69. a portrait of six years

in graphite.

68. Nov. 17, 2010

All too graphite.
Last class of the fall semester. Emoticon...

67. Nov 10, 2010

66. October 27, 2010

65. October 13, 2010

Conte, charcoal, graphite, ibuprofen.

64. September 22, 2010

Thursdays in Room 23 have become Wednesdays in Room 22, but the fight is still alive.

63. September 14, 2010

Charcoal and graphite pencil.

New semester. New room, which might have been affecting my mojo. That, and the amount of time I've been spending at the John Singer Sargent Virtual Gallery. I recommend it, but be warned: he edges over into being a little discouraging.

His life drawings/nudes are all consolidated under the year 1919...

62. A couple more from Aug 12, 2010

61. August 12, 2010

Another interim session held in a private home, where I'm less inclined to break out the messy chalk. But the first drawing I've done in over a month. Still the most swift and sane-making way I know to pass three hours.

60. July 8, 2010

Topmost was in the big pad, graphite and conte. The rest in sketchbook, as class was once again in a private home where one doesn't like to make a mes.

Could be last batch for a while...

59. June 24, 2010

57. June 17, 2010

56. June 11, 2010

Another class in a private setting, so graphite and charcoal pencils.

55. May 31st, 2010

A follow-up, on those water-inspired images. Pastel - a medium from which I'd like to move on.

54. May 27, 2010

The top sketch I'm a little iffy about, but I post it because I always think it's funny when a drawing so clearly recalls the work of someone else. (There was a post a while back that for some weird reason made me think of Carl Larsson.) This one here makes me feel like I'm looking at the figure drawings of Robert McCloskey, author of Blueberries for Sal and Make Way For Ducklings. The particular quality of line and drawing has something to do with it, but there's also the fact that the model has a lot of Sal's features, and -- correct me if I'm wrong -- Sal's mother's expression.

Anyway, this was the last class of the semester. Let the Jonesing begin.

53. May 20, 2010

Not much web-worthy from this last lifedrawing class. Peaked early in the 45 second range.

Also, in preparation for a possible upcoming show with a "Water" theme, I went down to the beach. Here is the yield.

52. May 13, 2010

51. May 6, 2010

50. April 29, 2010 - erasing your darlings.

Tried something new - something I've been wanting to do for a long time, but a friend recently suggested it, and also there was an especially thick white paper at class last night, perfect for the technique: Instead of drawing on the brown butcher paper and providing highlights with white chalk (as I've been doing a lot of), I charcoal-smeared the white paper and found highlights with my eraser. In other words, I basically drew with my eraser. Fun.

I’ve been trying to think if there’s some writing analogue to this, drawing with the eraser. Imagine a page crammed with randomly selected words. Erase the ones you don’t want in order to reveal and combine the words you do. Close, but not quite, because even there you’re still drawing the reader’s attention to the words and not the spaces. They’re still looking at what you’ve left behind. Not what you’ve removed. How can a writer, through erasure, make the reader see what he or she has removed?

Maybe by killing the darlings?

“Kill your darlings” is a universally held precept among writers, attributed variously to Oscar Wilde, William Faulkner, Mark Twain, etc. Whoever said it first, all writers understand it to mean that if there is a sentence in your prose of which you are especially fond, you should probably get rid of it. The usual explanation boils down to vanity. Pride is a symptom of rot. The fact that you like the sentence so much is probably an indication that it calls attention to itself, and anything that calls attention to itself – anything that feels precious or to be of special value - must be purged for the good of the whole.

And that is certainly true.

But there’s another less recognized, less ascetic, reason that darlings must be killed. Darlings aren’t always darlings because they’re pretty or because they sound nice. They’re darlings because very early on in the process of composing a story, they stand out in the author's mind as being a damn-near perfect distillation of what it is that he or she means to say, or of who that character is, for instance. They are a kind of flag the writer plants in his or her page, a signifier to which the rest of the story must aspire, and in fact that’s often the way our darlings work best, by providing a kind of centerpiece around which the drama gets built, including scenes and dialogues and gestures. All of these are borne of the desire to justify and dramatize – to show, in other words - the meaning expressed in the seminal darling.

Once the writer has succeded in this, however – once all the rigging and the dialogue and choreography are all in place – he or she will very often find that the darling is now standing in the way. It is superfluous. It reads as being a little “on the nose,” as development people like to say. So the author kills it not because it is too pretty or ornate or subtle or mot juste-y, but because it has served its purpose. It has authored the scene, really, and it will always be there in spirit, but in the end it had to be erased so that the story – the flesh, that is – could be seen.

Post-scripturally be it noted that last night's class marks the last time we will, at least in the forseeable future, be drawing the pictured model, who is being lured east by the currents of her own life. She will be missed.

49. April 15, 2010

48. April 1, 2010

Still between official class sessions, a group of studio 23 stalwarts met at a private home and ponied up for a model, whose birthday is today. Happy Birthday. The new setting, in addition to providing a closer, more intimate vew than usual, also meant I had to bring my own paper, in this case white watercolor, which meant less underlying color to work with. These are charcoal
pencil and conte.

47. March 4, 2010

46. february 25, 2010

Two uses of ten minutes.

45. february 11, 2010

prognosis grim for the future of the class, but as pictures speak louder than words, consider my plea as submitted.

44. february 6, 2010