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| Peonies in Large Snifter, Oil on Canvas, 25 by 24 in. |
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| Happy Moo Year, Oil on Canvas, 12 by 14 in. |
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| Recent Drawings, Charcoal Pencil on Smooth Newsprint |
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| Recent Drawings, Charcoal Pencil on Smooth Newsprint |
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| Birth of a Model, Charcoal Pencil on Smooth Newsprint |
I’m bored with this
blog as well. Anything I write about the
visual arts and its practitioners has already been written by someone else –
and much better, too, especially when it comes to musing about the process of oil painting, something I’m particularly obtuse about, although it has occupied
much of my time in the past 30 or so years.
I dream of moving to the High Desert
to get some sunlight into my canvases, but that’s a move that seems way too
decisive at this late stage in the game of life.
I tell myself and anybody who is willing to listen that the
main reason I remain in New York is because my social club, The Art Students
League of New York, provides a free figure drawing sketch class for members
from 5 to 6:30 p.m. Monday through Friday during the regular school year, and
an inexpensive sketch class for members during the summer months. I paint most mornings by that abysmal natural
light in my home studio I’m always complaining about, eat a slice of pizza and
drink a can of soda for lunch, take a nap and then head a short 18
city blocks to the League for the sketch class and a smidgeon of camaraderie. That’s a pretty full accounting of my
day-to-day existence, and this seemingly irrelevant information might be useful
if you are considering following in my footsteps on the path to an exciting and
lucrative art career.
You have to go real slow if you want to succeed. I believe that the Tuscan painter Cennino
Cennini (1370-1440), a follower of Giotto, got it right when he advised young
artists in his Book of the Art to take it easy, live moderately and drink only "thin wines." Thanks to his advice, I
don’t get worn out “heaving stones, crowbars, and many other things which are
bad for your hand” before I begin a painting.
He offered another sage bit of advice that all you young men with
designs on an art career should pay special attention to: “There is another cause which, if you indulge
it, can make your hand so unsteady that it will waver more, and flutter far
more, than leaves do in the wind, and this is indulging too much in the company
of women.” I’m only guessing, you
understand, but I think he’s right on that score, as well!
To get back on track, something that’s never been easy for
me, I was drawing the figure better 20 years ago, but this passionate visual
exercise to train the hand and eye remains the only consistently enjoyable
activity I have ever participated in throughout my rather long and, without
exaggeration, comically wretched existence.
I’ve posted a couple of collages above with images of a few
of my recent drawings in charcoal pencil on newsprint. I’ve never had much interest in drawing with
other media. Why should I? I’ve been drawing with these pencils on smooth
newsprint for 30 years and I still get so much pleasure out of this practice that
I’m loathe to experiment with any other medium.
I go through maybe 30 or more 100-sheet, 14 by17 inch newsprint pads in the course
of a year and throw away thousands of sheets of drawings. And so do the hundreds of other artists who
draw at the League in various media on a regular basis. But fear not, Rain Forest preservationists,
the League does recycle. I keep a few of
my sketches, but I don’t have a very critical eye, so I probably throw away far
better drawings than I save, if truth be told, at least I hope so!
I’m not much interested in marketing these drawings. Some
years ago, a distant cousin from Norway
professed to liking them and bought a few, but that seemed like such a fluke
that I never tried to sell any drawings to anybody else. Besides, they are on newsprint, which is an
anathema to many artists because it is not “archival.” Promoting drawing papers as “archival” seems
like such phony nonsense to me. It’s really
nothing more than an annoying advertising pitch to get artists to buy expensive,
chemically treated papers that aren’t sympathetic surfaces for charcoal. Papers with 100 percent rag content are great
for drawing, but just too expensive for all these quick sketches I do.
Part of my fascination for this time-honored figure drawing
exercise is, most assuredly, the nonjudgmental intimacy permitted in a communal
gathering of artists raptly engaged in drawing the nude model. In this nurturing environment, I can make
believe that I am in the company of Van Dyke, Rubens, Sargent and other great
masters of the art of figure drawing. I can
always tell when I’m going to have a pretty good drawing session when I start
thinking, after a couple of poses, about what I’m going to eat for dinner after
the class is over.
I like to start a figure drawing with the head, when the
pose presents that opportunity, because I’m drawing a live human being, not a
manikin, and I want to capture the spirit of the individual model first and
foremost. The quality of an open pose for me is wedded to the carriage of the head and the expression on the model’s
face. In addition, the model’s pose is
usually more graceful and balanced at the beginning, before the position of the
head changes, as it invariably does, sometimes slightly, sometimes
dramatically. The body is usually held
in the same attitude throughout the pose, so work on the torso and limbs can
wait a bit.
But sometimes it’s so difficult to get a satisfactory
likeness that I don’t have time to do justice to the rest of the figure. And that is one of my better rationalizations for
why my figure drawings aren’t so great. Lots of artists who love drawing the figure are
as good as or better than I am, so why should I consider my own work worthy of
exploitation. Why, just the other day I sharpened a black pastel
pencil for a 13-year old kid attending the sketch class, and in return for this
favor, at the end of the class she gave me a notebook-size sheet of paper with
a drawing of the model and a profile sketch of me that was pretty darn good! How demoralizing is that for an aging artist
headed out to pasture!
This entire blog post seems like déjà vu all over again, but
it doesn’t much matter to my phantom audience, so I’ll go through the routine
again, even if I may have done so before.
The League sets aside three studios for drawing during this open sketch
class, giving artists a choice of three models to draw from. Non-members can draw for a very reasonable $7
per session. Two of the studios are
dedicated to quick poses -- traditionally 10 one-minute poses and three five-minute
poses, then a five-minute break, then a 10 and a 15, another break and then a
20 or 25 minute pose at the end. Some
models at the League will only work in 20-minute segments nowadays, so the
timing of the poses is less consistent. One studio is reserved for a long pose for the
duration of the class, but most of the regulars prefer drawing short poses.
There are more female artists’ models in this world than
male models, and, in general, the artists, men and women, prefer drawing the
female figure for a variety of reasons, including one I used to hear often from
Sal, one of the sketch class regulars from years past. “I never sold a drawing of a male model,” Sal
would say, as he dashed from a studio with a male model to one with a female
model. If by some unfortunate
coincidence there were three male models for the day, Sal just went home.
It bears repeating that there are no schools for artists’
models, so the training is all on the job.
And it’s gratifying to witness a novice model develop skill and
confidence as the weeks and months go by.
I’ve posted five drawings of a League model in one of the collages above
that are a case in point. When this
model began posing at the school two years ago, we all found her natural figure
a delight to draw. But she seemed very shy
and never fully revealed her face to the artists, typified in the first two
drawings of her. But as time went on,
she grew in confidence and is now very relaxed and comfortable on the posing
stand. And she is no longer reluctant to
show her expressive face.
So as the new year approaches, I remain in this great city
of assisted living because of the figure drawing opportunities, the
rent-stabilized apartment and all the public amenities that make going from place to place and acquiring the necessities of life so convenient. Heck, I’ve got a Starbucks and a Duane
Reade/Walgreens drugstore right around the corner. You can’t beat that in Grover’s Corners, I
reckon. No exit for me, it appears. But it could be worse. Out west where the sun always shines I’d need
a car again and would have to learn how to deal with black bears, mountain
lions, rattlesnakes, tarantulas, scorpions and two-legged evildoers armed with
hunting rifles who wouldn’t mind taking dead aim on a city slicker from a mile
away. Or so I’m told.
