If at first you don't succeed

 

 

 

I did try again.  And again and again.  And then I ran away from home for a day to clear my head at VanDusen Garden, where I always spend a little time with my friend Dr. Menzies in this tranquil corner, a good place to mull things over.

 

Our story so far:  I've assigned myself the project of deliberately working in styles that progress from the flat, linear to the more painterly – and then see what comes of it in terms of my own approach.  Until I've completed a few of these experiments, the jury is out – that's the name of my series which imagines a group of art students waiting to learn if their submissions have been accepted.  So far:  Alex and Nando. 

 

For the third student's submission, I'd planned a spinoff on my long-time favourite artist-teacher, Mary Beth McKenzie.

 

When I first discovered this book that's been so meaningful to me, she was a slim, dark-eyed 41-year-old artist, just making her mark in New York City.  I was a year older, also dark-eyed, and otherwise in the Wannabee category.  Here's a tour around a fairly recent McKenzie exhibit where you'll see artist-coincidentally-as-senior-citizen, still creating her wonderful larger-than-life paintings.  (Just a hint:  You might want to mute the curator who seems to say the same thing four times over.)

 

I'd been spinning my wheels for two weeks, sketching various set-ups for a Mary Beth Wannabee Painting, when I took myself off to the Garden.  I came home refreshed, again looked through my life drawing sketches, and selected a pose from a 2019 in-person session:

 

Then I chose a face from a recent on-line life session.

 

Coincidentally, I happened on a similar pose in an old magazine and used that to scale up to my intended 18" x 24" canvas size. 

 

Then I got cold feet and decided I'd better do a preliminary study of the face – which was so intriguing to me, I wanted to spend time with it anyway. 

 

If this looks easy, it wasn't.  So I decided to take a page from my mentor Mary Beth who advised that there was a lot to learn at the beginning stage of a painting and to avoid the compulsion to produce a finished product.  "Make many starts," she said.  So I started another.

 

I continued to work on the two in tandem, using different approaches with form and colour.

  

When I reached a certain point with Face One, I realized another of Mary Beth's wise counsels.  This face was so dark, it looked like an old ad for Coppertone Suntan Lotion before we all became aware of sunblock.

 

I'd finally understood the point of her advice to "Put down the most important colour first – that's the guide to which you will key all the colours that follow."   So….I added the background colour to both of them.

 

That showed me the extent to which I needed to adjust both faces.  It also helped me see some structural errors, particularly in Face One.  This is why acrylic painters love white paint!

 

 

I could work back and forth on both paintings for another few weeks, but let's not belabour this.  They're studies, after all.

  

 

Or should I try a third face?  No, I'll leave that to VanDusen Garden.

 

 

 

I haven't struck gold yet

 

Inspired by the imagination and commitment of D, a young "creative" and ardent enthusiast of diggers and words, I've been paying close attention to construction sites.  (D's grandmother, in her witty accounts, tells me that at age 3, he's a seasoned site supervisor on every dig in their North Shore vicinity.)  

 

As I hope for a little more than the mud and clay of the old Tea Swamp not far from my place (photo above and also here) I'm reminded of the words of artist-author 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."

 

My own recent diggings are guided by my plan to answer a key question I've posed: -- Do my paintings work best in a linear style or a painterly style, or my own combination of both? (This link by the way is a wonderful brief synopsis of what the heck I'm talking about.)  My aim:  To do a series of paintings modelled on painters I admire who work in various mixes of linear/painterly styles -- and eventually draw some conclusions about my own style.  

 

You might have caught my first try, based on the flat linear style of painter Alex Katz – "The Jury is Out (Alex)".

  

 

For the second in the series, I reconnected with a painter whose works I *love*  -- Ferdinand Hodler.  I'd discovered this early 20^th c. Swiss artist a few years ago when I emulated his style with a painting which I based on a photograph of Richard Avedon.

 

This time, I viewed a lot of Hodler paintings on line, like these.  His "Portrait of Gertrude Muller" led me to a working hypothesis.

  

 

Many of his figure paintings are very linear and dynamically coloured, against a rather flat and plain background – one step beyond Alex Katz in terms of presenting a 3-dimensional impression on a 2-dimensional surface.  I did some preliminary planning and got started.

 

I smiled at my early stage, based on a sitting figure I photographed ...somewhere.

 

About halfway along, I realized I'd made a big mistake.  The eyes were just too low on the head.

 

 

There's a general guideline that helps with placement of features – and it's a halfway point itself.  Yes, of course, human faces vary -- but most show the middle of the eyes at about half the height of the head.

 

Groan.  There was only one thing to do. 

 

When the paint dried, I tried again and came closer.

 

 

As I worked towards the finish, I considered the title for this second piece in my "Jury is Out" series.  I've imagined art students waiting to learn the fate of their submitted portfolios, with their first names the same as the artists I'm imitating.  But here's the thing:-- I don't like the name Ferdinand.  I don't like the nicknames Fred, Freddie, Fredo.

 

But wait!  Here's a little known nickname for Ferdinand:-- "Nando."  Really!  But will he be confused with Nandi, the young prodigy?  What the heck – the guy in my painting looks a little preoccupied and needs a goofy nickname to cheer himself up.  Here he is in "The Jury is Out – Nando" (copyright 2021). 

 

 

I'm not entirely happy with this.  I could have done something much more exuberant along Hodler's lines -- like his gorgeous painting, "The Joyous Woman."

 

So as to whether you've seen the last of Hodler on this blog, I wouldn't place money on it.  (1911 Swiss 50-franc note with Hodler's "The Woodcutter")

 

The season to begin anew

 

 

The structure is solid but there hasn't been much action.  Now, though, in just the past two weeks, "green is beginning" – in the words of Pablo Neruda in one of my favourite of his poems.

 

Almost simultaneously, there's been a heartening development in my personal art world.  The studio where I'd been doing life drawing until March 2020 re-opened in Zoom format after its pandemic-imposed shutdown.  It didn't take me long to set up at home for the first session.

 

 

A year ago, I felt I was really beginning to catch on.  My quick poses (1-, 2-, 5-minute) were pretty informative, and I was quite pleased with my drawings like these from 15- and 30-minute poses.

 

 

 

Now – well, I'm downright rusty…just barely making it with some sketchy short poses...

 

…making lots of false starts with the medium-length poses…

 

…and getting downright fed up with my fumblings through the longer poses.

 

 

Nonetheless – I'm happy to be back at it, and coincidentally as I begin anew, I've picked up a fascinating bit of complementary lore.  I can't even remember how I came across this brief article on a mid-20^th century Canadian woman (and her collatorators and successors) who, as a medical illustrator, changed the look of anatomy texts for medical education. 

 

Quick! – to the catalog of the Vancouver Public Library, which almost never disappoints me.  There I found several editions of what became a classic Canadian text, "Grant's Anatomy."  I requested the oldest edition they had – 1991 – before the widespread use of computer-assisted design, thank goodness.

 

Don't ask me why but somehow the subtle colours and hand-lettering remind me of Maurice Sendak.

 

It happens that I have many marvelous anatomy books of my own, most of them birthday gifts from the mid-1980s (!!) when I was first becoming enthralled with the human figure. 

 

They're written by artist-teachers for the purpose of art education and contain often stunning illustrations – skeletons, bones, muscles and, very usefully, "surface anatomy," the landmarks we see when we observe the figure, clothed or unclothed.  (Quick cut to this week's "OOPs" moment in the Canadian House of Commons).

 

The following are from the books of Louise Gordon and Joseph Sheppard.  (Gosh – these heroes of mine from the 1980s are lookin' kind of old and grey these days).

 

 

 

 

 

If I had learned everything in these books by now……..  Well, I haven't, but I know enough to get crackin' again.  Along the way, I can enjoy browsing through "Grant's Anatomy" that, for medical students and professionals, dives deeper than artists need to know about nerves and veins and inner connections of muscles and such.

 

 

 

A new constant in my busy calendar of Zoom events will be twice-monthly sessions at the drawing studio.  My brow might be furrowed as I work (from the forehead muscle that's actually called the "corrugator"), but I *love* the environment – three camera angles to choose from, including the overhead "skycam" that's totally fun and something that's impossible in the normal in-person sessions:

 

 

 

 And if I don't soon get back to my 2020 level of confidence, I'll do backflips trying!  (- from artist/teacher John Raynes)

 

Consulting the oracles

 

 

Looking for guidance in confirming and developing my strengths and apparent style, I consulted…not exactly an oracle, but a promising local artist-teacher via a 12-hour on-line workshop – 6 weeks, 2 hours a week, 10 participants, "personal attention."  The stars seemed in alignment when my self-made pad of studio scrap paper (noted recently in the great puppet entanglement) revealed the headline:  INSPIRING EVENTS.

 

Alas, the times were out of joint (or maybe I should have used tea leaves?) and this workshop was *not* an inspiring event. After three teeth-gritting sessions, I declined to Zoom in for the rest of them.  Fine.  Now what?  Back to Square One.  We'd been asked to write down what we wanted to get from the program, and the only thing to do now was to – go get it for myself.

 

I had asked for help in addressing my perennial tendency to work in a very flat, linear fashion – vs. a more painterly style with more volume and subtlety in colour handling.  Okay.  Here's my new plan for the next two months.  I'm going to work this through step by step, modelling each of my paintings on the different and distinctive style of a painter I like. The jury will be out until 4-5 paintings are complete.

 

Painting One:  Broad expanses of intense flat colour.  And who best to exemplify this but American artist Alex Katz, still going strong at age 93!!

 

I "met" Katz on the recommendation of a very kind local artist who accepted my request to critique my works back in 2017.   And then I learned that my cherished friend A, who has been ahead of me our whole lives long, knew and loved his paintings.  When I visited her on my Historic Trip to the East a year later, she took me to the significant collection of the Alex Katz Foundation at Colby College in Maine. 

 

 

Wow!  I hadn't realized that so many of his paintings were huge.  And thanks to Colby's sophisticated website, you can tour around the whole collection.

 

I got excited again about Katz as I considered possibilities and selected an interesting male face as my model. 

 

This should be easy, right?  Just define the tones in the planes of the head and splash it all down.

 

Hummph.  NOT easy.  In fact, a close-up look at Katz's simplicity shows an extraordinary sophistication in the delineation achieved with just 3-4 tones.

 

My own early stage had entirely too much going on.  And really – I'd have done better to select a model who looked straight ahead.

 

 

Maybe it would have been easier if I'd worked on a larger scale.  Yes, here he is, the real deal – Inspirational Elderly Artist at Work.

 

However, rather than sacrifice a studio wall, I pressed ahead on my 11 x 14-inch canvas.  As I considered who to invite next to my Homegrown Workshop, I started to think of my subjects as art students (the perennial guests, who allow for plenty of quirks and wackiness) waiting for their works to be juried.  In that vein, here's the final version of "The Jury is Out – Alex." (copyright 2021)

 

 

 

This is getting a little eerie, but when I inspected the scrap paper I'd been using for brush-wipes, I found another message.  Had I already struck gold with a Dream Design??

 

 

Games people play

 

 

 

What are these people doing?  They're a little gang I met up with at Summer Camp way back in 2011 (ten years ago!!!) – and they mostly play quiet solo mind games, dreaming the impossible dream…kinda like me.  I've often thought as I'm working on a painting that it's like a challenging game…Is this the right move?  Can I bring this off?  Is too much going on here – or not enough?

 

When it gets into game strategy, there's nothing to match chess – a game I was never very good at although I love the pieces, the more fantastically designed, the better.  A year or so ago, a school friend (notice I didn't say "an OLD school friend") sent me a wonderful photo of her husband and grandson deeply absorbed in a chess match – using the family's classic Staunton pieces, which were also the choice of other serious players I've known.

 

I did a quick sketch from her photo and always wanted to do more with this twosome.

 

Coming across the photo again about a month ago, I decided the time had come.  But seriously:  It would be utter madness for the likes of me to attempt both figures, the chess pieces, and the chessboard in perspective.  How about just The Husband…and the chessboard?  Let's try that with a quick splash of paint.

 

Well….this might work.  At a cross-continental distance and sight-unseen (by me) the grandpa is a pretty handsome dude, suitable for the cornerstone as it were.

 

Then I literally went back to my drawing board to prepare some templates for the six representative pieces that would fill in the meditative space on the right side of the canvas.

 

Here's the preliminary plan with cut-out pieces:

 

And here's the midway point with colours established:

 

As I cleaned up one day, I thought again that some of my best works are the Accidental Abstracts created on the palette.

 

 

Okay, here's the final version – in which I couldn't resist showing the possible directions each piece could move to place The King in checkmate.

 

Because my friend and her husband are one of those grey-haired couples who just keep on being **Too Sweet** together, I've titled the painting, "Dreaming of His Perfect Mate." (copyright 2021)

 

This time, let's invite 20^th century American artist William Faulkner to have the last word.  He was writing about writing but this applies equally to art – and maybe even to chess.

 

"Get it down.  Take chances.  It may be bad, but it's the only way you can do anything really good."