February 6, 2015

A New Batch of Small Drawings


sd 25, egg tempera on paper hand-toned with pigment and size, ca. 7 x 7 in.


I enjoy doing these small drawings because with them I can let out my inner painterly painter; because my painterly side is so hidden, I have tremendous uncertainty about them. I feel most secure working in a deliberate and fairly precise way, with images that have a grounding in geometry. But at this point in my life, I enjoy the challenge and the play. Years ago I did a series of small painterly oils on panel; they were a mashup of deKooning and Mitchell and Hodgkin. I gave up on them after a while. Now that I'm a senior citizen I allow myself to wander about in my art making; as long as I'm engaged with the work, I keep going.

I work on the toning of these small drawings at the same time as I'm toning paper for my larger drawings. When I began doing them, the backgrounds were fairly simple, then I began to loosen up. Now I layer color, and move the brushes around freely. I am mainly using 2 inch flat brushes with pigmented size; the size is a solution of food grade gelatin. In sd 25 almost all the paint is size, or perhaps I would call it distemper paint, but distemper has some added chalk. So...I paint all the backgrounds during my "toning" day. Then, I spend some time looking at what I've got, and with a brush hovering above the drawing, I add something to it. It was only two light green curved lines above....


sd 26, egg tempera on paper hand-toned with pigment and size, ca. 7 x 7 in.


....and here it was a line of gold paint across the opening. I feel that what I'm doing is pinning down the drawing, making a deliberate mark on the more fluid background, saying here I am, here it is, a decision. These additions feel necessary to me.


sd 27, egg tempera on paper hand-toned with pigment and size, ca. 7 x 7 in.


Two thick yellowish rectangular lines pick up the ocher above.


sd 28, egg tempera on paper hand-toned with pigment and size, ca. 7 x 7 in.


I never know if I've done the right thing, or should have done more; I'm floating in a sea of doubt.


sd 29, egg tempera on paper hand-toned with pigment and size, ca. 7 x 7 in.


This drawing was difficult to photograph because the three egg tempera squares are very shiny (I glazed them with extra egg medium) so look different in different light. They are a dark red.


sd 30, egg tempera on paper hand-toned with pigment and size, ca. 7 x 7 in.


For this drawing I added three yellow arcs, one on the red and two below. I meant to echo the sweep of red. The other thing the additions bring is a different sense of space: they tend to float above the glue size paint below.


sd 31, egg tempera on paper hand-toned with pigment and size, ca. 7 x 7 in.


For sd 31 I added a green rectangle, using several layers so its opaque quality would assert itself on top of the translucent blue and green.


sd 32, egg tempera on paper hand-toned with pigment and size, ca. 7 x 7 in.


The underpainting for this drawing was just the yellow; it looked almost like a floating landscape to me. I began adding a couple of curved lines, but didn't like them at all. Then I painted the horizontal transparent brown washes, and maybe I saved it, but maybe not. I sincerely don't know. What I do know is that I am giving myself permission to try all sorts of things, and giving myself permission to fail.


7 comments:

  1. "here I am, here it is, a decision. " Exactly.
    This is not a piece of dropcloth.
    Stopping too soon is always best, right!?
    You can always go add more.
    In woodworking it's similar. You can always remove more. It's hard to put back!
    Thanks for sharing these. And for articulating the concepts, as the one I quoted above.

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  2. All are beautiful. sd 26 is my favorite, as if light were coming through a window and illuminating something; the gold bar across the window is mysterious. sd 29, a house in the night with something glowing behind it. They are engaging.

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  3. I enjoy seeing the playful side of your art. I am always amazed that you can write about what you think and feel while doing these things. All I can say is that they look like you were having fun.

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  4. No fall here! Love them all: more play: less fear.

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  5. PS: Joan Mitchell was a roommate, I think, of my mother's before she moved away from Chicago. Quite a force in my earlier art landscape.

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  6. Thank you all, so much, for your kind comments and sympathetic reading.

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  7. love the theme of small assertions -- esp sd26 and sd30 -- and how the rougher brush strokes suggest different kinds of depth -- thanks.
    stuart

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