Pensées

It struck me while discussing my running habit that artists are custom-made to be runners. I run with no iPod or other media distractions (neither are they allowed in most races anyway), and this makes the whole thing completely unthinkable to most people. Yet artists are alone with their thoughts (pensées) all day long, everyday, often in solitude not so different from a run. While I do listen to stuff while painting, it's not unusual for something to finish and me not notice, I just continue on quietly for awhile.

Since last mentioning it, I have reread the first 4 books of King's Dark Tower series and finally got to reading a new entry, finishing "Wolves of the Calla" last week. Though not the only books I've read in that time, they are the only fiction. I probably won't begin the next (even longer) book for a few months.

Somewhat related: after a way-too-long hiatus, Michael Whelan has relaunched his website. It's a little prettier than the old, and has a whole lot of his personal work, which I mostly love. Sadly there wasn't much I hadn't seen--I'd been going to his online gallery Tree's Place and getting my fix there for some time. I'm guessing this new site goes strong for a year or so then dies the long death of artist inattention again.

After discovering Andrew Bird on a Late Night With Conan O'Brien rerun about a month ago I have listened to little else. I have a habit of burning out new albums by listening to them over and over and..., burning them into my head until I finally absorb them completely or am distracted by something better/newer. Having picked up "Armchair Apocrypha" and the wonderfully titled "the Mysterious Production of Eggs," I find myself once again years behind the hipper music scenesters who no doubt were following this guy long before Marriot's Residence Inn found him, basically right about when I did. Actually, even they beat me, I just didn't know who it was. My indie cred expired a decade ago.

My schedule for all of recent memory: paint/draw/work ~10:00-4pm go for a run, shower, eat dinner and rest for a bit (or keep painting with maybe a half hour nap on off days). Work again 7pm-anywhere from midnight to 2am. It varies depending on my runs, but 9-12 hours a day total has been typical. 6 days a week, though often life doesn't allow the 6th day's evening painting session. Trust me, I'm not bragging here.

Have a sketch while you're here, as reward for reading the randomness:

This piece saw many changes by the time it was finalized and approved.

I Haz Cat pt.2

With cat owners, once is never enough, is it? No, they are always on about their cats. Well, dog-lovers have the same tendencies, I suppose.

I mentioned his little window-pad last time I think

These doodles popped up at random times, usually while doing computer work. I'd occasionally sneak a peek to my right, see if he was in any pose I thought he might stay in for a couple minutes, then slowly and oh-so-quietly I'd pull out my life drawing pad and uncap my brush marker. It didn't occur to me in this next one that I had basically sketched the same pose a week or so earlier:

These sketches are 2-3" wide

There are as many false starts as there are completed sketches. Sometimes I'd start, get a head done or something and then he'd completely roll over, walk away, commence grooming or do any of up to 3 more actions. Rather than try to fake the rest I'd just curse at him then get back to work. This unfinished one actually holds its own reasonably well as a vignette, however:

Analyzing what I did, I had begun defining his torso shape without outlining it at all, simply through the zig-zag shading I was doing, whose lines reflected his body bent into a donut. The tail at this point is a single stroke which may or may not have been filled out later.

Have a great Thanksgiving Day, everyone. Or Tofurkey Day, or whatever you do. For my non-American readers, have a fantastic Thursday!

Figure Drawing, pt.8

Drawing men is a very different thing from drawing women. Particularly if the men show any muscular definition whatsoever, you are, for the purposes of drawings, practically drawing different creatures entirely. While the proportions and underlying anatomy are similar, what the skin reveals on each is strikingly different. A very slim and muscular woman I suppose could present the same issues, but they are by far the exception among artists’ models.

With women, you basically have an issue of usually smooth surfaces, and smooth arcs. If you use a smudgy technique like charcoal and stump you can use these to great effect in drawing the smooth shading gradients regularly found on women’s bodies. If you use pure line, the accuracy and suppleness of your lines are everything. If, like me, you like to hatch or scumble, you have quite a different problem. Hatching and scumbling (undirected rubbing of your drawing tool that doesn’t leave individual strokes) are rough and textured, and so it is a sort of unnatural technique for drawing women. Certainly they can be used well, and I hope I do. But these techniques lend themselves more naturally to drawing men. On the plus side, some things like arms and thighs become basically smooth cylinders with often little definition, making them relatively easy to get right.

When drawing men you suddenly are faced with muscles and tendons and bones and veins to a much greater degree, though of course this varies dramatically with the level of musculature as well. While a woman’s leg is a series of a few gentle curves, a man’s leg is often more varied in its line with sharper angles and more turns as the silhouette hugs the more pronounced muscle groups tighter. Lastly, hairy men have additional texture, and where a form turns from light to shadow, the hair will make the shadow edge look rougher.

Within forms, you can also have the problem of muscles creating more shapes within large sections that are largely planar or gently rounded in women. A woman’s belly, for instance, is a lovely sort of soft pillow shape, while on a man with musculature you have a pack of pillows one might know as the 6-pack You also have the “bacon-strips” of the oblique muscles, all adding a lot more intricacy to the torso. However, this quilt of light and shadow on men’s bodies means that hatching is a very effective way to indicate form. I wouldn’t say one is easier than the other, but they definitely each have their set of unique requirements.

Summer was rather hectic, as it always proves to be. Between finishing publication of my book, preparing for conventions, 3 weeks away from home for these, and illustration projects it was extremely difficult to continue many of my extracurricular activities. That included figure drawing, which I was attending regularly through the spring. This session was in early June, and I am sad to say it was the last session I’ve attended to this point. I had actually hoped to completely fill the pad I had purchased, before leaving, but it looks unlikely now.

Plein-air: Watauga Woods

Sometimes, after a long week or a few long weeks of work, there is nothing I want to do less on a day off than paint. This is understandable, right? I can neither eat pizza every meal of every day nor play videogames every waking hour either—every good thing has its limit. On days off, I stay far away from my pencils and paints.

With the cold approaching, there were going to be few opportunities left to do any plein-air work in comfort. So on one day off a few weeks ago, I bit the bullet and hauled my rig outside to paint again. Due to one part laziness and one part convenience, I only had to haul it about 15 feet outside as there was a nice little pond/fountain out back that I’d been wanting to paint. This made the decision to paint much easier to bear—packing it up and scouting out locations was just not going to happen.

It turned out to be a very pleasant early afternoon and I quite enjoyed working on this piece for about two hours. I even had a nice cup of warm coffee and held a cat under one arm as I worked for part of the time. Best of all, when I was done I could tear down and be back on my couch within about half hour. All in all I got to enjoy most of my day off, and still get a little painting done without feeling the pressure of a deadline forcing me to tread on ‘til the wee hours.

12x16" Oils on canvas