Sunday funnies 8

On retreat 1

I spent the beginning of this week at my twice-annual retreat, just 30 minutes up the road but it might as well be hundreds of miles away.  Something about your work table being 2 minutes away from your bed, and a lack of distractions makes those days quite productive, or at least that's the plan.

This year I repeated my usual approach of bringing paperwork: still working on my longtime series of book review haikus.  I look through old New York Times arts sections, find review of art exhibits, and find haikus in the copy by identifying five- and seven-syllable phrases that put together, not only make nice poetry but faithfully reflect the opinion of the reviewer.  Then I paste the haikus, plus a small picture from the review, into my two little notebooks.

I'm reaching the end of this project, I realized on the first day of the retreat.  Not only are the notebooks getting full, I'm running out of steam.  No wonder, because I've been working on this series for several years, but suddenly this year I detected less enthusiasm than in the past.

I forgot to pack my tweezers, which are indispensable for picking up tiny bits of gluey paper and positioning them for pasting down.  So after fumbling through a half-dozen poems pasting by hand, I decided to simply "write" the poems (the time-consuming part) and wait till I got home to paste them into the book.

I got many finished, but it wasn't a particularly satisfying experience.  I found myself easily distracted by anything else going on in the room, and when you have to force yourself to do art it's a good sign that you should stop making art.  Or at least go make some other art that will make you happier.

I'll tell you about the rest of the retreat in my next post.

"Plein Air at Xidi Village (Day 2)"

I have started another large painting. When I was at Xidi last September, I saw so many artists plein air painting all over the place. I really want to do several serious paintings to reflect the lives in this small place. You have seen I painted quite a few doorways there, but that was just the necessary foundation work. This one I start to involve more figures, which are the artists in the village. I know it is a challenge for me to paint any serious painting with my fragmented time, but I will give a try.

Channeling Morandi -- I wish

Last week's drawing exercises had to do with light and shadow, and on a beautiful warm morning I took my sketchbook outside to enjoy the bright sun.  I found a white bottle and an oversize white cup and posed them on the deck railing, then drew them from three different angles to capture different shadow patterns.

I'm learning a lot from this class, and a lot of it is not what I expected to learn.  In these drawings, for instance, I learned that while Giorgio Morandi can make wonderful still lifes by putting his pottery against a white wall, I don't think I can.  I still need to figure out how to give some kind of background effect, if only to let the shadows fall on something and to better delineate the edge of the white bottle.  Or maybe I just need to draw that edge with a heavier line.

I think the two most important things I'm getting out of it are a knowledge of the different tools available, and a confidence with holding them.  The specific lessons about where the ears go and how to measure distances with your outstretched pencil are harder to assimilate and perhaps in the long run less crucial.

I don't expect my drawing career to be stellar; what I do want is to become more confident with a pencil or pen in my hand.  I want to make marks (probably not realistic sketches, given my past history) that look authentic and have character and ideally, are MINE.  My drawings are improving with practice -- no surprise there -- but I'm particularly happy that it no longer seems terrifying to pick up the pencil and make lines in the sketchbook.  I'm even feeling better about having a sketchbook at all!

"Xidi Doorway 7"

I used this ref photo the second time. Xidi village is the place that keeps coming back in my dreams. This morning I painted this Xidi doorway again. I want to practice this technique more to gain more control and gradually develop a style. There is a Chinese character on the red sign posted about the door, I have waiting the paint to dry to write it on.