Using Drop-in Sessions to the Best Advantage

I had an active week this week, and soon the Fall will arrive, and with it I go back to my non-summer schedule. This includes drop-in drawing starting in October, and continued sketching outdoors, and continuation of a portrait drop-in drawing session I found this summer. I will also start going to the university when the weather gets too cold to draw outside, and go to their drop-in drawing as well.

I find the drop-in sessions to be lots of fun, and in many respects more productive than workshops. I love drawing and painting people, so the drop-in sessions are perfect for me. I find there are several types of drop-in sessions, and each has its own special value and things I can learn.

The life drawing drop-in session is what I would call a traditional drop-in session. It lasts about two hours, and we have a model. We begin with 30 second poses, which force us to draw quickly and just get the gesture of the figure. Then we go to 10 minute poses, then 20 minutes, and finally in the end we get about two 30 minute poses. This kind of session I find good to focus on fundamentals, getting the basics right, and observing the model for tricky areas to draw. There is not enough time to paint, and no time really to finish the drawing during the session. Sometimes if a drawing is really good, I might go home and finish it, but I really prefer to complete the drawing with the model there for reference. These sessions are great for honing drawing skills, creating masses, placement of the figure on the page, and learning to work fast.

The second type of drop-in I had a chance to do in the beginning of the summer was a long pose drop-in. Here the model took one pose and after each break she resumed it. These poses are usually sitting or reclining, because of the time the model spends in the pose. This session lasted about 3 hours, and there was plenty of time to paint, which I did. I still did not finish the painting, but I completed enough that I just had minor touch ups (artistic touches, not drawing or model related touch ups) to do in my studio. This kind of session lets the artist reach the finishing stages of the painting, and yet the time limit is still short enough that you have to work fast, and accurately the whole time. No photos are allowed at any of the drop-in sessions, so I have to get it right while I am at the session. It forces me to work directly from the model for the whole painting.

The third type of drop-in I have participated in this summer was what is called a portrait drop-in. This lasts two hours, and the model maintains the same pose for the whole time. This is less time than the long pose, but because there is only one pose for the two hours, I found the time adequate to draw a head and shoulders portrait, but not paint or do the whole figure. Others did paint or do the whole figure or both, but I do not think any of them were able to complete their piece in the time allotted. I was lucky, I got into the zone, and finished a little early. I had to resist the temptation to fiddle with the finished drawing in order to fill up the time and I did. I just started to cleanup quietly during the last ten minutes so as not to disturb the others. In this session, when we have a professional model, the model is nude, so it is like the life drawing sessions in that sense. Alternate weeks, one of the participants models, so we get a draped model, which I would like to do more of. I find clothing difficult to do, and drawing clothing needs lots of practice too.

I am sure that there are many other types of drop-in drawing sessions that I have not had a chance to experience yet, but I found these three provided a rich mix of opportunity that exercised unique skills with each type of drop-in. This kind of practice is a must for artists interested in drawing people or portraits.

In Awe

I did not post a blog last week, and I regret that. I wanted to, and sat down to several times, but got interrupted and never did so I made this week's blog a top priority. Having done that, it is amazing that I just had one of those artistic experiences that puts me in awe.

My neighbor came over and asked if I wanted to go to coffee. We went to the local coffee shop and got our coffees, but I could see my neighbor was restless. Excess energy, something. We decided to take our coffee out to a local park to walk and enjoy the views.

My neighbor and I are very close friends, and were walking in companionable silence. The park is Whiffen Spit in the village of Sooke, British Columbia, Canada. The spit is between the harbor and the Straits of Juan De Fuca. This morning there was a dense fog over the water-the spit was engulfed in it. I felt as if I was in my own little world, safe and sound. It was very beautiful - mystical, as you made out the shape of some boats through the fog, and could see the seabirds clearly. I have done this walk many times before by myself, but having a friend with me made it more companionable and relaxing.

What I found as I walked along in silence was that I felt in awe of what I was seeing and feeling. I could smell the salt water, feel the cool ocean breeze, hear the crunch of gravel under my feet, and see the sea grass waving in the wind. Each step revealed a new and beautiful vista that just begged to be painted.

Then the revelation came. I could paint for the rest of my life, and paint with my utmost skill for each and every painting, and never even start to reach the beauty of what I was seeing and smelling and feeling. I felt in awe of all the beauty that surrounds me and that I take for granted each and every day. I often laugh at myself when I go to sketch a very beautiful bay, and say to myself disgustedly "not another wonderful scene with sailboats, mountains and beautiful water." I have become jaded to the beauty that surrounds me and overlook so much of it in search of that perfect scene to paint.

My awe gave me great comfort. I can paint and draw for the rest of my life, and my efforts will be no more than a drop of water in the ocean of beauty surrounding me. The real gift of my art is that it is teaching me to see that beauty, to appreciate it, and to incorporate it into my being by painting my feelings towards it.

I find that I often get frustrated at my lack of ability no matter how good I get. I am learning a lot and very quickly, but what is left of my life is just not enough time to even come close to what I want to achieve. This is the curse, and the blessing of art. I will never run out of challenges, or beauty, but I will never even approach capturing in my paintings the beauty and feelings that have so awed me.

The solace I get from all this is that somewhere, somehow, my paintings will convey what I saw and loved to another human who did not have my experience, and in that way I can convey the marvels of my world to others. Words could never begin to convey my feelings the way painting can.

This gives my life purpose and my endless practice at drawing and painting purpose. Art will challenge me for the rest of my life, and help me appreciate the world around me. Sharing my art with others will pay back to some small degree the joy I have gotten from the sharing of other artists throughout the centuries with me.

Copying is Good for Learning

For the last week, I have been copying drawings by Kate Kollwitz. I really like the feeling and strength of her images. I was hoping if I copied her images, I would get a clue as to how she created so much feeling in her drawings.

Copying master drawings is a traditional art training activity and can lead to some powerful learning. Once I copied a Van gogh and felt really angry. It was the marks I was making that brought up the feelings. Another time I was copying a Holbein the Younger drawing, and realized the drawing just was not looking right. Then I put in a mark so faint I could not really see it, but once done, my copy looked right. (I was copying Holbein the Younger because of his mastery of the deft marks he made.) I copied a Tintoretto drawing of a figure, and I was amazed the next time I went to life drawing. I could only see the figure and its outline in the way that I discovered copying the Tintoretto.

I was surprised with what I have learned so far copying the Kollwitz drawings. As I did the copying, I was highly impressed with the free movement of the marks, and the limited use of lines. The drawing is quite elegant and minimal, but very strong. I got the feeling that the broad marks used to create mass were the main marks I was making. Light was left as white paper, and the darks created the shape. Less is more. The darks were just enough, and the lights said so much without additional marks. The few lines drawn were perfect, and again just enough to finish the drawing.

I think copying these drawings taught me a lot about how to see light and dark, to use mass as the main element of my drawings, and to limit my lines to only those necessary, and draw them so accurately that they say all they need to.

As for the feeling, I get the sense that the drawings were done pretty quickly and directly. I find in my own work that if I can work quickly and directly it is easier to get the feelings down then when I polish the work, and slowly lose the feeling in myself and the work as well. To work this quickly and accurately, the drawer needs very strong skills in making the marks he or she wants, and needs to draw very accurately.

There are very powerful lessons to be learned by copying master's work. Of course, the artist should never claim the work as their own. If I show my Kollwitz copies I will indicate "After Kollwitz" to give credit where credit is due. The value in copying for me is the learning, not the drawing.

Note that the Holbein copy I referenced in this blog is displayed with the blog entry "Going Back to Move Forward".

Progress is Measured in Many Ways

I was pleasantly surprised when I thought I finished my last painting. I let it sit in my studio a day, and then looked at it again. I found what I thought was small correction, made that, and I became aware of two other small corrections that I did not see the first time. I made those, and was surprised to see three other small corrections that needed to be adjusted. Then two more, then one more, than two more, and so it went for some time.

Why did I not see all these corrections the first time? Why do I keep discovering new corrections after I make the ones I did see? It suddenly dawned on me, that I kept discovering new corrections because the earlier set of corrections created the need for the new corrections. In other words, my painting is a whole. If I change any one part of it, I change the dynamic of the whole painting. Doing this creates new deficiencies that I need to correct, or that become obvious after I have made the first ones. This is a wonderful, but annoying process. I think I am done, only to fix the problem and find it created new ones, and that this goes on for sometime. The wonderful thing about this is if I am making my corrections properly, the process eventually converges on a solution where I am happy with all of them and the painting is done.

The hard part of this process is to keep going. I find I try hard to convince myself at different points that everything is okay. That I have finally got all the changes I need, but then there is that nagging in my gut that is telling me I am not really happy yet. I think not having the perseverance to keep going until the painting truly feels done is what defeats a lot of novice painters. It is easy to feel tired of the painting, nervous that if I make the change I need to, it will destroy my painting, or that making the needed change will destroy a beautiful passage I have fell in love with. The answer though, is the painting as a whole is what I must be happy with, and a beautiful passage in the wrong painting is not a beautiful passage because it does not fit.

Now that we have talked about the hard part, let's talk about the really hard part. This is when I go to bed at night after checking the painting numerous times, and I liked the way it looked every time. Then in the morning, I get up and put the painting in the kitchen so I can look at it during breakfast, and it still looks good to me. And the same for bedtime, and any time I look at the painting for the next week. I declare the painting done. I put the painting in a frame, and maybe I hang it temporarily in my bedroom until the next big show.

The really hard part comes when I have done another painting or two, and then glance at the painting in the bedroom and think maybe its not done. In the last painting I did this or that, and perhaps this painting needs some of that treatment. This self-doubt is really hard to deal with. I think it springs from a growth in painting technique over time and several paintings. Yes, maybe what I can do now is better than what I could do when I did the painting in the bedroom, but as a whole the painting in the bedroom satisfied me at that time, and as a whole, it is consistent skill-wise. If I start monkeying with it at this point, because of learning I have done since I finished the painting in the bedroom, stylistically any changes I make will look just a bit out of place, and to get it right I really should repaint the whole thing.

At this point, I may no longer be as happy as I was when I first thought the painting was done, but it is history, so don't change it. This is a mistake that plagues novices as well. They have to keep fiddling with a painting until it is destroyed or loses all of its life. It become so polished that it looks dead. This is something every artist struggles with all the time and with every painting or drawing -- when to stop.

Not giving up too soon, or not fixing something that does not need fixing is a very important lesson to learn. If others say a painting is done, carefully consider their opinion. It may be that I have just gotten into the habit of making changes, and need to stop before it is too late. In the end, though, only I can determine when my painting is done, and that is a skill that requires constant honing.