July 2008 Archives

In honor of Franklin's posting some of his works in gouache -- and also because I got a new studio and I'm thinking, between rent and commuting I won't have enough money left over to keep painting on panels with oils so I'd better find a cheaper medium to work in for a while -- I decided to dig out my old tubes of gouache. I gave them up over a decade ago when I quit airbrushing, but I kept the paints in a box in my attic. Some of the tubes, after all, date back to when I was in high school -- some of them still have formaldehyde as an ingredient -- so I didn't want to throw them away. Most of them are still liquid; a few of them will need to be revived when the time comes. (I also found my old Paasche VL with spare needles and a few cups and tools. Nostalgia is a sickness.)

I started with red because that used to be my favorite. Then I pulled out green, which turned out to be kind of dumb, since red and green makes Christmas. But the green captivated me with its pure brightness, so I played with that by itself for a while.

The first two are very loosely based on sketches of Stephanie, a wonderful model and dancer we worked with at the Vallejos'. (Not Stephanie Lee Jackson, in case you were wondering.) The last one is...it's problematic. Since I got the Kuretake brush pen I've been filling sketchbook pages with more of my squiggles. Sometimes I put space between them, sometimes not. Sometimes I just fill up a whole page with them. I just felt like filling up a large page with the squiggles in color this time. Because...I can't explain it. That's part of the problem. I can't explain these squiggles at all. I mean, I'm following a formula: Four lines, curving, not intersecting. It sounds like Sol LeWitt, right? So why four lines? Why not three or six? Why no intersections? What the hell?

I really have no idea. I don't know where the lines come from or why. I just sort of do them. And that makes me uncomfortable -- I don't understand these drawings so I can't figure out if I like them or not. I certainly like things about them: I find the curves aesthetically pleasing, I guess. I like the balance between ink and ground. And I like the way watercolor lies on paper. I like the various light and dark tones of gouache in this latest one (the Kuretake is so perfectly and consistently black I don't get that effect).

But I can't judge the drawings. My eyes just kind of slide off them. Dawn, who is my eye, who I always ask about anything I do, she says she likes the drawing and would frame it right away if we had a frame for it. But still, I'm not sure. I was working on a small one in my sketchbook, in black ink, in a restaurant, and our waitress said she thought it was very pretty, and it reminded her of plants, the way plants grow. (I left her a page with our check.)

Certainly I know what I'm doing is the antithesis of LeWitt. LeWitt's formulas allowed him to say that anyone could execute the drawing; only the idea is his. I'm saying the exact opposite with these: Anyone can follow my formula, but these lines are mine and mine alone. Only I could do them. In a way, I suppose, each drawing encodes my state of mind at the time I was working on them. Maybe an advanced enough machine could rebuild my brain by interpolating from them.

Anyway. Drawings don't have to mean anything, right? I shouldn't worry because I can't explain their existence. They just exist. Right? But I wish I could put my finger on these, I really do.

Drawing at the Vallejos' has continued. I get there as often as I can and I continue to have a great time, although there are long stretches of time where the music can get really annoying. Last year somehow it seemed most of us had the same basic taste in Music to Draw By, but Dorian's wandered off a bit into atmospheric New Agey stuff (last Saturday I found myself saying, "Would you like the purple crystals or are you looking for something a little more upscale? We have a good line in yellow healing crystals in this display here...") and another one of the artists has this thing for Gregorian chants and it wouldn't surprise me to find the quiet girl in the corner wishes we had Jay-Z on. So Dorian's been putting Pandora on, with the enteraining effect of irritating everyone in the room when the "music like this" algorithm goes haywire and thinks Public Enemy could reasonably be connected to Elvis Presley. Or Elvis Costello, for that matter.

But the music's not important. What's important are the drawings.

This is Niki and her purple scarf. I actually went to the art store during this session -- I was out of paper -- and picked up a small bottle of Winsor & Newton purple ink just for her scarf, so naturally right after this pose she stopped using it. I started this one in pencil and then went over the sketch with my Kuretake brush pen, then added the colors with my now-second-most-expensive brush, my #4 Raphaël 8404.

This is another of the same kind of thing, although I'm not sure I used pencil on this one. I think I jumped right in with the brush pen. I don't think it's awesome, but there are things I like about it.

Our most recent model was Rebecca. Rebecca is a boxer -- both kick- and regular -- and muscular. The inks are sumi ink and the #4 brush, the last ink is with the brush pen. And then I'm back to my old tricks with the Conté.

Every so often an art contest shows up and I find myself entering something in it. I'm not sure why I keep doing this to myself but I've been doing it since at least third grade when I won a Triple Yahtzee set (parts of which I still have somewhere) for a poster on good nutrition. Usually I'm much more disappointed -- not only don't I win, but the winners are often really bad. Very sour grapes.

I recently entered two more contests, mainly because entering them was free and, you know, why not? One of them is part of a campaign for Christiana Vodka, a libation I have not been privileged to taste. Hey, it's Norwegian, it must be good.

Today I was informed that my painting, When she woke up, she found I'd gone for a walk, last seen in the Blogger Show, is one of 25 finalists in the second annual Christiana Arts Foundation New Classic Nude Competition. There were 125 submissions, so 25 out of 125 isn't too bad.

I'd like to thank Marcus at Night Agency for personally inviting me to enter the contest. You'll recall that Night Agency was behind the brilliant revolution that was Assvertising, so you can imagine how honored I am.