Monday, December 13, 2010

Something completely different -- drawings

Sizes of all the drawings range from 8 x 10 to 20 x 16



White ink on black paper, HP sleeping



Contour drawing of model, black ink



Contour drawing, in triangular form, of model, black ink



Contour drawing, black ink, wash and collage, several views of HP and of Anneke, the golfer, and a local beloved cow



Contour drawing, black ink



Contour, white pencil on black



Contour drawing, silver pen on black



Contour drawing, silver pen on black



Ink and wash, HPs sneakers



Double portrait, charcoal, ink



I love to draw, taught it to adult beginners for many years, creating workshops designed to introduce them to the magic of the line. For most people it was many years since they'd tried, having given up typically at the age of twelve, when people want to do detailed and impossibly technical drawings then give up in dismay when they can't do it, not realizing the skills they need to develop.

But revisiting the whole thing is a wonderful thing in midlife. One man, who I found later was in the last stages of cancer, though he looked pretty good to me, was a well known regional figure in politics whose father was an architect. He told me that learning that his drawing was not at all awful as his father had said, was a huge door opening, and it made him very happy. He had a different sensibility from his father the literal architect, more loose and actually better in terms of fine art, and it was great for him to discover that. Later when I found out how near he was to the end of his life I felt so privileged to have been part of giving him this new insight into his own talent.

Anyway, art is for everyone, and I encourage everyone to try it. I used to tell people that erasers were not used in my class, aside from kneaded erasers which have an art purpose, not just erasing. People would look at me with horror, thinking they were not allowed to make mistakes! then I would explain that there werent' any mistakes in drawing. Every mark is your mark. Even if you decide it's in the wrong place, that doesn't make it a mistake. Heck, look at the old master drawings and all the attempts that went into the final product, all left there on the page without apology, since they were the drafts that got the artist to the drawing.

Anyway, here are a just a few of the many many drawings I've made over never mind how many years, but these are recent.

1 comment:

  1. They look like you write, and sound, in your letters...and I do like the one with the cow!
    I look forward to seeing more, many more.

    ReplyDelete

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