Off to Maine

Off for a week on Little Cranberry Island, Maine. Hope to get lots of sketching and painting done. Back in a week. Meanwhile finished this last night which had been set aside almost a year ago.

Robin, week three

Wheel invented!

If you are the sort of person who pokes around on art and artists' websites you may have come across an ad for "The Carder Method" (trademarked). Carder's website sells a six-hour dvd and two tools for learning to paint and draw according to this method. The proportional dividers shown above can be bought from his website for $29.95.

Yes, that's two pieces of wood with some holes drilled into them and a brass screw and nut holding them together. $29.95. I will admit to having bought one of these a couple of years ago, largely because I am too lazy and/or inept at building and making things to have tried to make such a device myself. But that doesn't mean I don't feel foolish for having spent thirty dollars for two pieces of wood and a brass screw.

Carder also sells a color spot checker for $14.95 Presumably that's less expensive because it has no moving parts.

Mark Carder is a very capable and accomplished portrait artist. You can see some of his work on the same website. I respect his art considerably more than I do his marketing claims.

The method itself being described on his website is a quite solid, dependable, almost foolproof method for learning to draw by carefully measuring proportions and learning to paint by carefully observing and comparing mixed colors to the natural colors you're trying to duplicate. As Carder says in a video on his site, this is "how to become a color Xerox."

But while Carder has trademarked the name "The Carder Method," I don't see a patent mentioned anywhere. The irony is that his descriptions of his "method" leave one with the impression that he's come up with all this himself. In fact, these methods have been around much longer than Mr. Carder.

Proportional dividers are such an old concept that one can find them showing up in old master etchings and engravings. And the color-spot method of painting was being taught by Charles W. Hawthorne after the turn of the previous century. "Hawthorne on Painting" published in the 1930s is still being reprinted, by the way, and can be purchased from Dover for $5.95, considerably less than Mr.Carder might charge were he to issue it under his name.

In the book, Hawthorne makes no claim to having originated this approach to painting himself but neither does he mention Carder who, in fact, would not be born for another few decades.

2-minute poses and longer

Two pieces in Brooklyn exhibit

Got a call from a curator last night. The two pieces above will be in the juried exhibit "Making Funny" at Under Minerva a gallery in Brooklyn. Opening is May 27 and the show will be up for the month of June closing on July 3rd. Self-Portrait in a Rubber Nose (do I need to point out that it's the one on the left?) and Manifest Destiny, both oil on canvas, both done in 2007.

No hard edges so far

I am trying to glaze my way up to the right colors. I've so far avoided any really hard edges and now it's getting on my nerves. I need to start drawing into this one to create some interest. This is on linen primed with a clear acrylic so the brown of the linen shows through. In principle I like this idea but wonder about how it may discolor as it ages.

Just Happy to be Here

The above drawing is included in the new 2009-2010 catalog for the Art Students League of NY. Those familiar with the catalog format know that the bulk of the book consists of a page devoted to each instructor. One each page is a fairly large reproduction of a piece of art by the instructor and a smaller image of a piece done by one of the instructor's students. My drawing appears on the page devoted to James Lancel McElhinney with whom I've been studying for the last two years or so. I am also his 'monitor,' a sort of teaching assistant who takes care of chores like timing the models, collecting class tickets, etc.

Overhearing two students talking about my drawing in the catalog, a third student asked me, "Is that a picture of you?" Well, no, actually it's not: I am neither bald nor thin. And at this point in my life, not likely to pose nude for a group of thirty or so artists. But thanks for the compliment. I guess.

Altered states

I finished this painting last year. Or so I thought. But something didn't look right and over time I grew to realize that I needed to do something with this painting.

I liked the basic composition, the relationship of the three objects and the definition of the space as being bound by a shadow. It took me a long time to realize that what I didn't like were two things: First the edge of the shadow was too hard and crisp. Second, the overall light was too bluish and I wanted to warm it up. These things sound simple now that I've articulated them but they took me a long time to realize.

But once having realized these things, it took less than an hour to make the changes. Now that I've made the changes I feel like the painting is more interesting and 'painterly.'

BTW, the top image is a bit too contrasty and the bottom image is more faithful to the colors and tonality.

Two-Minute Drawings

This is a great warm-up exercise for any drawing session. But you have to approach it as just an exercise. If you take any trace of an attitude that you are actually trying to create art you will probably have some degree of difficulty. It seems that only when you approach this as just a warm-up exercise (think of runner's stretches before the 10k) then, without the pretense of 'making art' one is free to fine-tune the hand-eye coordination and sometimes, mirabile dictu, you end up creating a bit of art.

One secret seems to be to just keep your drawing hand moving all the time.

Things I've noticed after doing these exercises over the years: In the first pass I tend to make the head too large and in the subsequent minute and a half, almost always end up reducing it. Sometimes it helps me to add the head last, after fixing the rest of the torso. It helps to think of these drawing as 'gestural' that is aiming to capture the gesture of the body, where the weight is borne and where the muscles are working and where they are at rest.

Sometimes our progress is measured in baby steps. In the drawings above, I was particularly pleased to have caught the position of Robin's fingers in her left hand in the drawing that is second from bottom.

After doing about ten two minute drawings, spending five or ten minutes seems like an amazing luxury!