This last card made me think of “Winken and Blinken and Nod sailing off in a wooden shoe…sailed on a river of crystal light, into a sea of dew.” It’s one of my favorite songs!
Not much going on with the back side of the card. I was “done”. You know, the itch had been scratched. And I put away the bits of papers for another day.
Little forays into creating with different mediums is so much fun. But it isn’t long before I’m longing for the simplicity of a pen and watercolor.
Trees! I have a fascination with Trees! When I finished making this one, I kept thinking “Chicka Chicka Boom! Boom!” which is from a favorite children’s book by that name and features the alphabet climbing a tree.
I really should have photographed this upside down so you could see the little tree on the back of the card. I liked it. This one is titled, “A Wishing Tree”.
Chicka Chicka Boom! Boom!
This is the second collaged card I made. It was cool to take a background paper and look at my pile of scraps to see what would work with the card stock. It almost seemed like the little scraps would whisper…yes, me! and me! oh no…i just won’t do with that blue! etc.
Not as much going on with the back of this card. But I titled it “Waterlily Nite”. Children’s books and songs were floating in and out of my head with each one.
Until I have a chance to create a post about our awesome Walk Day, I’ll share this with you. I had another creative itch to scratch last week…except this time it was paper collage! I decided to make cards. I liked using the little bits of throwaway papers I have and seeing what I could come up with.
This was the first of four I made. I felt I had to title them. This one is “Breezy Fall”. These are not the best photos. The colors in the top one are truer to the actual collaged card.
ID #103
I’ve recently discovered an artist whose work and words I’m eating up these days. To say that his paintings are delicious would be correct…the color, movement, and draw-you-in composings on canvas are breathtaking. His words are equally inspiring.
Brian Rutenberg lives and works in New York City. His work is about as far on the other end of my own artistic offerings as one might be. He has an art degree while I have a French degree. He was a Fulbright Scholar and has made his living from his art whereas I have raised kids and worked small odd part-time jobs while my art-making has been stashed in-between every-which-way. He works in oils on HUGE canvases and currently I work in a sketchbook. He works in abstraction, with his drawings in charcoal being representational; I draw representationally with forays into abstraction.
We do have a few things in common though: born in the same year, southern upbringing, family people (he is married with two children; my husband and I are raising three). But the largest common denominator is a love for articulating all-things-art. And this is what I want to share with you…my reactions and responses to a few of the ideas and thoughts he presents in his marvelous Documentaries.
There are 18 of these 10-minute videos of Brian speaking to us about his work. I’ve watched them all, eagerly absorbing and mulling over the concepts he espouses and describes so eloquently. You really must watch these. I suggest watching only one or two and then spend a few days thinking about them and letting the ideas seep into your way of creating.
ID #105
I have also been making more of these Improvisational Drawings (as I’m calling them:). I’ve started numbering them with ID (stands for Improvisational Drawing) and then a number. I’ve also taken to writing about each of them on the back, or on a sheet of paper placed in an envelope I glue on the back. I enjoy creating the words that speak to how the drawing evolved, any thoughts as to why, and specifics about approach, or underlying ideas. The drawings themselves are in no way an attempt to replicate Rutenberg. The thing I’m going for is to consider the elements surrounding the drawings, the making of them, the impetus behind them…like Rutenberg, as he so wonderfully communicates in his Documentaries.
My next post will be responding to one aspect of one of his talks. In the meantime, see if you can watch a few of his documentaries. It will be time well spent!
Lesson #6: Caress Your Life
There are several approaches to drawing, three of which I’ll be highlighting in these Mini Lessons. The one I tend to gravitate towards the most is CONTOUR drawing. There are many reasons why I love this way of drawing, which you can read about here and here. But chiefly, I love contour drawing because, first… it is the most meditative of the approaches, slowing me down in my busy life. AND second…because the very motivation behind it, is to fully engage with your life.
Here’s how-
When you set your mind to create a contour drawing, you are to focus your eyes on your subject and NOT on the paper. You are to imagine that the tip of your pencil, pen, (drawing implement of any kind) actually IS your hand, or finger, following the contours and shapes of the subject in front of you. Here’s how Kimon Nicolaides puts it in his book, The Natural Way to Draw. (This is a book on drawing I would highly recommend. It may seem a bit heady and wordy if you’re a beginner. But when you’re ready to dig deep into the world of drawing, it is a treasure trove of instruction.:)
“…move your eye slowly along the contour of the model and move the pencil slowly along the paper. As you do this, keep the conviction that the pencil point is actually touching the contour. Be guided more by the sense of touch than by sight. This means that you must draw without looking at the paper, continuously looking at the model…. Develop the absolute conviction that you are touching the model. This exercise should be done slowly, searchingly, sensitively. Take your time…” pgs. 10 & 11.
Love that! So, draw up a chair somewhere in front of a family member, your morning cup of coffee, a tree in your backyard, etc. Place your pen or pencil on your sketchbook page somewhere that corresponds approximately to where you’re beginning to draw your subject. IT DOES NOT MATTER WHERE YOU BEGIN! You could start with the eyes, or the top of the head, or the shoulder, WHEREVER! Just begin.
*And as your eyes move slowly around the contours of your subject, draw on your paper as you go, as if your eyes and your hand are ONE. Do not limit yourself to outer edges. The contours available to you to follow, are BOTH on the outside of your subject (edges of face, arms, feet) AND the inside of your subject (folds of a jacket, lines of crossed legs, neckline of shirt, etc.) Try not to get ahead of yourself…keep your eyes and hand moving simultaneously. Go slow. Caress the contours!
*Allow your hand/pen to NOT COMPLETE all shapes. Can you find the places where I did that in the above drawing? Let the contour line move you from the edge of the pant leg to the leg itself, EVEN IF you have not finished drawing the pants!! This is an essential element, in my opinion, to contour drawing. You are not trying to delineate complete shapes, but rather describe the lovely flow of contours as they morph in and out of each other.
*Allow your hand/pen to CROSS OVER already drawn contours!! This is another essential element. Don’t restrict yourself to thinking you can’t draw the leg of a chair OVER TOP OF an already drawn purse or bag sitting nearby. Draw right on through it and keep going!
*Feel free to BACK UP with your line. I will often take my pen/eye back over what I’ve just drawn to get back to another contour I want to follow for a while.
*DO NOT FRET over your hand/pen going off the side of the paper!! So what, if your drawing is not perfectly centered on the page?? Simply, place your pen back on paper and keep going! I personally, think this gives the drawing a feel of spontaneity and in-the-moment authenticity.
*Try contour drawing with various amounts of BLINDNESS. You can actually create a drawing in this manner without EVER looking at your paper. These are called Blind Contour Drawings. The above pastel drawing was developed from a blind contour drawing created during a Drawing Group. If you saw the lady I was drawing, you would not know this was her!! Most of the time, I look at my subject for a length of time while drawing, glance down for a brief second WITHOUT DRAWING OR LIFTING MY PEN, and then return to looking at my subject to draw. I suppose these would be called Partially-blind Contour Drawings. 
*Try keeping your pen or pencil ON THE PAPER THE ENTIRE TIME, never lifting it to move it elsewhere in your drawing. These are called Continuous or One-Liner Drawings. Although the above drawing is only one or two complete lines from top of the page to the end of my name; most of the time, I draw one line for as far as I feel I can go and then pick up my pen and place it somewhere else to begin another line…again and again. Perhaps these could be called Several-Liner Drawings. Check out Picasso’s One-Liner Drawings! Very cool!
**A key element to contour drawing in this manner is to LET GO of your desire to have “pretty” results. (Remember the last lesson…“Leggo My Ego”). Just go with the flow, engage with your subject matter by drawing its contours, and then have a little chuckle at the result. THE IMPORTANT THING is the PROCESS of drawing!!! It’s NOT to have a “perfect” drawing, that is to say, a drawing with perfect proportions, scale and perspective. I, myself, ACTUALLY PREFER an off-kilter, wonky, funky drawing done freely and lovingly. Mr. Nicolaides says it beautifully:
“When you looked at your first completed contour drawing, you probably laughed. No doubt the lines sprawled all over the paper, the ends did not meet in places, and one leg or arm may have been much bigger than the other. That should not worry you at all. In fact, you will really have cause for worry only if your drawing looks too ‘correct,’ for that will probably mean either that you have looked at the paper too often or have tried too hard to keep the proportions in your mind.” pg. 19.
A Blessing: May you slow down and enjoy your life, by caressing its contours through drawing…this week and throughout the years to come!!
Addendum: It occurs to me to point out some things that may seem obvious to you. And here is where I absolutely, teetotally LOOOVE art for this. There are SO many things we can take from this lesson on contour drawing and apply it to our lives. For instance-
**We really, truly, absolutely need to slow down.
**We would do much better to enjoy and focus on the JOURNEY of our lives rather than on the PRODUCT or ACCOMPLISHMENTS of our lives.
**We need to be ok with some things just not being completed. Being willing to let things in our lives be open and unfinished is a good thing.
**Sometimes we need to back up. Then take a new direction.
**When we fall off the “paper”, we need to get back on the proverbial “horse” and keep going!
**We need to make an effort at NOT getting ahead of ourselves. Be where we are…fully!
**We need to “let go” of having a particular outcome.
**And last, but not least…we need to have a little chuckle as we look around at our lives.
***Access all Mini Lessons for Drawing Your Life at the top of the home page on my blog! (OR just click the highlighted words in blue!)
Lesson #1: DRAW UP A CHAIR
…any chair! It does not matter where you sit, but sit you must! I’m not telling you to draw a chair…I’m saying to draw UP a chair and sit in it! In our full-tilt lives, we’ve just GOT to get off the merry-go-round for a few minutes (ok, maybe 10 or fifteen) in order to even begin to make a mark in our sketchbooks.
To me, there are three ways to go through life: 1. Disgruntled, disengaged, distempered. 2. Auto-pilot, numb, zoned out. 3. Alive, engaged, active in it. We’ve all been there in each of these modes of living. Drawing is one of the BEST ways I know to engage with my life, be alive to it and actively embracing it. Drawing up a chair is the first step to doing this!
This ONE SIMPLE ACT is crucial for those just beginning to keep a journal of images AND for those of us who have been doing this a while. Drawing up a chair in the midst of our busy day, can seem like, “Duh, stupid!” But really it’s the one thing that, for many of us, keeps us from drawing (or sketching, painting, collaging…whatever it is you’re wanting to do that day!) If you don’t somehow train yourself to sit down for a few minutes, you’ll never slow down your life enough to really enjoy it, draw it, record it in images and/or words.
There’s only one alternative to drawing up a chair…and that is, to TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THE MOMENTS YOU ARE ALREADY SITTING DOWN! Waiting in a car pick-up line for your child, waiting at their soccer practice, sitting at the DMV, in staff meetings, on lunch break, on a bus, subway or plane…wherever it is that you might already be sitting down….these are terrific moments for dashing off a line or two, or smooshing a bit of color around on the page.
Don’t get me wrong…I know it is possible to draw while standing! You can stand at a table, in a field, office or classroom. But you still have to drop what you’re doing presently in order to pick up paper and pen, sketchbook and paints. We must develop a practice of DROPPING IN to our lives, letting go of the get-it-done mindset, and taking the precious minutes to record the Beauties of the day. It really might be as simple as just gluing into your sketchbook the movie ticket stub of your latest favorite outing. It might be picking a crayon color that matches the color of the sky that day, and swiping it around on the page a bit. It really doesn’t have to be elaborate. But it can be if you want it to. And I find that ONCE I’ve drawn up the chair, done a little doodle or two, then I’m itching and ready for more! I just needed to slow down and sit a spell.
This week, see how many times you can just DRAW UP A CHAIR and sketch, or color, or glue, or write. Just see… Train yourself to sit down, to pause. You’ll need to carry some kind of book with you, or have it handy wherever you are. The book can be lined or not, cheap or pricey (I am much freer to draw/doodle/etc. when my book is cheap!). Take advantage of the already-sitting-down moments. And, if you are so inclined, draw chairs! Draw all the chairs you have in your home, office, out on the deck, or in someone’s back yard. If you feel like you can’t draw a chair you see, then draw an imaginary chair like the one I painted above. Create it right out of your head! Let it be wonky, weird, funky and frivolous.
I’ll leave you with some suggestions/ideas…I’m not mandating what you are to do in your little book this week! Only suggesting! But I am saying, “Draw up a chair and SIT!” This is the first (maybe THE most important?) baby step toward your desire to record your life in images and words.
*Draw/doodle/sketch each chair you purposefully sit down in this week. Create a whole page full of small doodles of these chairs.
*If you do not draw (or just don’t want to), choose a crayon/paint color or torn piece of paper that matches the color of each of the chairs you sit in! Color a patch in your book or glue the paper down!
*Draw/sketch/paint/collage all the chairs in your life and label them. Living room reading chair, dining room chair, wrought iron back deck chair, adirondack chair in your yard, car seat you sit in while driving, office chair, airplane seat, bus seat, subway seat, rock by the stream, patch of grass in a neighboring field, fold-up chair at soccer game, etc. I think it would be enlightening to see just how many different types of “seats” we sit in on any given day!
A Blessing: May you have many chairs calling your name this week: “Come sit with me! Come and draw! Draw me! Collage me! Paint me!” May you find strength to push aside the clamoring to-do list and DRAW UP A CHAIR!
P.S. For some of you, this first “lesson” is already in the bag. You’re already drawing up a chair any chance you can get to sit down, pause a bit to draw. Hang in there with me…each week explores a different baby step. My hope is that there will be at least one or two weeks that will give you some real help toward drawing and celebrating your life in a sketchbook. Thanks for visiting!!
***Access all Mini Lessons for Drawing Your Life at the top of the home page on my blog! (OR just click the highlighted words in blue!)
Aisle 5
They stood around, the three of them
as I came beside for ‘matoes.
Loud and boisterous they spoke of them-
this generation’s pathos.
“They don’t know what work is!
They’ve never had to do it!
Plow the back forty, bail the hay,
clean out the barn, all in a day!”
I stood there with diced, sauce and paste,
One woman and two men.
I was in between them…
In a middle generation.
I’m up before the dawn
to plow with pen and paint
Lines upon the papers…is this “work”?
To them, I’m sure it ain’t.
-jpe
4 December 2011
In a series of poems from the vantage point of my shopping cart at Walmart.
December was an interesting month. It might be described as magical. Or befuddling. Whatever it was that caused it, I found myself with words raining down all around me. I could hardly catch them all. If you remember, I had declared December as a Holiday from blogging. Not from my daily drawing and other creative goings on, but just from blogging and being so tied to Facebook. It was, in hindsight, as if my restriction of words in one direction, opened a door for them in another. I’d wake up in the mornings and have poems already half “done” in my head. I’d race downstairs to pin them to the page. I’d go on my morning walks in the neighborhood…only to quicken the pace near the end for fear of losing the poem that trotted along with me at every footstep. Sound bizarre? It was. At least it felt that way, being someone who is more familiar with images running through my mind to paint, to draw, to sketch. Words? Really?
I have written the odd poem here and there throughout my life. Some very dark and personal. Some lighthearted and carefree. In all, I “received” over 30 poems in both categories in the month of December. I shared a few of them with you in Postcards like this one and that one, and this too, oh and here as well and finally here. It actually had begun in November with poems dropping in every week or so, like here and here. It seemed to want to continue into January, but both busyness (aka. The Art Show prep) and my own desire to stop-the-madness brought it to a halt for a while. I have, since the fury of the art show, written one or two poems since. (One recent poem is in my new Zine as a treat for you! I have not posted it on my blog…and probably won’t. A gift from me to you who purchase my little Zine:)
And I like it better that way…words coming in a little at a time. Images have a way of flooding into my head and I can feel quite “backed-up” if I don’t have a regular flow letting some out. But the words were the worst: they DEMAND to get out, to be “gotten down”, to have a life on paper instead of stuffed inside a brain that can no longer remember very much! In December I felt a bit like I was at the behest of these words, rather than the other way around. THEY were dictating to me and there was nothing for it but to write them down. I shared a few of them with you in December. I think I shall paint and sketch little images to go with some of the others to share with you.
The above poem is in a little series I’ve called “Shopping Cart Poems”. They are exactly that…poems that got plunked in my head as I pushed a cart around at our local Walmart. Hm. So many times we think inspiration can only strike on the tops of mountains gazing at breathtaking views. Right there, in the most mundane of places…little poems to catch and render. Hm. More fuel for my conviction that Art is RIGHT WHERE WE ARE! We don’t have to exit our lives to be the artists we want to be. We need to present IN the lives that we have and look for, indeed EXPECT, that art is happening underfoot.
Even in Walmart. Go figure.
I was recently loaned the video titled Between the Folds, A PBS Independent Lens movie. I fell in love…again.
When I was a child I had several origami books (which I wish I could find!) and spent hours folding and folding and trying to figure out the diagrams for creating all kinds of animals, boxes, people, etc. I have continued to enjoy origami as an adult, buying a book here and there to share with my kids. Currently in my art classes at school, I’m teaching tesselations. To my delight, I discovered in this film that Origami is a kind of 3-Dimensional tesselation! How cool is that!
I was enrapt from the beginning of this video to the end as it expounded all the heights to which origami is currently taken. An exquisite art form, a way to teach geometry and other mathematical subjects, a practical problem-solver for industry, as well as huge scientific strides being made through Origami. If you can get your hands on the full, hour long video, PLEASE DO SO! It is hugely inspiring!!!!
But here are links to a couple of mini segments from the film:
An amazing origami artist who makes his own paper prior to folding it.
My favorite origami artist in the video whose work is breathtaking and whose personality is equally delightful! I’m sad to see he is deceased…what a wonderful artist!
The above photo is of all our creations this past weekend. Maddie, Catherine, and myself made lots of cool things from butterflies to swans to boxes, to a person and on and on. This is too much fun! You should go pick up an Origami book and some square papers (I’ve often seen very inexpensive books with papers in the Bargain section of Barnes n Nobles) and you will have so much fun!!
Sometimes I think I must be as crazy as Eric Joisel about art…sure wish I could say, as he does in the video for his excuse, “…but, of course, I am French!”
**To be noted: the first three letters of Eric Joisel’s last name, are the French word for Joy. He indeed brought a lot of joy into the world through his art!
