Artsy Thoughts
I am still working on the portrait drawing of my son and waiting for the first of the fixative/matte medium/adhesive/leafing/varnish layers to dry. In the meantime, I have started a full-size preliminary sketch for my next drawing (48 x 25 inch drawing on a 60 x 40 inch sheet of paper). I usually sketch on large sheets of Canson Vidalon Vellum (a high grade tracing paper that comes in a 36-inch-wide roll) that I overlay and shift around until I am satisfied with the composition. When the preliminary sketch is finished, I transfer the outlines to my sheet of watercolor paper and start the final drawing. (Thorough details about the papers I use and why are located in my blog on paper).
This next drawing stems from my grandmother's death last year, my obsession and disenchantment with the "Old South", and the sense of identity that originates from my native soil. And, as such, it will have plenty of magnolias and a little bit of cotton.
I have been reminiscing on All That Is Southern; this fixation has partly to do with the subject of the newest drawing, but in truth my reminiscing happens every summer. Perhaps it is the summer heat that reminds me of my childhood in Georgia as well as my ancestral family homesteads in North and South Carolina. Perhaps it is the fact that I am excited about my upcoming annual visit southward and the recharge that I get from being back in my beloved hometown of Athens, Georgia.
At any rate, as part of the reflecting upon my grandmother's death and all of this reminiscing on All That Is Southern, I have also been thinking more objectively about my grandmother.
Well, I have always been a little objective about her...she was the embodiment of the Old South in ideology and in belief: truly, if she had not died in March of last year, she would surely have keeled over on the morning of November 5th. We had many vehement disagreements on politics and social issues through the years that led me to hold a lot of anger towards her, but all in all she was my grandmother and the only grandparent with whom I was close.
This conflict of love and hate has become the springboard for the newest drawing.
Now for a relevant and visually influential southern tangent: two scenes from the 1955 film noir classic Night of the Hunter: a flash of Robert Mitchum's "LOVE" and "HATE" tattooed hands as well as the vision of Shelly Winter's floating hair as she rests in her underwater grave:
Ah, the South. It is an enigmatic place and although I have been north of the Mason-Dixon line for over a decade, I have not lost my sense of connection to its complex history and the dual, dueling nature of love and hate.
While cleaning up my studio and organizing reference photos, I have shuffled through years of my own photographs documenting the nooks and crannies of the Deep South. And, it has dawned on me that some of these images are a little amusing, a little strange, and visually rather interesting. So, for the next few months I will have sporadic posts of Magnolias and Strange Fruit: these will be musings about Southern artists, places and things, random observations, and a few oddities ~ all of those places and things that influence, intertwine, and underpin many of the drawings that I create.
In the meantime, I simply have to muse on one* thing that I miss about the South: the purely magical and delicious fragrance of a blossoming magnolia tree on a cool night breeze.
I always pick the magnolia's flowers even though they quickly bruise and do not last very long. I have also photographed them until they literally are falling apart:
Now to start drawing them...
*Only my yearning for proper barbecue surpasses my yearning for the magnolia tree
A quick thank you to Traci D for dragging me to the theater to see the restored "Night of the Hunter" all those years ago - the movie still gives me chills...and the references appear in the most magnificent places.
The new piece is finished! These are not the best photos (will this rain ever stop??!! I cannot get outside to photograph!) ~ but I did not want to wait to post the finished work.
The Carrier (XX + XY = XX)
graphite and pigment/ink on Arches paper
48 x 30 inches
Details:
OK...so I have not actually formulated a statement on this one (as of yet), but I have been thinking about what prompted the piece:
Most of my drawings begin viscerally - I do not start with a subject or an idea and then work for a visual solution in the manner of an illustrator. Perhaps this is why I fail miserably at illustration - I have trouble thinking in words or using logic to plan a visual image without creating something that looks contrived. And, by the way, I adore illustration - early 20th century illustrators were a major influence for me (but that is a topic for another post).
However, many of my drawings have started with words or a phrase as a reference point, or maybe a concept that has been tossing around in my head, but even these images come to me as complete visions or sensations. (And yes, this is the flat out definition of synesthesia. It comes from years of moving visuals around in my head and now my right-brain dominance cannot be restrained).
Since my drawings are so highly refined, viewers may think that they are consciously designed like an illustration. Quite frankly, my worst drawings are the ones where I actually think about the concept while I am resolving the composition - these are inevitably stiff and feel contrived. The best are the ones where I just draw away and don't reflect or try to deconstruct the imagery that is coming through me and into the sketchbook.
There were two sketches before the idea came to me as a whole complete thought.
The first was the idea of that which is internalized suddenly being externalized; seeing through the body to the inner workings:
The second was what I have, in retrospect, called the "tooth-cell" - it is like an invading microbe - a thing that eats away at the insides (only this one has an old family photo inside):
Then, the tooth-cell migrated into a true self-portrait - and this was the final sketch before I started the drawing:
When I did this sketch, I knew this was the imagery that I wanted, but the practicality of executing the drawing was to be considered:
How will the figure fit within the format of the page?
How large can the drawing be to fit into a mat and frame?
This is the point that I started tinkering with the format and composition of the drawing. For this piece, I started with a photograph (self-portrait) with the pose I wanted to use for the drawing. This photo was cropped, narrowed, shortened, widened, and reformatted until I came up with the positive/negative space relationship that felt right. I then, by using the "image size" function in photoshop, I convert this into inches - height and width - with consideration of the maximum size I can draw and have the piece fit in a frame.
The rest of the little microcosmic details fell into place within the framework of the figure. I actually had no clue how I was going to draw the background until the figure was finished (sometimes I have to see the figure finished it to know how the negative space can be resolved) and in this case I serendipitously stumbled across an old photograph of my father and one of his cousins (it is always a serendipitous notion - or perhaps a leap of faith - that makes the drawing come together at some point well after it is underway).
The stamping of the "XY" occurred to me later, too - I was going to draw the letters onto the hands but I had a vision of something more like a hand stamp - or a tattoo - a more permanent branding of the letters.
Oh, and speaking of leaps of faith...it is quite a nail-biter to wield an inked rubber stamp to a completed drawing...
I have to think more about this piece before I come up with a statement. In the meantime, I will be posting a fun studio side project in a few days!
