New Year’s Eve 2019 - What’s out there?

Wow.  What's coming?  A new year.  A new decade.  And who knows what, on all fronts.  To say the words "twenty years ago", to reflect on all that has happened in that time...  rather astonishing.

Well, twenty years ago at this time of year, I'd been recently hired for a full-time job at a place I loved, we were celebrating the season at our snowy cabin, and among the gifts I was cherishing from JT was this beautiful half-size sketchbook:--

Just recently, when my Chinese-Canadian neighbours brought their friends to my house, I realized my chance had come to learn the meaning of the symbol on the cover.  When I brought it out, their eyes lit up, "Good luck!  Good fortune! -- and the red, too, so lucky!"  Well, what more could I have asked, for the special purpose to which I eventually put this lovely little book? 

Twenty years ago, the year 2000 was a special time for my art.  I had come to accept that evening art classes were no longer feasible but that, by golly,  I wasn't a half-bad student.  I had continued my enduring practice of drawing every day -- thank you, revered teacher Kimon Nicolaides via your book THE NATURAL WAY TO DRAW.  I see by this link, which explains the Daily Composition exercise I've followed for more than 20 years, that his teachings continue to inspire others.

I also recalled then the advice of my other revered teacher RJS, from whom I'd taken several semesters of life drawing classes in the early 80's.   Nicolaides had said, "The student who learns to draw is the one who draws." (Meaning:  You have to work at it, not just think about it.)  RJS had said, in answer to another student's question about how to learn to paint, "Just do it.  Start painting."

By August of that year (the season that I consider my personal "new year" in terms of major goal-setting), I had decided to take myself to Art School at home -- to set goals, to devise a curriculum from all the resources I had available, to keep working. 

Year One in my art school was based on an exercise suggested by Robert Kaupelis, artist-author of two great books, LEARNING TO DRAW and EXPERIMENTAL DRAWING.  He proposed:  "Draw every day for a year.  Draw on a roll of paper.  Do not unroll and do not look back until the end of the year." 

And I did it! - missing maybe 3 days out of the 365.  The Daily Composition continues (most days!), as does my annual goal-setting in the beautiful red sketchbook.  To cheer myself on, I "graduated" from Art School about five years ago and began to call my studies "The Homegrown MFA." (Master of Fine Arts).

This past fall, I again carefully set my goals for Year 20 - Homegrown MFA.  And I decided that I'd paint a self-portrait for my launch into the year 2020 -- when (gulp!) I will be 75 years old.  The self-portrait was a good opportunity to try working in the style of an enthralling artist I'd only recently discovered -- Julien Lévy-Dhurmer.  My eye was caught by a library book cover using his painting, La Femme à la Médaille ou Mystére  ("Woman with Medallion -- or Mystery."):--

As much as I've always loved Art Nouveau, I'd never come across this French artist of the late 19^th/early 20^th century.  When I checked on-line and found some of his other eerie images -- like "Le Silence" -- I was smitten.

Here's my take, in the manner of  Lévy-Dhurmer, on my own personal "Mystére":--  "Looking Toward 75" (copyright 2019).

Although I'm excited about the unknown adventures ahead, the view hasn't yet come into focus.  I'm confident, though, that if I just keep moving, one step after another, the path will become clear.  From another old sketchbook that I came across just the other day, here's how things appeared as I looked out my studio window at our old house -- one dark evening, almost exactly 20 years ago.

Denizens Series -- It's a wrap!

I aimed to produce ten paintings in the "Denizens" series by year-end, and with mixed results, I'll announce that it's a wrap.  Did I learn a lot?  Yes.  Did I make progress?  Well…let's come back to that in a minute.

First, I'll introduce Number 9 in the series.  She's a lovely young woman who's a receptionist at the clinic I go to.  Almost every time I show up for a volunteer stint, her hair is a different colour, and I ooh and aah.  She told me her sister is a hair stylist, and she gets the benefit of her sister's experimentation.

Here's the first drawing I made from memory and my first quick painted study.

She was so excited about the drawing -- though we both agreed it doesn't really capture her beautiful young face.  (My words, not hers)  And I don't even plan to show her the final painting, Denizens Series - "The Stylist's Sister," copyright 2019.

Number Ten in the series is truly a denizen -- a neighbour down the block until two years ago.  Evidently, he worked from home and would go out for a daily coffee.  He seemed at first to be grim and vaguely hostile.  Then I began taking my sweet cat Nik for walks on his leash -- and that led to cordial sidewalk exchanges.  Here's my memory drawing and very slapdash painted study (gotta use up the excess paint on my palette).

The last time I saw him, Thanksgiving 2017, he and his 10-year-old son (who I'd never previously laid eyes on) were taking a big box of food to a homeless shelter -- quite a different person behind the forbidding features that had first caught my eye!  Two weeks later, I learned the family had moved out, unable to afford a hefty rent increase.  So here he is -- reminding me that you can't judge a book by its cover, Denizens Series - "Neighbour," copyright 2019.

Back to the opener:  Did I make progress through this exercise?  I'm not aiming to paint classical portraits but just want to become more….well, plausible, I guess.  Let's take a look.  Here's Number One, "Ringlets," compared to Number Nine, "The Stylist's Sister."

And here's Number Two, "Filmmaker", compared to Number Ten, "Neighbour."

Hmmmm.   Progress?  Not sure.  What I remember as a uniting feature of all four is that I knew something more needed to be done, but I wasn't sure what.  And I was afraid to go further and wreck the whole thing.

Did I say "feature"?  I'm sure I've read somewhere that it doesn't take an artist to instantly recognize the errors in the features of a painted face -- like those eyes in "Ringlets"?!  Looking for this reference on-line, I found an abundance of articles on facial recognition -- some of it rather scary.  The Smithsonian offers the simplest (and least sinister) summary of findings to date.

With the Denizens Series a wrap, what's next?  Well, there are always people off on the sidelines, and their figures and features are just waiting to show up in my studio.