trap: accept that most of your work will not be your best, you must free yourself to play around. I've occasionally come up with ideas that thrill me for about two minutes until I realize just how facile they are. Visual junk food. Bumper sticker art.

Second: who says doing art has to communicate a message? That's academia, not creation. What I have to show is a love for my subject, and if I do well that should speak to someone. Scott and I were at the grotto today, looking at the religious sculptures. He couldn't communicate to me just why none of them really spoke to him, and the only answer he could give when I asked what would make him happy he said, essentially, “something that makes me feel what these don't”. he needs something that strikes a spiritual chord...as an atheist, I was looking at the artistry and found some of the pieces beautiful. (that's another lesson, BTW, no piece will strike a chord with everyone.)

Basically, I'm stumbling over the idea of art instead of making it. Just make something, that's art. Not necessarily good art, usually not, but art all the same. It doesn't have to be anything.

Third (wait, wasn't that supposed to be only two problems?): perfectionism. After school the problem with my homework seeped into my drawings, exclusively portrait work by then. Can you imagine trying to get every hair in a photograph mapped out on a drawing? But if I didn't, I got frustrated and too unhappy with the work to finish it. I'm still struggling with that. I have no solution to offer, at least not yet, but I do have a tentative fix to suggest to anyone in the same circumstance. Lay off the drawing for a while, and do some sketches – but do it in another medium. At first I had a bias against sketches, they would seem inherently of less worth than a meticulously crafted piece. Once I did one, though, I was struck by how much I liked the vitality of it. My drawings are done in mechanical pencil, .3mm most of them. I did the sketch in ball point pen. You can't erase anything with a pen, and you can't get every fine line. You simply can't, not if it's truly a sketch. Even a sketch can take me all night.

Fourth: depression. Was my depression caused by my block or was it the other way around? I don't know, but I think it's the only way out. OTOH, my depression flares up irregularly from another source, one that I have not been able to surmount. Someone missing from my life but not my soul, a misunderstanding never corrected, a wound that can't heal. But that's another story...anyway, I feel better when I'm working on a project, and I have so many to work on! Working – well, it hasn't outright healed me but it takes blots out the pain for a while.

**********************

Okay, so, as of tonight I haven't yet done another new image to post.  Still, to give this blog a little legitimacy and to show you what I'm talking about, I'll post a few older pieces.  Apologies to the few people who know me, they've seen these already.  Thing is, I'm working in 3D media at the mo', switching back to 2D takes psyching into and I want to get something more substantial posted.

 This is what I do at my best.  See the hair?  I got lost in the hair.  How thick is a hair?  But I had to have each one - nad not a contour line, either, but the shine of each one charted.  It shut me down fast.  

That was done with a .3mm mechanical pencil.  That thinness of lead does not lend a side to shade with, it's all point.  That takes a while to get anywhere.  A small drawing can take a week, and my eyesight gives me  two hours working time before risking an eyestrain headache.  This one is larger, but done back in the mid/late '80s. just before the block took me whole.

Josephine Baker, unfinished ballpoint pen sketch on regular typing paper. Recent.  Now, this was supposed to be just a sketch to test the state of my mojo, which is why it didn't get more respectable paper...but I really like the style that came about for this.  I want to do more like this!  Somewhere around here I've got one of Carole Ann Ford that's really nice - I hope I can find it on one of my flash drives so I don't have to scan it again. 

This is something I'm still exploring, the idea of leaving a a piece partially finished.  I need to get her other earring and the necklaces, but what about her headscarf?  Will that detract from the emphasis on her face?  There's something about leaving an area where the process is more obvious that I think invites people to look deeper, to see what's behind the work.

This is primarily an exercize to discover how well rain can be done in ballpoint pen.  Again, typing paper (accounting for the unanticiparted wrinkles in he shirt, my bad).  the woman is asuka Kurosawa as Rinko, a pivotal (and amazing) scene from Shinya Tsukamoto's film A Snake of June.  As I wanted to display it on sites that were iffy about nudity, and the only place in the scene where she still has clothing is the beginning of the sequence - thus her hair is still not slicked down at this point.  That perhaps detracts from the image being convincing - at leqast, I'm not happy with that particular detail.  I'll try another at some point from the same scene (so many shots to choose from...)

You'll notice that none of these are from my own photography.  That's another problem to grapple with...I couldn't sell any of this, strictly speaking it's not my work.  The images already existed.  This is craft...is it art if it isn't mine?  I'm comfortable with it as long as I'm still only learning, but...that's another post, and it's one I don't know enough about to write.

Here, let me show you those last two agian blown up so that you can see the how the ballpoint works:

Hello.

This blog is an experiment in resurrection.  It will probably be at times NSFW - not photographically but in content.  I am trying to find my way back to "the zone" on a regular basis, overcome artistic blocks.  It is also therapy for depression..

Posts pending.  Like me.  I live in Portland Oregon and my name is Jeff Larsen (no, the other one).  "I am an artist".  No, I'm not quoting someone, the parentheses indicate that I don't have the slightest idea what it means to be an artist, though people keep telling me I am one.  I find the claim highly suspect.

Have patience, please, as of yet I have nothing to show.  Whatever I had I gave away.

Ahem.  Hey, be kind, it's a first attempt.  I've just read a few Austin Kleon books to try to jumpstart me.