Dinosaurs 'R' Us

When the new campus of Emily Carr University of Art and Design opened last fall, its president proudly showed off its new media labs and robotic studios and blithely described the school's painting and sculpture programs as "living archaeology." 

I'm still deciding how much to be appalled.  But then -- everyone loves dinosaurs, don't they?   Yes, I do understand the difference between archaeology and paleontology.  Whatever.  In any case, painting and sculpture are not quite endangered species (not quite), and I'm pressing on regardless.

With a nod to the current generation, I'm continuing my formal art studies in an on-line format.  Yikes.  Uncharted territory.  But it's shaping up to be kind of fun.  It's a year-long course focusing on the portrait through Western Art history.  Each week there's a new video lesson taught by one of several talented instructors.  Then the members of the cyber-class do their own thing -- following the instructor's model or adapting the artist's style or doing anything we feel like doing -- and the output is posted in a private Facebook group.

As January draws to a close, we've raced through the Renaissance with lessons on Piero della Francesca, Caravaggio, Leonardo and Giovanni Bellini.  It's no surprise that the master works of this period have a religious theme, but I've found myself enchanted with some of the supporting characters in the predictable dramas.

Searching for an alternative to the first lesson's Piero Madonna, I was bowled over by the compelling self-assurance of this angel on the sidelines of a fresco called "Madonna del Parto" ("The Pregnant Madonna"):

Using prints I'd pulled from the internet, I set up my easel in a way that will probably become my norm...

 ...and produced a guardian spirit for my studio.  I didn't quite capture her/his mesmerizing gaze, but.......as we say in the Facebook group:  "I love love love this!"

 Week 2 presented a very loose and dynamic drawing approach to the dramatic contrasts of  lights and darks of the artist Caravaggio.  Some of my classmates did gorgeous things with the central Christ figure of "The Calling of Matthew"  but I chose another figure in the crowd.

I spent half the week on a rather satisfactory pencil version and worked away until I felt like I'd need the rest of my life to finish it.

I made one more splashy attempt with Conté crayon (a combination of wax/clay and charcoal) and then called it a wrap for the week.

And then -- a funny thing happened on the way to my next production.   I'd already decided that when we reached Leonardo, I would do something with my all-time favourite "Lady with an Ermine."

 And then....a cat crept into the picture.  A dear friend sent photos of her holiday spent with son and family, starring as always her Angel-Granddaughters.  How could I resist trying to put the younger teenager and the family cat into Leonardo's serene masterpiece?  Here it is, with apologies to all the dramatis personae, none of whom has been done justice.

One offshoot of this exercise was a renewed determination to keep working on hands.  And so as Bellini Week rolled around, I searched on the internet for something of his that would offer challenging hand models.  I found another compelling angel in his altarpiece of San Vincenzo Ferreri.  I cropped the image to a long vertical slice and printed this in giant size for my studio reference:

I then had the interesting experience of scaling up my smaller print-out to an unfamiliar vertical format...

for my grand finale:

Keep in mind that each of these assignments was done within a week in about six hours, not my typical twenty.  You can see a capsule of some of the developmental steps here. 

Whether or not my continued explorations will prove as exciting as excavating dinosaur bones or unearthing an ancient mosaic buried in volcanic dust, I'm reminded of a statement by the artist/teacher Donald McIntyre:

"Painting is ultimately a bit like mining.  You explore and explore; then it dries up and you keep on like an idiot hoping that something else will come along...Every now and then, you do a painting which is the start of something different in your life."

- Donald McIntyre, Acrylics Masterclass

And so I push back my sleeves and continue to work.

Facing facts

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."