Howell's Barn, sketch A | charcoal

Here are a few quick sketches done earlier this year.  Drawing in vine charcoal helps me learn to translate what I’m seeing into line and mass.   It also makes it easy to design in three values– light, medium and dark.

Howell's Barn, sketch B | charcoal

Same subject as the first sketch, slightly different way of seeing it.

Howell's Building Cluster A | charcoal

This last one plays around with spacial relationships – how much “sky” vs how much “building cluster”, etc.

Drawing in charcoal speeds up the decision-making process, allowing rapid development of dark, medium and light value zones.   The backbone of a strong painting is already in place once you come up with a strong charcoal drawing.

For fixative I recommend Utrecht brand.  It’s called “Workable Fixative”, comes in a spray can.  It’s the only brand I’ve found that does not have a yellowish tint.

9 x 12 | oil pastel on paper, 2005

Mary With Chalk, pencil

“REAL ARTISTS PAINT EVERY DAY.”  I don’t know where I got that idea, or how many other people believe some version of it.  “You have to draw every day if you want to be any good, blah, blah blah…”  I say FORGET IT.

Life won’t cooperate.  Obstacles abound– illness, relationship crises, family problems, emotional issues, child rearing, car repairs, home maintenance, earning a living…  Sometimes the obstacles completely overwhelm our good intentions to pursue our art diligently, when there simply is no time or energy available.     What then?  What if the hindrance lasts for a long time?

Here are some practical suggestions for seasons when making your art  just can’t happen as you had hoped:

1)   Do some quick sketches as time allows – even just five minutes of sketching in your sketchbook.  Even one sketch in a two week period.  (How many stones did David need to kill Goliath?)  This can be the most important thing you do artistically anyway.  It trains you to

• choose subject matter that resonates with you personally
• convert your visual experience into marks on a surface
• arrange value shapes
• create hierarchy
• balance mass and line
• reconnects you with the simple, childlike pleasure of responding to nature by making an image.   If you can get to that calm, creative place where it’s just you, the charcoal, and your response to nature, when time disappears and joy takes over – one five or ten minute session in that emotional place –it will make up for weeks of frustration about not being able to paint.   I know this from lots of experience with frustration, and fear that I will lose ground if I can’t paint.

2)  Look at great art. Get library books on painters you love, and paintings that intrigue you even if you don’t love them.   Ask yourself what it is that makes you stop and stare.  Let your mind chew on that question.  Even just a few minutes before bed looking at some master paintings counts.  I have done this on and off for years.   I want to be regularly absorbing great work into my creative bloodstream.

3)  Great art grows out of a life lived. Art is the visible expression of human life as we experience it.  It’s about soul. So everything that feels like a hindrance is actually filling the well we will draw from when the time comes to make art.

I received an email from a friend today asking what she should do about the fact that she is completely hindered right now from making art.  These are some of the thoughts I shared with her, based on years of experiencing the same frustration.  I need to be reminded of these things myself, so I figured maybe somebody else might benefit from some encouragement today.

Something I keep in mind as I drive around Indiana– a sown field looks like nothing but dirt for a long time before a crop sprouts up.  Appearances can be deceiving. You may actually be growing artistically even when you are unable to make art.

Maybe even because you can’t make art right now.

Turned Earth (30 x 48)

Corn Study from life (21 x 15) charcoal

Corn in the field is overwhelming to draw or paint from life.    So much information floods the eye – you either select and edit or go nuts.     When I’m able to really focus, drawing becomes a jacuzzi for the mind and soul.   Time vanishes, the day’s mental to-do list goes dormant, and the pure pleasure of smearing burnt willow on cotton rag paper takes over.

Nature in all her apparent randomness rewards the staring eye with hints of deep math and even magic just below the surface.  No two stalks alike in a field of thousands;  Every crisp, twisted, dry leaf is like yet unlike every other.  Every space is unique, every shape it’s own.   Nature is where we learn design.

Drawn from life just up the road from my house not too many weeks ago.

The dividing of space was uppermost in my mind as I worked.

Learning to draw never ends.   Learning to not just see, but perceive and understand is one part.  Learning to translate experience and emotion into an arrangement of marks is another.   And then there’s learning to fall in love with the process again and again.    All of that depends on learning to be still and patient long enough.

I’ve been starting each day  in the studio recently with a few quiet hours of uninterrupted drawing.    The effort to shut out the noise and busyness, to ignore the “to-do lists” for a while, and to allow my spirit to become quieted again has been more than worth it.

Sidewalk Chalk and Boots

Mary Driveway Drawing