Too cold for plein air...? So I'll write about it instead!

Note: This post picks up on a conversation that started in the comments section of my post from a couple of days ago about painting outside in "the elements"....or not. My first plein air painting experience was a disaster. In fact, I don't think I was really won over with the whole idea of painting on location until about the 5th time out. It took many more outings than that, however, before I created anything I considered to be remotely approaching a "success".

There were definitely days when I found myself wondering why I bothered with it at all. Even now that I really love plein air painting, I still find I don't do it as often as I would like. It is certainly a lot easier to paint in a nice cozy studio at any time of day or night without having to haul a bunch of gear around. It's a hassle. You have to deal with bugs, sunburn, wind, rain, or the freezing cold. In some cases you also have to deal with constant interruptions from passers-by (from dogs to people to timed sprinklers coming on unexpectedly to boats parking right in front of your view!)

But even with all of that, there is something exhilarating about it. It can often be the best sweaty, bug-bitten, exhausting, driven, compelling, and highly focused couple of hours I've ever spent. And even in the "wipers" or those that end up in the "circular file" there was often enough of an element-- maybe just a square inch or two-- that hinted at some special understanding and called me forward. In short, there was something this experience was teaching me that I wasn't getting by working in the studio alone.

In order to really enjoy my plein air painting experiences I think I first had to finally let go of the need for a particular outcome. Of course ultimately I want to become a better painter! But just as I'm trying to do now with my life-drawing, I gained the greatest benefit from this practice when I finally started viewing it in terms of what I could learn rather than what I could produce. The shift in perspective helped, because what I found from nearly the beginning was that whatever the immediate outcome, these experiences helped to inform and improve my knowledge and understanding overall, including the work I did in the studio.

Since my work is based on the natural world, there is no better reference than nature herself; and one of the main benefits of plein air painting for me is that I am painting from life.  Plein air painting isn't the only way to achieve that of course. I can also set up a still life  or do some figure drawing and painting (which is one reason why I've gotten back into life drawing myself this winter when I can't seem to get myself outside in the cold for more than 5 minutes!)

But the difference with plein air is that not only are you dealing with painting your response to a "live" subject, you are also having to concern yourself with the changing light and many other things that move and change and can't be controlled the way you can do in the studio environment. It's limiting, but not in a bad way. It pushes you to think about simplifying and making the bold statement without having to articulate every little detail, and doing so with a great deal of accuracy at the same time.

That is not to say that by their nature all plein air paintings are "better" than studio paintings. I'm sure anyone who has spent time looking at landscape paintings has probably seen a good deal of strong AND weak paintings produced by both methods. Ultimately, a painting has to stand on its own.

Both methods have their advantages and their limitations, which is why I like to "mix it up". In some respects the two practices could be compared to short-pose gesture drawing vs. longer, more studied sittings done in life drawing. In either case, I'm sharpening my skills of sight and understanding, but using different muscle groups, so to speak. Hopefully with regular practice the dexterity and skill will grow. That's not all there is to art. To be sure, it's not art without individual creativity and expression. But skill and dexterity in the execution sure make it a lot easier for me to better articulate my creative vision.

Reclining nude II- WIP

I started this drawing on Friday in Robert Liberace's "Exploring the Figure" drawing class at the Art League School:

The upper portion is the least resolved so far, but the whole drawing is to be developed further by a kind of push/pull method of adding and subtracting layers of charcoal, followed by highlights in white conte chalk.

Rob started the class with a beautiful demonstration inspired by the techniques of a 19th century French academic artist named Pierre Paul Prud'hon. I had not heard much about this artist, but enjoyed seeing the exquisite  reproductions that Rob shared by way of this book.

Rob made particular note of the way in which Prud'hon defined form, and his unique method of shading and highlighting. As this article by artist Rebecca Alzofon explains very well, Prud'hon had a unique method of shading--in part by creating hatch lines that followed the direction of the form, then stumping and hatching again in a similar manner with highlighting chalks. So in our class, our challenge (should we choose to accept it) is to experiment with working in a similar manner from our model. From my understanding we will work on the same pose for another two or 3 sessions.

In Rob's demonstration he used a Canson gray tinted paper (at about a value #4) which worked well, as it created a light-mid value to contrast with highlighting with white Conte. I again found myself without the proper materials to perform the task. I must have gotten an incomplete or outdated supplies list or something, but all I had was an off-white Rives BFK paper, with which I just made-do by shading with vine charcoal to give me somewhat of a "tone".  I'm not sure at this point how far I can continue developing the current drawing or if it will produce the desired effect. At some point I may just start again with the proper paper, but I'd like to at least take this a little further to see what more I can do.

It has occurred to me that this method of very refined drawing is somewhat more polished than what I'm normally drawn to. Even in the Prud'hon reproductions in the book, I found myself lingering in the passagesof his drawings that were less "finished" and showed more gesture, more of the decision making process, and more of the hand of the artist.

In my own drawing, I notice myself secretly wanting to stop before I lose too much of the gesture. This is probably because in my landscape painting I've set a goal for myself to find ways of stating things more simply...to say "more with less", so to speak and to do it a bit more loosely. At the same time, the whole reason I signed up for this class is to experiment and maybe even learn something new in the process! You can't do that if you are too beholden to your own agenda.

I've been reading a great little book right now by George Leonard called Mastery: The Keys to Success and Long-Term Fulfillment. Leonard is an aikido master so a lot of his analogies in the book are drawn from the martial arts and Zen philosophy. According to the author, one of the keys of mastery is entitled "Surrender":

"The courage of a master is measured by his or her willingness to surrender. This means surrendering to your teacher and to the demands of your discipline. It also means surrendering your own hard-won proficiency from time to time in order to reach a higher or different level of proficiency."

Hmmm. I suspect it probably also means surrendering your own agenda from time to time as well.

Reclining nude sketch

Last night I joined a local figure drawing group. This group met for two hours-- slightly shorter than the usual 2 1/2 to 3 hour sessions I've been to before. The time flew, but I was still there long enough to be reminded again of how out of practice I am! This was my best attempt --a 25 minute pose (one of the longest of the evening).

I really liked the model...she was very dramatic, which made drawing her lots of fun. She was also quite the trooper, lying on what looked to be a very uncomfortable low bench, with her head supported by a wedge-pillow thingy. I felt happy that I at least started to get some of the weight of her pose. But not much else in the way of detail. I think I'll be sticking to charcoal on newsprint paper until I can get myself to a point of more speed and accuracy, which is only going to come with practice and understanding.

 To that end, I'm studying proportion and human anatomy as best I can on my own for now, through books. I picked up a book by Andrew Loomis at the library called "Figure Drawing for All It's Worth". The book was originally published in 1943, and is one of a series of books by the author on similar topics. Loomis was a well known illustrator back in the day and is still referenced by a lot of figurative artists today as a good source for basic and accessible information on human proportion and figure drawing in general. Sadly, his books are now out of print, but you can still find some of them online  and possibly at your local library.

Loomis makes some interesting opening comments in the book about "Beginner's Work". There are several telltale signs he lists, but I took note of this one, as I definitely see this occurring in my own figure drawing:

"An overabundance of small fuzzy line:  Do not "pet" in your line, draw it clearly with a long sweep. Do not shade with a multitude of little "pecky" strokes. "

Ya. So in addition to all of the other stuff on anatomy and proportion, one of the things I want to work on is quality of the contour and line. I think the sketchiness comes in part from a lack of confidence/familiarity with the subject. It's much easier to make sketchy marks as you try to find the right placement and proportion. It's something else altogether to put meaningful, lyrical marks in just the right place!

A beautiful day!

I don't much write about "politics" on this blog (if that's even what you'd call it?) but I couldn't let this momentous day pass without noting my own sense of joy and national pride as we prepare to inaugurate Barack Obamato the presidency. A big part of me wishes that I could have been there in person on this historic day, in spite of the mobs of people, and in spite of the fact that I will likely see more of the actual inauguration on TV than I would do on the ground. As it is, I'll be celebrating by drawing (as one of my nephews would say) "nekked people" ;-) . I'm attempting to make good on one of my artistic goals this year by working more from life and tackling the challenge of the human form. To get started, I've enrolled in weekly class up in Alexandria, VA studying under the very fine classical figurative painter/portraitist Robert Liberace. Liberace is making a name for himself and he'sbeen featured a few times in American Artist magazine and other publications.

This class is a big one. Not surprisingly he's a popular teacher and in prior years students were lined up outside the Art League School for a chance to enroll in his drawing and painting classes. In light of that the school has expanded his class size to accommodate two classrooms full of students. So at this point I'm not too sure how much face time I'll really get with the instructor. Outside of the first demonstration, I didn't see him much in our room on the first day of class. But I'm hoping this will change as we all settle in to a routine, so that I'll at least be able get more of his input if even indirectly, by watching him interacting with other students my classroom.

Having said that, it was inspiring to watch our instructor's elegant handling of his drawing. I wish I had thought to get a picture of his demo with my camera phone, but I'll try for it next time. Meanwhile, here's one of my first efforts in life drawing in a verrrry long while. Boy did I feel rusty! I'm posting this drawing not because I think it's great, (actually, it looks pretty tentative, like a cave-man drawing compared to the masterful sketch of my teacher!) But I wanted to mark a starting point to track my progress (hopefully) as I go along.

How not to succeed at your goals while really trying ;-)

Happy New Year everyone! This past week, I've taken some time to reflect on the common practice of new year goal-setting, and I've enjoyed browsing around the blogosphere to see what others (and particularly other artists) are writing about the subject. Actually artist Katherine Tyrrell has made this task easy for me with the  great series of year end roundup posts she's provided on her blog Making a Mark--  the topics of which extend far beyond goal-setting (though there is a good deal of that too, including Katherine's own set of goals for the new year.) *Note of thanks to Katherine for foot-noting my blog posts on studio lighting in her "art studios in 2009" subsection of "Who's Made a Mark This Week". For myself, unlike previous years I am taking my time and being a bit more reflective about goal setting. Obviously there is value to goal-setting --otherwise there wouldn't be so many people finding satisfaction in doing it. But why is it that so often goal- setting fails to achieve the desired results? I think that in the past I've sometimes been guilty of goal-setting just for the sake of getting things accomplished, without really examining whether the goals are really worthy ones. Taking this approachleaves me feeling either unfulfilled even if things get "done" or disappointedbecause I didn't accomplish more. It also keeps me so in the mode of wanting to "get there already" that I don't enjoy the process nearly as well. 

So in thinking about how to set more meaningful goals for myself, I've also been thinking about why goal-setting so often doesn't satisfy. There are any number of reasons, of course, but here's a shortlist that I've come up against.

How not to succeed at your goals while really trying:

• Don't ask "WHY?" Why do I want (or think I want) to do, be, have, or achieve this? What do I hope to gain? How will this improve my life, my work, or the lives of others? These seem likeobvious questions, but without asking these essential questions first, it's easy to find yourself pursuing goals that aren't meaningful, and sometimes aren't even yours! (see bullet #2) In a nutshell, asking the essential "Why?" helps to get to the heart of what is driving you. 
•  Set goals that deep down you don't really care about just because you think you should or because others think you should. For an artist, these might include things like setting a goal to get work into a gallery or earn a certain dollar amount from your art, for fear that failing to do so will mean you will be perceived as "unsuccessful". Or setting a goal to paint in a certain manneror by a certain method because you feel others think it is a more legitimate form or method than some other one. Mind you, none of these are wrong choices as long as they support what you want deep down. But here's a tip; if there are a lot of "shoulds" in your goals, that's worth examining before you commit to them, to see if they really serve you. Otherwise, setting these kinds of goals can often set you up for feelings of "failure". If your heart isn't really in it all the way, you're likely to go for it halfway or not at all. 
•  Be unrealistic- It's been my personal experience that my trouble has not been the size of the goal, but the timeline I set to achieve it. Setting far greater goals than you can possibly achieve in a given timeline creates more stress than inspiration.
• Set goals that aren't challenging enough- Being realistic about time and/or resources doesn't meanyou should feel bored. If your goal leaves you feeling flat-lined, are you really going to be inspired to devote the time needed to go for it? In order to motivate myself, my goal has to be beyond my comfort zone. I want any goal I set this year to make my heart go pitter-patter. It should inspire, excite, ignite and sometimes maybe even feel a little scary.
• Be over-expansive. It has taken me a number of years to get this, (41 to be exact) but I think (I hope) I am finally learning that setting too many goals in a given time-period is not only hard to manage in terms of time, but it also splits my focus too much. I'm finding it's better for me to limit myself to fewer more meaningful goals in order to really give them the proper attention required.  This doesn't mean that I won't break the big stuff down into smaller milestones, but the milestones and activities should support one of my main goals, not set me off in 100 different directions.
• Set goals without making a plan to go about it. It does me no good whatsoever to set even meaningful goals without breaking them down into plans of action. In order to track progress, a high level goal could then be broken down into:
  • milestones along the way (these should be measurable)
  • activities needed to reach those milestones
  • a scheduleto carry out those activities (monthly and weekly schedules are good, but for me it has to be daily).
• Lack balance- This is a very personal matter. Some people do just fine with letting other matters drop for a while in order to hyper-focus on achieving one goal. Not so with me. I'm already an "uber-focuser" and unless I intentionally set goals that address all important aspects of my life, I miss out on fun stuff (like, oh,  sleep, proper diet and exercise, fulfilling relationships,  and time for fun, for instance!) And without those things in balance, soon there is no joy even in the things I dearly want to achieve artistically.

It's easy to jump into a litany of to-do's, but it may take a little longer to step back first and examine the big picture to see if your goals really speak to the greater vision you have for yourself. As I go through my own process I am finding I do have an overarching theme that I want to focus on this year in relationship to my art.

Back to school

Ideally this would include "real-time" instruction and mentoring, and I am hopeful I will be able to find the time and resources to pursue that. But after all, I have a ton of art books to keep me busy and they will help me to commit myself to a regular staple of study through experimentation, self-guided lessons, etc. *Note: For a fascinating and inspiring look at one artist's documented learning processes, check out Paul Foxton's wonderful info-packed site Learning to See.

Also, I love landscape painting and I will continue with this tract, but I'm feeling a great desire to become reacquainted with and develop a greater understanding of the human form. Along those lines, I will make a greater commitment to paint much more often from life--if not daily, nearly so.  Whether this means painting en plein air or still life or portraiture, (or even if it is a 5 minute sketch waiting for my haircut) I continue to see so much benefit to this practice and its time to commit to working from life as a regular discipline.

Obviously all of this will need to be worked out in greater detail into more specific goals and a measurable plan, but this is where I'm heading as for the year ahead. I guess if I had to boil everything down to one word I'd say that what it is I'm after is to achieve a greater level of mastery with my work.

Mastery

Now that's a big, expansive scary word if I ever saw one! And  while it's really too broad to write down as a year long goal,  it can be a guidepost by which my artistic goals can be set. It is said that it takes 10,000 hours to achieve mastery at something. Whether or not this is exact, what it tells me is that it's not something that's likely to be attained in a year!  It's not as if I'm starting from zero, but even so, in truth it may not even be attained in a lifetime, for that matter, even with a disciplined plan.

I do wonder though, as an artist, how do you really know you've arrived? Do you suddenly wake up one day and say, "I'm a master!" It seems a bit of a moving target. Each new level of understanding inevitably leads to new questions, new challenges, and raising the bar ever higher. To quote Gertrude Stein, "There is no there there."

To my mind, arriving really isn't the point. The way I see it, mastery has more to do with a state of being than a state of arriving. It's more about process than it is about product. It's a state of flow. Certainly there is tangible accomplishment produced as well, and I guess the accomplishment part is what we tend to focus on when we think of someone mastering something. But I really see those kinds of results as more of a by-product of something much greater. And yet, it is the by-products that are the most measurable so that's the starting point I'll use to make my plan.  Better get to it. 10000 hours is a long way off.