Inevitable, isn't it? That as the two-faced god Janus looks forward and backward at the new year, so do we. My self-portrait here will be 30 years old this August -- I was 43 that hot summer day when I took a break from working in the garden, came inside, and caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. The very dark glasses, my old lime green T-shirt, and the intense red scarf I used to wear kayaking called out for a painted self-portrait that I didn't then feel capable of attempting.
My face and hair have certainly changed since then, but some things remain constant. I'm still striving to draw and to paint; I'm still entranced by the human figure. So as I continue to draw live models at the drawing studio, I also hope in this year 2018 to develop more confidence in portraiture.
As I spun my wheels on that subject this fall -- how to accomplish it, what to do next -- a magic conjunction came my way.
I found the coolest library book based on artist Julia Kay's mind-boggling "Portrait Party" project. And the book called out on my shelves to be matched with a gorgeous sketchbook from my friend L-of-the-Rocks -- oh, so inspirational for its delicious thick artist's paper and Vermeer's "Girl with a Pearl Earring". (Oh, dear, someone just told me that her timeless face is now available on a shower curtain!!!!)
As I finished working on my Flash Mob figure paintings, I started using the sketchbook to do one portrait drawing each weekend, sampling styles from Julia Kay & friends.
Meanwhile, I was scanning the horizon for a possible winter semester course to take.
I had plenty of faces to work with. For decades (shocking, the time measurement!), I've collected and filed interesting faces and gestures from media photographs. One day, my files turned up a film festival brochure, and I was struck by the compelling face of renowned (now long-gone) French director Eric Rohmer. Aha! I resolved to try his face in a different style each weekend.
I could have gone on for more than a month...
...but this new and popular book came due at the library, and my sequence ended for a while. (No problem in the long run since I've ordered the book as a holiday gift to myself).
In a quick succession of ups and downs, I learned that the course I'd hoped to take wouldn't be offered -- but that an unrelated on-line course I'd discovered looked promising. I'm starting Week 3 of that now and will report more the next time.
Meanwhile, for septuagenarians like me -- OMG, the synapses definitely fire more slowly these days! It's taken me three years to realize that I finally wear the mantle of that term that I've known for....well, decades. Nonetheless, the future is bright for aging artists, according to classic Japanese artist Hokusai. He lived to be 89.
"From the age of six, I had a passion for copying the form of things, and since the age of fifty I have published many drawings. Yet of all I drew by my seventieth year there is nothing worth taking in to account. At seventy-three years I partly understood the structure of animals, birds, insects and fishes, and the life of grasses and plants. And so, at eighty-six I shall progress further; at ninety I shall even further penetrate their secret meaning, and by one hundred I shall perhaps truly have reached the level of the marvelous and divine. When I am one hundred and ten, each dot, each line will possess a life of its own."
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