The Model Room

Students spend 3 hours in the model room every day of class. The model room is a large space with concrete floors, neutral colored walls, and natural light from north-facing windows. We work in silence with breaks every 20 minutes for the model. 

Each of the images below represent the work of one day. These drawings were preparatory drawings for a long (5 week) drawing in charcoal. 

Day 1: Day 2: Day 3:

These drawings show the development of visual understanding of the pose. The first drawing is stiffer and more general in comparison with the third which is more expressive and specific. Each day of drawing is a kind of visual exploration. 

I enjoy this kind of work because it helps me to see more, and that process of seeing more is by nature contemplative. By contemplative, I mean receptive of what is present. Period. In one sense, art is about making things - transforming existing materials into new things. It is an active activity. In another sense, art is about receiving what is present without trying to change it. It is about going deeper, going beneath the surface of things, or going beyond the first impression. 

Most people have two arms and two legs, a head, and a torso. These are ordinary, horribly ordinary things. But, I once heard a teacher refer to the "drama" of a particular intersection in the body, and when she said it, I could see it. Light and dark and tension and resolution and harmony and unity - all the things that make up drama. And this, all this, is usually hidden under our clothes. Seriously, what a metaphor! If we could see for real all the time, it would blow our minds. 

The Arm of Moses as Seen by My Little Girl

Don't tell my classmates, but I kind of like Bargues (copying exercises). Back to animal shapes: I wrote about this a few weeks ago, but I've got more to say. So, one way of breaking down an image and understanding it visually is to find shapes within it - kind of like finding shapes in clouds. "This one looks like an elephant... that one looks like a baby..." This week, I was working on my new Bargue drawing, Mose's Arm from Michelango's famous Moses on Julius II's tomb. I was working my way down the arm, blocking things in using the "seeing shapes" technique. Actually, I was seeing animals. And, I had a flashback. I remembered the downstairs bathroom floor in my childhood home. When I was a little girl, I used to sit there and look and the linoleum and see shapes and creatures and animals. They all had stories. There was the guy with the club. There was Our Lady. I couldn't look at that floor without seeing all kinds of things in it. I thought that was pretty cool - connecting with young part of me and being able to bring it into this new process that I'm learning as an adult. 

Copy of a Copy of a Copy. But, why?

This past week, I finished my first Bargue. A Bargue drawing is an exercise that involves making an as-exact-as-possible pencil copy of one of a series of drawings by a guy named Charles Bargue who lived back in the 1800's. Bargue did a series of drawings of casts of parts of famous sculptures. So, right now, I am working on a Bargue of Mose's arm from Michelangelo's Moses. My recently completed Bargue is of a hand holding a whetstone, but I can't figure out what the original sculpture was.
So, what is the point of this copy of copy of a copy? (Original, cast, Bargue copy, my copy). You've heard the saying, "Its not about the destination, it's about the journey."? Well, it is. It's about the journey. There is a whole process to making the copy that is designed to help an artist learn to see. And see what? Contour lines, shapes of shadows, form turning in space, shapes of half-tones (the grey areas), overlaps, relationships between all of the above, and the list goes on. All of the things I learn while making the Bargue, I then take with me into the model room where I apply them to human figure drawing. And, human figure drawing is also a didactic exercise, the lessons from which I can then apply to future artwork.
Lots of exercises. It's all preparation. Funny thing is that it is easy to get lost in the exercise - and not in a bad way. Even if the main purpose of the copying exercise is to teach me to draw, that does not mean that the product is not also beautiful in a particular way. I have a great affection for my Bargue. I could sculpt the form in space of the 2-dimensional image I drew, and I would know every curve. I have to say that I am much more at peace now than I used to be about things being both exercise and end in themselves. I remember my mother saying that in college she thought that a person gets an education to do something and then they finish the education and then they go off and do it. End of story. But, now she knows that the learning part really goes on forever. (Something like that. Sorry, Mom, if I messed up your words.) So, one of the things that I've learned from doing my first Bargue is that I *really like* representational drawing. It's fascinating and challenging and fun. So, that tells me something about the direction I might want to go, and since fleshing out that direction is part of the point of this blog, I'd say that's a good thing.
Signing off for another week. Thanks for reading. Go out there and see Beauty today.

Hand with Whetstone, Copy of a Cast Drawing by Charles Bargue

Mucking Around with Watercolors

Week five of the first trimester at the Florence Academy of Art is done, and I'm tired. This is a lot of drawing. So, Thursday night, I cut loose a bit and took advantage of the fact that full-time students are allowed to attend part-time figure class and pretty much do whatever we want.
So, here's my recreation: watercolor sketches. It's my attempt to bring some of my own heart in to the stuff I've been learning. In this case, my "heart" is pretty much represented by the fact that I enjoy watercolor. Heck, I enjoy color, period. Down with pencils!
OK, rant done. Bring on week six.

Fantastic Paintings by Cornelia and Stephen

Today at the Florence Academy of art was our Friday lecture. It was a real treat because it consisted of a presentation by Cornelia and Stephen, two of our instructors, about their show that is opening at the academy on Sunday.

See the Facebook invitation here:

Bauman and Hernes: Selected Works

Both of them graduated from the Florence Academy at about the same time and have been making paintings ever since. It struck me how different their work is from each other as well as how their talks differed. Stephen opened with a quote from Frankie Valli that goes like this:

They ask you "what was the high point?" Hall of Fame, selling all those records, pulling Sherry out of the hat, it was all great. But four guys under a street lamp, when it was all still ahead of us, the first time we made that sound, our sound. When everything dropped away and all there was was the music. That was the best.

Stephen then went on to describe how he has followed that "sound" which is his in his painting career. And, he showed slides to illustrate that process.
Cornelia, on the other hand also showed us a number of slides, but they were grouped into genre, and she went into quite a bit of detail about the composition and process of painting each one.
Both talks were fascinating, and the work is really beautiful.
The thing that impresses me is that both Stephen and Cornelia were trained at the same school, in the same discipline, and both focus on the human figure as their subject matter. And yet, within this narrow focus, the range of emotions and ideas they communicate in their paintings are very different. Each of them has a unique artistic vision which is transmitted the classical realism of their paintings.
I think that the thing I take away from this is to not be afraid to engage in the styles of mediums that attract me simply because other people already use them and because they may have connotations which with I do not want to be associated. Even though I am being trained in a very particular method, the method is only a vehicle. It is my responsibility to make it my own.

Gesture and Rhythm

Done with week three of my first trimester at the Florence Academy of Art. We just finished up our first 2-week long pose in the model room. This means that for 3 hours a day, every day for 2 weeks, the model stands in the same pose and we draw that same pose on the same sheet of paper for those 2 weeks. The point is not to have a finished drawing in the end. It's an exercise. It involved lots and lots of tweaking. Draw a line, check it, move it. Move the drawing forward, more checking and moving. Once a day, the teacher comes by and give an in-depth critique. 

This week, I received a paradigm-shifting critique from Jordan, one of the teachers and the director of the school. He told me to focus on rhythm and gesture, that my figure looked stiff and dead. Now, this is not the first time someone has told me to, in essence, "loosen up." I remember my high-school violin teacher telling me this over and over again, and I wanted to clock her. 

I felt like clocking Jordan too, but I asked him a question instead. I said, "Jordan, I understand the concept you are telling me, but I do not understand what is means in terms of the marks I make." And, Jordan told me something very interesting. He said that how we look determines what we notice. So, if I am doing a rough diagram of a figure and looking for major points to mark out the big shapes of the body, I am going to be moving my eyes from side to side on the figure and looking for general distances between unconnected points. However, if I am looking for the gesture of a line as it runs down the body, I am going to move my eyes down the line. So, if I want the gesture to be accurate, I have to look for gesture. The difference between a line made my connection accurately marked points and a line made by imitating a gesture can be very subtle, but it is also the difference between a living and a dead thing.

Indeed, Jordan pointed out that this sort of very small variation in elements of a drawing can make a very big difference in the final perception. This comment made me think of an experience I had in college when I sang with a polyphony choir. It was an intense choir. We each had private voice lessons - not so that we individually could be awesome singers, but so that we would sing correctly together. We practiced in sections and in full choir, and we went over the words of the songs so that we could pray them. And, the result was that when singing with this choir it was necessary to deliberately shut off my emotions because otherwise I would be a quivering puddle on the floor. It was powerful stuff, and when we sang for mass once a month, the church was packed. 

I've sung in other choirs since, and they were all fine choirs, and none of them were nearly as obsessive about the quality of the music as my college polyphony choir. Both choirs sang (in many cases) the exact same songs, and both pretty much were on-key and sang the notes right. But, oh, one of them transported you into the realms of God and the other was mostly accompaniment. So, as an artist, one of the things I crave is that kind of perfection. That's why I'm at a school like the Florence Academy. Not sure *what* exactly I'm going to make, but, man, it's going to be good!

Part way through the figure drawing, trying to find the gesture.

Imaginary Animals

And, it's the end of week two at the Florence Academy. I'm still working entirely in pencil, copying Bargue drawings or anatomy drawings, and drawing the human figure from life.
This week, the thing that excited me the most was seeing a dog in my drawing.

See it? He's got an open mouth with his tongue sticking out, facing to the right.
I know, this sounds silly, but bear with me. Cornelia, one of the instructors was explaining using one's imagination by seeing shapes (like animals) in a drawing can help to see the drawing in a fresh way. Drawing involves seeing relationships - relationships of length, volume, value, etc. In order for me to draw, for instance, a hand, I need to be able to visually deconstruct all the visual relationships and see the hand in terms of visual realities. The "animal" trip is one trick that helps with visual deconstruction.
It's funny, I think people think of artist as creative. Sometimes, I'm not even sure was that word means. I'm not particularly good at "coming up with things." I found myself staring at my drawing for quite awhile, trying to see some kind of animal. When the dog jumped out at me, I actually burst out laughing. It was really a surprise, and it delighted me.
Maybe this is significant because, especially in areas in which I may consider myself knowledgable, I have a hard time seeing things in new ways. And, I do think that is part of what art does. It gives a view of something *according to someone.* And, maybe, I see a dog and a spaceship, and a pigeon where other people see a hand - and that means I can represent it more fully and accurately.
So, I'm going to try to see some more dogs this week and be surprised at what jumps out at me.