sandr037

I was just in NYC to meet an old friend/mentor, and get his advice on the book I'm writing.  He pointed out that finished renderings, drawings and paintings were nice for inspiration, but a bit more process would be nice. He was right, and so without any more delay, a bit of process.  Unfortunately, I'm not in a verbose state of mind (am I ever?), so just a few notes will be attached. The general lines have already been finalized on toned pastel paper, working from a photo.  No tracing allowed, I'm trying to force myself to "see".  The bright and shadowed areas are then roughed in using white and black Prismacolor pencils. Most of life is filled with polishing.  Not the most entertaining work, but excellent for training the eye to see in detail. The same color pencils are used to develop the form.  I was especially interested in capturing the reflected lighting on the right, and the pattern of muscles under the skin on the lower back.  It is interestin...

Here is a shot of my watercolor palette.  It looked interesting; an accidental abstract painting, if you will. Here is a photo from a few years ago, which I took without realizing the curious shadow shape.  An accidental confluence of tree, fence, light and me. My kid brother (at our age that will give him a chuckle) lives out by a river, with plenty of undeveloped land.  I was tramping around his woods last winter and shot this old truss bridge.  I painted this on a computer tablet, using that photo, which, with its contrast of green, rust and winter grays, was irresistible.  A bit of luck that I hardly noticed when I was photographing it. Finally, here is a pastel sketch that just fell together: a bit of kismet... Kismet comes from the Urdu word for fate, destiny or luck.  It is the sea we swim in whether we like it or not.  No matter how much we try to control our future, and guarantee our happiness, things happen.  In its most benevolent form ...

I ran across an Eisenhower quote: "Plans are nothing: planning is everything."  Being into military history it reminded me of the very old maxim, "no plan survives contact with the enemy," which goes back at least to Clausewitz, and was restated recently by Colin Powell. It states the reality of almost every complex, real world problem: that every move you make to "solve" a problem reconfigures the situation so that you have to rethink your solution.  The enemy always has a say in the direction things are going to proceed.  Indeed, the whole world tends to reconfigure with every step we take.  No wonder the future is such a strange place, even though humans haven't changed much in the whole of recorded history. Helmuth von Moltke, the military counterpart to Bismarck's political genius, was a master at planning, and re-planning, as a military campaign developed.  His successes against Austria (1866) and France (1870) paved the way for German unity,...

It's the 4th of July weekend, and unfortunately I'm living in a pest house.  My wife and I both have bad summer colds, and since she coughs at night I spent last night in the spare bedroom.  A recent (2008) copy of Anne of Green Gables was on the bed (my daughter, who is on vacation must be rereading it), and the cover illustration caught my eye.  It was a wonderful painting by Ben Stahl , and is a wonderful example of "edge lighting", or lighting a subject from over the shoulder of the subject.  As you can see it creates a highlighted edge (from above left) that accents the softer reflected light.  The reflected light comes from the opposite direction (below right). I'm going to avoid commenting on the beautiful sense of color, so as to follow the edge (and get back to bed).  Edge lighting in portraits is not new, but it is relatively rare.  The most obvious example that came to mind was Vermeer: his painting called The Lacemaker is below.  It ...

The last post on the addictive and coercive qualities of using "machines" in producing "art" was rather depressing for some reason.  So I want to cleanse the mental palette with a simple process watercolor example.  It was based on a photograph taken years ago in a cemetery, and was inspired by the idea that focus can be created with color temperature, and back lighting is an exciting option. This is not a watercolor "how to" blog, so the basics are...  trace image in pencil on 140lb Arches cold pressed paper.  Wet and stretch onto a plywood board using gunned tape.  Let dry.   Using Winsor & Newton Designer Gouache and a good red sable brush (#3,7, & 10)... begin... The first wash was aimed at setting the background, and starting the general shading of the back-lit sculpture.  The Second wash brings the sculpture into a cool tone to contrast with the warm background.  Detailing is started when the wash is dry. Final washes on the body to ...

A week ago I noticed an old photo of a nude in the Wall Street Journal, Visualizer section.  The blurb noted that Eugene Delacroix used such photos to practice drawing - even during mass in church.  It reminded me of sketching during long church sermons, and also called to mind the long history of artists using various "machines" to help recreate the world around them Students in the studio are taught to use the pencil or brush to gauge the size and shape of the model's forms so that the drawing will be accurate.  Various tricks can be used to insure some accuracy in color rendition also.  In the end however, the artist's eye is either good or not so good.  Practice helps tremendously; and then there are the machines.  There is the transparent plane shown in da Vinci's sketch. The Camera Obscura, which all artists of a certain age remember as the overhead projector. Varley's Graphic Telescope, used for landscape and buildings.  (that is Varley, no...