Traces

I need a quicker drawing to kickstart me back to where I need to be.  Not a sketch but a drawing.  I will try to take a somewhat lax approach knowing that instinct will kick in and  tighten things up. 

To that end I have a photo I like of actress Sharon Mitchell, found online.  I'll do two drawings, one a profile and the other a full torso image.  First I zoomed the pic on my  screen (10 x 17.5") and held a regular 8.5 x 11.5 sheet of typing paper to it to trace the images. 

I then used a lightbox to retrace them onto pages from an art tablet, 8 x 10.  None of these contour lines will make it into the actual drawing, they will all be erased and replaced with as few contours and as much shading as possible as I go.  They are for placement alone.

The image was not a large file, so blowing it up to this size did not lend it clarity for detail.  I will refer to other sources as needed.  for example, I have a few old Avon catalogs - excellent for closeups of lip texture, eyes, etc. The jacket is black leather (yummy on women!), a  texture I've never drawn before.  I'm looking forward to seeing whether I can recreate the feel of it.

Not starting in this morning, already feel my eyes are a little strained staring at this computer screen too long.  Need sleep first too.

*******
I don't want to comment on getting through New Year's Eve.  God I fucking hate New Year's Eve.

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.