Day 1

This first day was spent in not taunting myself for the pomposity of this undertaking. I actively put aside feelings of incompetence and dread. The drawings are humiliating and I hide them from the curious eyes of my model. These drawings appall me with their superficiality and clumsiness.
I remember that at my best, in the past, I used an intentional clumsiness, but that is entirely different from this ineptness.

It’s been so long since I had an extended, uninterrupted time to draw with the privacy of my own model. I spent this first day in a kind of awe at my good fortune in having the grant money to do this audacious, greedy thing.
I proceed with a strong sense that I am going to discover something by drawing intensively, which has eluded me in the last few years. Quite honestly, I have no idea where I am going, but there is importance in this mild adventure.

It’s the simplicity of just working, which is important… and difficult.

Day 2

The work went a bit better today. I still cringe when I look at the drawings.
Though clearly I have more control over my brushes, it is exactly there that I also miss the mark. In aiming at control I have made these drawings rather rigid, two-dimensional and almost entirely without humor. One problem is the acrylic paint. It is ruthless, relentless and immovable. When you put a mark on this paper the acrylic is sucked up by it and there is no possibility of pushing things around at all. I will go tonight to Utrecht and buy myself some watercolors in tubes. Lisa is such a great model; these drawing look nothing whatsoever like her

I did go down to Utrecht tonight to buy watercolors and they are better than the acrylic for doing this work, but it’s tricky. I suspect that I was blaming the tools when my own skill or control seemed unavailable. Nevertheless, I like the sensuous quality of the watercolors more, though the colors themselves are not as bright as the acrylics and with the watercolors I have a much more limited palette.

Day 3

I think that today was the beginning of a watershed for me as I began to know what I was doing. Of course, it is not until this point has been reached that the real problems of drawing can be grappled with. As long as skill is the issue, the art of drawing is a mute point.

So now I am faced with my almost competent drawings, which all bore me to death.

Right now, I am wrestling with the anachronism of drawing from the figure.

Day 4

As I anticipated yesterday, drawing today was a very different experience from anything that has happened so far. Somehow, I began to achieve a certain depth in these drawings that almost all my previous attempts lack. Though there are elements in these drawings that I find jarring and annoying (notably the faces), I am functioning on an entirely different level than when I felt technically unable to push the paint around in the way I wanted. In fact, on days 1 and 2, I couldn’t even connect enough with my skills to know what I was trying to make happen. This is real progress.

When I was reading about Hokusai last night, I discovered that when he was making a drawing for wood block printing he would begin with a rusty colored under sketch and then make the finished and often altered final drawing on top in black. I realized that if I used a pale wash of a red with green mixed into it to neutralize the redness, I could create a kind of map of the figure and where things were located so that when I began to make my final, more lyrical descriptive lines, I would not have to figure out where they should go as well as how they should look. This way, I can make discoveries about proportion and form before I make my final lines and the lines do not imprison the form so much. They can describe an area instead. This is the first day of working this way, but because of it I was able to make steady progress throughout the four hours we worked.

MUSINGS

A Quote From Hokusai:

“From around the age of six, I had the habit of sketching from life. I became an artist, and from fifty on began producing works that won some reputation, but nothing I did before the age of seventy was worthy of attention. At seventy-three, I began to grasp the structures of birds and beasts, insects and fish, and of the way plants grow. If I go on trying, I will surely understand them still better by the time I am eighty-six, so that by ninety I will have penetrated to their essential nature. At one hundred, I may well have a positively divine understanding of them, while at one hundred and thirty, forty, or more I will have reached the stage where every dot and every stroke I paint will be alive. May Heaven, that grants long life, give me the chance to prove that this is no lie.”

Copy and paste this URL and scroll down to see this wonderful short animation about Hokusai with comments by the Tony White who created it all from Hokusai’s drawings.

http://www.cartoonbrew.com/shorts/hokusai-an-animated-sketchbook.html

Day 5

I really wish I could say that today was wildly productive and that once having overcome my initial impediments I was off and running. But apparently, it doesn’t work that way, as if I didn’t know. Today the drawings look like elaborate prisons. Or rather, illusory prisons since they appear stilted, almost like stage sets rather than studies from life. There is something in that one on the left that is both appealing and horrifying.

TIME OUT:
I know I sound like a whining baby, never satisfied and always grumpy and critical of everything I produce. So it is essential to remind everyone, right now, that I am perfectly aware that this process is the only way anything is ever made well. This gift of time is one that I am so deeply grateful to have IN ORDER to experience this process. In other words, I am not looking for a place of complacent acceptance of my hallowed marks, but rather am taking advantage of this time to gratefully own the discomfort of growing as an artist, which by its very nature involves self-evaluation and frustration.
This should in no way be mistaken for a lack of pleasure. Au contraire, I am in heaven every minute I am working. It is simply that this is how I perceive the crosscurrents of my progress, knowing perfectly well that it is progress, even when it feels static or regressive.

Tomorrow I go to Washington to see the Philip Guston show and to the Freer to see Japanese and Chinese brush drawings. I am hoping that they will be the eyewash I need to use the next two sessions triumphantly.

Day 6

My trip to Washington yesterday had great significance for me, mostly because of the discipline of doing these daily drawings.
The Japanese and Chinese brushwork, which I saw yesterday at the Freer Collection of Asian Art, addressed so many questions, which I have been chewing over in my work.
I saw that when a brush line fluctuates in strength, width and darkness it can control space and form, whether that occurs in a landscape or in an individual tree, bird or figure. Varying the specificity of adjoining areas can bring depth and interest to a subject. I saw how “empty” areas can be activated by the variety of lines surrounding them and how individual lines can vary to create their own illusion of depth.

Because of seeing a wonderful little Giorgio Morandi painting at the Philips Gallery I really understood how a line can become an area of shadow, while remaining, on another level, just a line.
I learned so much.

In any case, I sat down to draw this morning with an excitement that was unfettered by anxiety.
I was able to look at the model with clearer intent and to concentrate in a more forgiving and yet more keen-sighted way. Oh yes, and there is humor in these drawings.

How odd. I would have thought that visiting the Masters would leave me cowed and intimidated, but just the opposite has happened. Instead, I am encouraged.

DAY 7

Today was the last day of this period of intensive drawing. Even the two-minute studies (small studies) evidence a new level of simple mastery. This process has opened a window for me. Fresh air is pouring into what has been a stifling, unused room.
If I look at my drawings from the first day and compare them with these, I feel deeply satisfied with what I have accomplished. These drawings begin to feel alive. And there is still so much to learn. I am going to absolutely find a way to continue drawing every week.

The combination of daily drawing and then writing about drawing has done much more for me than simply uncovering an old familiar skill. In fact, this way of working feels brand new to me, though obviously my prior experience was critical. For me, this re-exploration into brush drawing from life has been a sensual, ocular and intellectual adventure and I cannot ignore its significance for me.
Thank you to those who made it possible. It has been one of the most entrancing “vacations” of my life.