New Visual Journaling Class being offered.

I'm floating an idea to see if it resonates with folks - because my Visual Journaling class filled so quickly, I am thinking about offering another, daytime, one if there are enough folks interested in taking it.  It would meet Tuesday mornings 10 - 12:30 for six weeks in my studio on Southside Richmond.  We'd spend the first 2-3 weeks making the journal itself, then the rest of the time filling it by playing/doing exercises/experimenting, etc.  If you think you might be interested, get in touch with me.  We'd start next week and go through 10/23!  (I can only take 6 folks due to the size of my studio, so register right away if you're interested.)  There's more info about the class itself on my website.

More meanderings through my sketchbook

The last few weeks I've continued working/playing/experimenting in my sketchbook.  It has been one of the most freeing periods of my artistic life.  I don't think I've ever before given myself such a stretch of time without goals or expectations to produce for a series or a show.  My perfectionism has, thankfully, taken a back seat, and my playfulness has come to the fore.

Here are some pictures I've done lately:

Street scene of Main St across the street from the Visual Arts Center.  Practicing one point perspective.  Pen and ink, watercolor, and graphite.

Pattern I more or less copied from a book about visual journaling.  Pen, ink, watercolor, watercolor pencils, wax crayons.

I gave my student the assignment of drawing an apple 10 times in 80 minutes.  I decided to do the same thing.  Until I got going - I couldn't let go of the prettiness of it and wanted to complete the drawing. I started in watercolor then my student wanted to use them so I had to move on - I switched to color pencil after that

After I finished the above apple, I went on to another one.  First I glued some random Dur-a-Lar to the paper just to give me some different textures to play with, then I painted it in acrylics.  I was fascinated to note how the paint acted on the Dur-a-Lar as compared to the regular drawing paper.  It resisted.  I used gold paint for the highlights on the apple.

Sometimes what I do in the sketchbook is affirmations or assertions

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I let myself be bold.  This was one of those times.

Zendoodles are never far away.  This one is Micron pens on Dur-a-Lar.

I use my sketchbook when I'm in figure drawing sessions on Friday evenings at the Visual Arts Center (all are welcome - $6/person - it's a great opportunity to draw from the model)  Sometimes my drawings aren't all that successful because I'm still learning to work from the figure from life.  The picture on the left is how it looked after 20 min.  then I brought it home and had a great time cutting up magazines and making it into something completely different.  Whether the pieces are skillful or not, I'm learning so much from doing them.  It is changing the way I approach art completely.

This is the same model.  I drew the gesture drawing with green Micron then put the body on it with a graphite pencil.  I used the scrap from a magazine to glue it into the sketchbook because glue doesn't seem to work too well on Dur-a-Lar.

A friend told me about this quote.  I thought it was worth noting:  "There's a crack in everything.  that's how the light gets in."  Leonard Cohen

Workin' my stuff.  And what a great place to do it.

This postcard was my place marker at my niece's wedding I went to lately.  Va Beach in the old days.

Another picture from figure drawing sessions.  I love how the white and black look on the red background.  This one made me happy.

21 things that didn't work that night when I was 16.

 

An earlier figure drawing session.  I drew the figure on Dur-a-Lar which is slightly see through - it's translucent - then did a pattern on the page behind it.  I'm intrigued by the juxtaposition of the two.

Allowing myself to play.  Zendoodles.  Colors.  Sumi ink, micron pen, watercolors, on rice paper.

As you can see, I'm not sticking to any one medium or paper or subject or type of creation.  Whatever arises is what gets expressed.  It's a very right brain way of approaching art.  I'll write more about the difference in my next post.  In the meantime, I'm enjoying these meanderings and am very curious to see where they're going...

Playing my way through the pain

This December I'll be Artist in Residence on a cruise sponsored by Semester at Sea through UVa.  We'll be traveling to the Bahamas, Jamaica, Colombia, Panama (going through the Panama Canal), Venezuela, Peru, Ecuador, Costa Rica, Mexico and California.  It will be 25 days long.  It feels like one of the thrills of my life!  I love to travel but felt like perhaps my travel days were mostly over.  This awakened my Wanderlust again for sure!

I'll be teaching classes around the concept of a Visual Journal.  I'll teach Zendoodles (patterns) to decorate the journal with, Composing Photographs Successfully, Blind Contour Drawing, Modified Blind Contour Drawing, Drawing Basic Shapes, One Point Perspective, along with the basic concept of Visual Journaling.  Since I've never kept a Visual Journal, I thought it would be a good idea for me to keep one between now and then!

Generally when I use a sketchbook, I am very careful to create beautiful drawings which I'm comfortable showing others.  I put myself under pressure to make them "good" and don't give myself any room to play or experiment.  I bought a gorgeous leather-bound journal when I was in Venice.  I'm proud of myself for actually using it, but, again, I've only used it to make beautiful art (or as pretty as I can make it!)  I decided I need a change of pace.

While shopping for supplies for the classes for the cruise, I glanced through some of the lesson plans Dick Blick offers on their website.  One of the ones I happened upon is for making a sketch book using raw canvas and acrylic paints.  It looked simple enough so I decided to modify it and make one just like the one I got from Venice except with a canvas, not leather, cover.  And I'd get to decorate it however I wanted. 

I thought about doing the color field art like Dick Blick suggested, but that didn't interest me so much. Instead I gravitated to doing patterns all over it.  That took a couple of days but provided me with so much pleasure and concentrated joy.  I did do a color field painting on the inside but then decided I didn't like it at all - too busy and uninteresting so I painted over what I'd done with purple paint on one side and red on the other.  I put quotes which are important to me there so I can read them when I need inspiration or courage or whatever.

Then I went to the local art store, Main Art, where they have a terrific selection of papers and allowed myself to get whatever spoke to me.  $50 later, I had about 8 different kinds of paper.  The primary one, and what they used in the Venice sketchbook, is RFK Rives, but I also included some MiTientes pastel paper in different colors, some mulberry paper, other Asian papers with cool patterns, tracing paper, glassine, parchment, watercolor paper, Denril (used with markers, I think), and who knows what else?!  I spent the rest of that day tearing the paper to the right size to fit into the book (10"x14" - one page is 10"x7").  Then I grouped those into 4 sheets each which folded over to make 16 pages (2 sides of 8 pages each).  I asked Chris to show me how to use the drill press then used it to drill holes not only in the cover but also in each of the 8 packets of pages (I have approximately 128 sides of paper to use in the finished journal - some packets have more than 8 pages because some of the papers are very thin.)  Then I went to Michaels where I found some thread/string that seemed strong enough to use to bind it then figured out how the other one is bound and sewed up my journal.  I hope it'll hold!  If it doesn't, I can always re-do it.

Pleased with myself, I was ready to sit on my laurels for a while - months - years - who knows? - and admire my pretty work, but I recognized the trap I was setting for myself - this is a journal to USE! not one to just look at and smile cuz it's so pretty.

I boldly did a gesture drawing of the roses Chris gave me for our wedding anniversary last week - mostly wilted, but still pretty - then painted it with watercolor.  Then, boldly, I wrote all over the page.  I wrote a promise to myself that I will use this journal for PLAY and EXPERIMENTATION.  Anything else is a cop out and will be a betrayal of what it is for.   I'm going to make notes on each picture about what I'm doing and why,and I'm going to use all sorts of different materials. 

The second one I did was a total experiment - on parchment, I wrote with  Micron pens I'd found at Michael's on sale -  orange and green - and drew impatiens from a planter on my deck.  This morning I painted them with watercolors.  I found out that parchment isn't all that fond of liquid, but the colors show up brilliantly, and the watercolor dries faster than I expected it would given that it just sits on the surface for a while and puddles.  It's very different than watercolor paper.

Here's what my studio looks like now.  It's a mess with everything sprawled around me, but I love it!  Color pencils, acrylics, pastel pencils, brushes of every description, a book to look at, my journal, drawing tools, flowers, micron pens, a plethora of toys!

I also decided to copy a picture by Frank Lobdell.  It's from a book Chris gave me for Christmas.  Lobdell does figurative work and abstracts with patterns so Chris thought it might give me some ideas as to how to combine the two or move between the two or whatever.  I don't like his work a whole lot, but it was helpful to copy the picture.  I find that to be a good exercise because I learn how other artists work - it makes me use different materials in different ways.  For this one I used acrylics, pastel pencils, color pencils, charcoal pencil, and even a conte' crayon.  After I finished copying his, I decided to play with the concepts on my own.  That's the piece on the right.  I don't consider it finished, but I had fun working with it and look forward to getting back to it tomorrow.  That's the best feeling - looking forward to getting back into the studio the next day.  I've missed that lately.

I'm intentionally not cropping these pictures and making them all pretty, because that's precisely NOT the point!  It is incredibly difficult for me to let myself be messy and to do something which doesn't look precisely perfect - or as perfect as I can let it be.  I think that's one reason I've been in a slump lately - I haven't been allowing myself to experiment or to make mistakes.   I've been creating beautiful work, but the parameters I've been giving myself - to accurately represent what's in front of me - have been stultifying.

I'm also taking Figure Drawing at the Visual Arts Center of Richmond.  You might think I'd be good at that already, but frankly, I'm not.  I can copy 2-D things that are in front of me.  Drawing from life is not yet in my skill set.  I'm rectifying that.  Thomas Van Auken is the teacher I'm working with.  Thankfully he's very good.  He has us doing gesture drawings out the wazoo.  I've already used up most of a pad of newsprint in 2 weeks.  That's fine.  I'm also going to the Friday evening sketching sessions which anyone can come to so I can get extra practice.  I am determined to learn to represent the figure in a way I adore from life.

It's been a very difficult few weeks, feeling somewhat depressed and frustrated and in a lull, but I feel like following these gentle leadings and letting myself PLAY will be the key to moving through the muck and stuck and into something fun and interesting and compelling again.   

Hopefully this sense of adventure will keep me from looking like the self portrait I did last week and will keep me feel enlivened and curious and joyful.  That is, after all, the reason I quit my well-paying job to do my art full time - because the joy I felt doing it overrode any objections I could possible experience - if I'm not letting myself feel that joy, I should move on to something else.

It's painful for me when my creativity and drive are subdued and I can't access them.  I have learned to just let myself ride it out, but that doesn't mean I like it!  I'm hoping that treating myself gently and letting myself play will be the key to transforming the pain into joy.