Pastels

Degas

Jules Charet

Jozsef Rippl-Ronai

I don't work with pastel with great frequency because it takes over my life, my spaces, my things when I do.  I work large.  Pastel dust covers all my visible pores, the bottom of my shoes, and the tracks I leave when I forget to take those same shoes off upon leaving my studio. However, given the disaster I create on 'things', I still return to the rich pigment as an important link between drawing and painting.  I have recently begun to block-in with an acrylic layer prior to pastel, simply to slow the inevitable tracking of colored dust but this also saves on the pastels as well which are expensive, fragile, and quickly used in their entirety.  Pastels that I work with include Nupastel for a harder surface initially, followed by Rembrandts which are between the harder and softer pastels, topping them with Sennelier ( a broad range), Unison  (terrific tones), and Schmincke (beautiful darks) all of which have a buttery, rich quality to them.  Keeping them in uncooked rice helps keep the dust down and the color clean, when sharing space in buckets or boxes. The image below is a typical, albeit large set up of pastels, warms to cool.

John Russell

Pastel paintings range from the quiet of barely laid color to full paintings.  The color and saturation of toned papers impacts imagery as does the sense of opened or closed space.  Choosing a warm or cool base can create a significant change in the quality of light and feeling for mood as will the array of marks from dashes to hatched and cross-hatched, from squiggled and laid from the side, to singular or layered. 

Emil Robinson

Cassatt

Sigmund Abeles

Stroke variations project the quality of energy, space, and shifting of time, as does the surface pebble of the chosen paper.

Odilon Redon
Choices abound,... high key, low key, full contrast, high saturation, muted?  All decisions move towards content.

Degas 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Boccioni

Zuniga

Sigmund Abeles

Parag Borsee

Picasso

Manet

Rego, above, and Degas just below hers.

Paula Rego

Gesture becomes thought, energy, emotion.

Jack Beal

As participants in resolving space, we ask what kind of space, to serve what purpose and why?

Paula Rego

The complexity of multi-figural spaces opens narrative, suggests roadways and unanswered questions. Rego encourages searching through her convoluted mazes of story telling, linking with the viewer in a chain of ghostly, remembered fairy-tales, half believed, half forgotten, and brought back again through her eyes.

Toulouse Lautrec, economical, fresh, focused.

Kitaj

 So the question arises, what story will you tell and with what in your hands?  Will the story be light or will it be dark?  Will it be open or closed, loud or quiet, or swimming somewhere in the middle of memory?  Will it be clearly observed, invented, found, remembered or a combination of the dust in your hand, the color in front of you, the phrase or music in your head, the sights before you, or something of your hopes and wishes all miraculously blended?

Strategies in the Studio

I begin with quotes because they resonate with my own beliefs. The purpose of this particular blog is to share advice through visuals, words, and suggestions for seeing strategies. Have faith that drawing helps one to see better, and understand more. "Seemingly the most easy of crafts, drawing is the one which reveals most tellingly our incapacity to sustain true vision and our acquiescence to the ready-made." (Rico Lebrun)  
Tintoretto (Jacopo Robusti) (1512-1594), Draped Standing Figure. Black chalk, 33.4 x 18 cm (13 1/8 x 7 1/16 in). Uffizi, Florence. "What do drawings mean to me? I really don't know. The activity absorbs me. I forget everything else in a way that I don't think happens with any other activity... "(John Berger)
Jacopo Pontormo (1494–1557), Two Standing Women. Light and dark red chalk. 

   

Egon Schiele, Lying Woman with Yellow Dress, 1914 

William Auerbach-Levy, Cabby, 1919. Drypoint, 30.3 x 25.0 cm.

Raphael Sanzio (1483-1520) A Combat of Nude Men. Red chalk over stylus work, 37.9 x 28.1 cm (14 15/16 x 11 in). Ashmolean Museum, Oxford
 

Edgar Degas, Drawing for ‘The Misfortunes of the City of Orleans, Nude Woman’, 1865. Black pencil on paper, 8 7/8 x 15 in. Louvre, Paris. by Edgar Degas. 

 Mikhail Vrubel, The Artist’s Left Hand, 1882-83. Black chalk and charcoal on paper, 18.6 x 26.8 
 cm. The Russian Museum, Saint Petersburg. 

 

Michelangelo Buonarotti , Studies for the Libyan Sibyl, 1508-12

So then...: 
a)try to work regularly, with discipline, and with stride.
b) accept frustration as part of caring and not the end...just a way to another beginning.  

 "Painting and sculpture, labor and good faith, have been my ruin and I continually go from bad to worse. Better it would have been for me if I had set myself to making matches in my youth. I should not be in such distress of mind." (Michelangelo)  And yet, not better, the world's art would have been diminished if Michelangelo had not pursued through frustration.

Jusepe de Ribera (1591-1652), Saint Irene. Red chalk heightened with white on buff paper.

   

Rembrandt: Seated Man (Possibly Artist’s Father), (Date Unknown), Ink

  

Michelangelo

Zunino

1) Look first, spend time walking around the space you're interested in until you find something you connect with personally, that has something you want to investigate. It's just a starting point and the action occurs through hard work and drawing practice regardless of whether you begin with something inspirational or not, but if you have a choice and the room in an environment to pick your position, pick it...and if not, if your ideal viewing spot is taken or obstructed, realize again that through the drawing process itself, and particularly through the struggle of drawing and seeing, ideas emerge, patterns are found, shapes collect, and directions are born. How much time or how easy a drawing is or is not has nothing to do with its visual power at the end of the day, just do your work and do it consistently. 

 "If people knew how hard I worked to achieve my mastery, it wouldn't seem so wonderful after all." (Michelangelo)
It would and does to any that make art and know the value of such tremendous effort.  Keep your vision in mind.

 2) Be patient, work with care, work with the expectation that it isn't about the end product as much as it's about the process (artists remind others of this because we've all had the same or similar experiences and had to dig our way out, fighting to problem solve) Often we are frustrated by what we believe the drawing may have become if only..when in fact, every choice made, every path taken, is visible in the image and accounts for the challenges of drawing which is in fact, difficult.  

Degas

Da Vinci

Giacometti

"When I make my drawings... the path traced by my pencil on the sheet of paper is, to some extent, analogous to the gesture of a man groping his way in the darkness. "(Alberto Giacometti) Giacometti 










Artists, including Degas and da Vinci agreed that genius is a small part of the very difficult work of making well, without formula, without ego...Degas was quoted as saying that drawing was difficult every day f... as it was for Van Gogh and so many other master draftsmen. 

Van Gogh

Käthe Kollwitz, Self-Portrait, 1924. Lithgraph drawing.

Rico Lebrun

 Strategies involve both practicalities and hope: 

































3) Once you've located your position in space, try to be aware of your relationship to the easel and the figure - keep your view to the space you're searching clear and room to move backwards, open. Most people have a stronger connection to seeing well if the easel is straight up rather than slanted away which can add to unintended distortion, standing to draw rather than sitting where you are less likely to back up as frequently, and centering your the drawing surface on the viewer's eyes rather than much below or above. 
That said, if you're working on the floor or at an exaggerated angle, just be aware of how that impacts your seeing and either use it or don't, but make a decision. 
Moving around is more natural to us but may or may not be something you're interested in talking about within your drawing. Every time you move, shapes change...add to it the complexity of drawing from a live model and you have not only your own shifting to account for, but the model's as well. Be alert to these shifts a ignore preconception. 

4)"Remember that the relationship of a foot to a leg is no less critical than its relationship to the head. When a student says, 'I know this is right,' I ask, 'Compared to what?' Nothing stands alone in a drawing." (James Adkins) 

Artists put in words what I frequently feel and see, ...when we move towards finish ahead of process, we lose all that was valuable in the seeing process. 

There is a certain pressure to perform in a drawing class where the assumption is that drawing is relatively straightforward and so ease should accompany it, or in other words, good drawings should occur regularly, when in fact, it is challenging, unforgiving, knowing...recognize the leap away from seeing and towards easy, predictable product, and defy it.  

"Lord, grant that I may always desire more than I can accomplish". (Michelangelo) 

5) Compare, compare, compare..it's not enough to measure one angle or one distance, much more helpful to think and compare in the round, like a sculptor..."drawing is touching at a distance." (Sigmund Abeles) Be aware of how a shape relates to its neighbors by comparing widths, heights and distances by dropping vertical and horizontal lines across the field and mapping plotting points. 

6) Use a standard for measuring, your arm should be straight and parallel with your body, rather than tipping in...bent arms do not offer a comparable and can throw your measuring off as a result.

7) Squint your eyes to see large shapes first, by lessening the light on your retina, you decrease detail so you can focus on meaningful measurements. 

8) Some artists like to use an envelope system first which allows a quick pass of the largest shapes along the boundary and aids composition by setting the shape within the parameters of edges simply so one sees the figure ground relationships or the design of the whole. 

9) Working the same size as you view a space is simpler than working larger or smaller but any of the above can be understood by comparing ratios. Worded differently one might advise to make drawings anything but the size you see to help you search for relationships more carefully. 

"Practice by drawing things large, as if equal in representation and reality. In small drawings every large weakness is easily hidden; in the large, the smallest weakness is easily seen." (Leon Battista Alberti) 

10) Compare the surrounding shapes to the largest and look for intersections of one form into another at the particular point it intersects.

11) Overworking is as common as under-working, feel the need through your eyes and fingers and when in doubt, let the image breathe for awhile, look at it in passing and let it sit, the answer will come...is it complete, or are your eyes bothered by something each time you come back to it?

"What do drawings mean to me? I really don't know. The activity absorbs me. I forget everything else in a way that I don't think happens with any other activity..."(John Berger) 

"The process of drawing is, before all else, the process of putting the visual intelligence into action, the very mechanics of visual thought. Unlike painting and sculpture it is the process by which the artist makes clear to himself, and not to the spectator, what he is doing. It is a soliloquy before it becomes communication." (Michael Ayerton) 

12) I think it's common to be nervous or fearful of ruining an image, but if the image is incomplete, not right, missing something, it is in my mind, worse to leave it as if it's complete and satisfying. This is different from watching it, learning from it, giving some time before rushing ahead.  If you know it is unsatisfying, close but not quite right, fight for something more and if it dips, let it dive, there will be another day for resuscitation. 

Bruce Samuelson

Anne Harris

Carlos Ferguson

"Drawing is risk. If risk is eliminated at any stage of the act it is no longer drawing." (Lorne Coutts) 

Abdi Farah, Baptism, 2010, Charcoal, dirt and black pigment on paper,44 x 96 in,

Figures In Space: The Narrative

It is such a complex idea to attempt to talk about human life and its accompanying relationships in the relatively simple, singular space of a painting or drawing, even should these shapes extend into panels or irregular boundaries. Ideas about space, solid form, weight, pressure, flesh...are beginnings. Jason Shawn Alexander:

Ideas about love, friendship, sex, worry, fear, faith, connection, alienation, power, family, rivalry, touch, and endless more evasive ideas, ideas about loss, intellect, history, possibility, hope...those on the outside of one's periphery, that circle one's thinking, that breathe life, sacred form, and sensuality into works, all attempt to enter the picture plane. Jerome Witkin:

How can one ever gain entrance to the unfathomable strength and weaknesses of human beings, their mercurial shifting and spirits, through mark making? How does one reach any satisfaction through the simple elements of light and shadow? Do we begin with proximity, with overlap, with associations to objects, ... with scale? Where and how do colors come in? Patricia Schappler:

We attempt to story tell, but how does one suggest without closing interpretation, without breaking the images own life? Everything is both fragile and impossibly strong when connected to the figure, so we attempt this thing...this careful, uncertain, revelatory process of fitting forms into the picture plane in a design that is balanced but unaware, brilliant but naive, attempting to find meaning in the figures' gestures which support one's intended meaning but manage the miraculous of moving just outside, just beyond what one was able to articulate in words. R.B. Kitaj:

We muddle through and in our humanity, find our way to the other side. Nicolas Uribe:

Because a visual image is a miracle of sorts, an extension of what we couldn't say or dream or sing, it had to be manifested visually to find it in all its clarity and mystery, oddity, and completeness. So we tell our story in whatever way we can, we think in words, and pass through histories of others' attempts, we think in images from dreams and corners of bars, in terms of day and night and close and far, in memory and pain, in prayer and desire. Tamie Beldue:

Steve Huston:

Sophie Jodoin:

A limited bringing together of figurative works and there are so many more to find, but this presents something of ideas, a gathering of the quiet, aching, joyful, lonely,hurt, loved and robust. George Tooker:

Paco Lafarga:

Domenic Cretara:

Sangrum Majumdar:

Caravaggio:

Rubens:

Lucong:

Langdon Quin:

Nicolas Uribe:

Lucian Freud:

Jason Shawn Alexander:

Patricia Schappler:

Golucho:

Gabriel Laderman:

Balthus:

Gabriel Laderman:

Bryan Lebouef:

Jennifer Meanley:

Patricia Schappler:

Kent Williams:

Katherine Doyle:

Jenny Saville:

R.B. Kitaj:

Vincent Desiderio:

Vincent Desiderio: