Well, it doesn’t hurt to think about traveling again, does it? Our camper is calling and surely it won’t be much longer.
In December, when we went into a COVID related regional lockdown, I began a notebook for doing small imaginative sketches. I thought that since I could not get out for plein air painting, that at least I could learn a little more about composition and the elements and principles of design. I really look forward to these exercises and at this point a second little notebook has replaced the first.
The idea is to spend 20 minutes or so just putting down random marks in a relaxed, non judgmental manner. At some point you stop, take a look at what is on the paper, maybe turn the page upside down, and notice what you might make from it. Then you get picky and get to work.
Here is today’s little sketch. My favorite part is the section in the middle that goes between the two faces and moves from green to blue to yellow.
Our Tuesday night Zoom model is also an artist. He put up one of his paintings on his easel and spent the next two hours thinking about it while posing for our group. I decided not to include his easel, thinking that his paintbrush would be enough to indicate that he was thinking about his artwork.
My mother loved a good wind and rainstorm. She lived her life in Arizona, where storms were rare, and regarded each as a treat. When the winds built up and the rains came, we were the kids on the block who were allowed to go out to play. If there was lightning and thunder, all the better. Even into her last year, her eighty-sixth, she was still excited by a good storm.
Today San Diego had an amazing storm, a magnificent storm, just the kind of storm my mother would have loved. My young neighbors were out reveling in it, running, leaping, and seeming so alive. It made me remember how much fun we had in storms because of our extraordinary mother and her sense of beauty. And how fitting that today, on the tenth anniversary of her death, a good storm swept across San Diego and the whole Southwest.
The Tuesday night Zoom model sat in her closet, surrounded by an abundance of clothing and accessories. The richness of the pose was exciting and I worked to capture as much of it as I could. But the sketch got too confusing and I abandoned it. I tried again, this time enlarging the model’s face, omitting the rest of her body, and eliminating most of the items in the closet. I think I got a better sketch, but at the cost of not showing her intriguing belongings.
While we are under the Coronavirus stay-at-home order, I have been making small experimental paintings. I began this one by making random marks with gray ink and wax medium on slick Bristol paper. I added the color with gouache and the gouache beaded up on the areas that had been waxed. Some areas in the center have multiple coats of wax and gouache and that is what gives it a marbled look.
When we can paint outside again, this technique may turn out to be useful for showing the textures in materials like night skies, pebbles, boulders, and foliage.
Yesterday, our Tuesday night Zoom model dressed in an old fashioned blue gown and held a lace parasol. She told us she was going to do a haughty pose, to go along with the outfit. I think I caught more of a reflective look mixed with a tinge of regret.
Even more difficult than the expression, was the parasol. By the time I finished the Zoom session yesterday, it was a big mess. I spent a lot of time today trying different marks to make it look like lace. I ended up drawing over the gouache areas with gray ink.
Deliberate Sketching 