Alone with a Bottle of Ink

Over the last month I have been spending time at the house/art immersion of the two artists known as Chuck and George. They gave me a key so I was able to drop by whenever I pleased. The result is 14 ink drawings of the visually overloaded interior of the world they live in.

Their house from the front porch to the back gate is overflowing with artwork, artifacts and curiosities. All of the walls and even some of the floors are custom painted and just about every surface has artwork on it. Not only with Chuck and George's artwork but also the works by hundreds of other artists too. It's safe to say this is the biggest collection of slightly demented regional art in Texas. You can understand why I was excited about the opportunity to draw in this environment.

On May 20th the Chuck and George house will be part of the Visual Speed Bump Art Tour. I recommend you earmark the day to spend time at this wonderful house as well as visiting the other 13 studios on the self guided tour.

Drawing A Few Good Books

While teaching the Drawing Fundamentals class at CAC I used several books to help demonstrate the various elements of drawing. Since then a few people have asked for a list of those books, so here they are.

The War of Art, Steven Pressfield
Drawing On The Right Side Of The Brain, Betty Edwards
Cezanne and Pissarro Pioneering Modern Painting,  Joachim Pissarro
Cezanne In The Studio Still Life In Watercolors, Carol Armstrong
The Paintings Of Jakuchu, Money L. Hickman
Impressionist And The City Pissarro's Series Paintings, Richard R. Brettell
Vincent van Gogh Drawings and Watercolors, DMA publication 1967
An American Pulse: Lithographs of George Wesley Bellows, San Diego Museum of Art publication 1999
The Art Of Drawing, Bernard Chaet
American Drawing The 20th Centery, Paul Cummings
Daumier 1808-1879, National Gallery Of Canada publication 1999
Matisse Drawings and Sculpture, Prestel

Drawing The Pieces Together

Raku Kilns at the Creative Arts Center

For six weeks we have been focusing on drawing by breaking the practice of drawing down to it's basic elements; contour line, mass, mark making, negative space, relationships, gesture and composition.

For this last class of Drawing Fundamentals, we are taking all those elements and applying them to a larger scale view. This shifting from still life to landscape tends to bring about a regression of drawing skills, but all the drawing elements apply in the same way. The objects in the landscape are the same as the fruit in the still life. Apply the elements to flatten your view of the world, all the objects will become a flat pattern which is transferred onto the page like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.

Ceramic Class Room

Of course the trick is to stop thinking in 3D. You know the bucket is round, but in a drawing its a rectangle with curved ends.

When drawing landscapes you do need to acknowledgment the horizon line. The line that marks the separation of seeing the tops of objects and seeing the bottoms of objects. In the drawing of the Ceramic Class Room, you can see the tops of the buckets on the floor, but you can't see the tops of the objects on the top shelf.

This horizon line is your grounding straight line. All lines angle off of this line. Angling more as you look higher up or lower down. It tells you what the angle of perspective should be for all the other flat shapes.

Sorry, that's probably more confusing than it is enlightening. That's the nature of perspective. You just have to be there and do it to understand it.

Anyway, This was the last day of class and my last day to teach Drawing Fundaments. A Big Thank you to the Creative Arts Center for this opportunity to fill in while the instructor was recuperating. I really enjoyed the experience of getting back to the fundaments of drawing.

Next week: I'll blog about something new.

Scribbling The Night Away

For this Class on Drawing Fundaments I began by show examples of famous scribblers from the past; Matisse, Cezanne, and yes, Daumier. You might not know it, but Honore' Daumier is a fantastic scribbler. All of these artists drew with speed and passion, never letting the fear of getting it wrong slow them down.

The scribble allows you to react and respond to the subject intuitively. You make decisions about composition before you have had time to think about composition. The scribble involves your whole body, not just your fingers.

So, tonight, working from one large still life, we drew like devils. Starting out with several one minute drawings, then 2 minutes drawings, then 5 minutes, and finally finishing the night with a 30 minute drawing. Here's a montage from the class.

Next week- Pain Air Perspective.

The Dark Side Of Mass

In tonight's class on Drawing Fundamentals we focused on describing mass, volume and shadow. Starting with a simple still life of fruit laid out on the table under a bright spot light, we drew quick sketches to get our eyes adjusted to seeing the subtle changes in shadow and high light. Then moved on to a few longer drawings.

To push the eyeball exercises a bit further, we switched over to drawing with white pencils on black paper. This switch means that you are now drawing the high lights instead of the shadows. Your marks relate to the brightness hitting the surface. We did two of these, and with all the groaning/conversation they took longer than expected. Seeing the light is much harder than following the dark.

Our long draw for the night was only about 20 minutes. It consisted of all white objects, related to the human head, and lined up against a white wall. The spot light accented the mass and the positive and negative shapes. Even though the drawing above is not finished, notice how your eye falls into that black void.

Next week, it's time to get down and scribble.

Building A Vocabulary Of Mark Making

A common issue faced when drawing from life is the frustration cause by a lack of a mark making vocabulary.

Drawing is the language of describing the 3 diminutional world on a flat sheet of paper, and doing it without the use of letters or words. Drawing uses marks, scribbles, dashes, smears... hundreds of variations. If you approach a drawing with only the mark making language used in hand writing, your drawing will reflect that lack of knowledge. It's like reading Moby Dick at only a Dick and Jane reading level.

So, tonight's Drawing Fundamentals class focused on building a vocabulary. We started by copying a few Chinese landscape drawings, which are loaded with mark making variations. In the drawing above, you can see that Clayton is exploring how to reproduce those marks.

We then moved on to drawing from a still life. Clayton is now using his pencil to a much fuller extent. Creating marks that describe light, texture, weight, and volume. These variations are the nouns, verbs, and adjectives that create visual poetry.

Next week we will be exploring the Darker Side Of Mass.

Sketchbook Project 2011 Hits The Road

The reports are that the opening for the Arthouse Co-op Sketchbook Project 2011 at the Brooklyn Art Library was a big success.  There were over 28000 artist signed up to create a 40 page moleskin sketchbook. I don't have the final numbers yet, but if even half for the artists followed through on this project, that's still 14000 sketchbooks. Arthouse Co-op has created a web page for each of the participating artists. Here's the link to my page, which also has links to some of the artists that I like. There is also a very nice Arthouse Co-op blog too.

But the project doesn't stop there! The small staff at Arthouse Co-op are now boxing up all the sketchbooks and shelves into a moving van, and taking the project on a 9 stop tour across the United States, which includs a stop at the Austin Museum Of Art, March 12 (During the SXSW Festival) in Austin TX.

 

Sketchbook Project 2011

Just Below The Surface, The Cover, originally uploaded by Brad Ford Smith.

This is the front cover of the sketchbook I sent to The Sketchbook Project 2011. SBP 2011 is an exhibit of moleskine sketchbooks sent to the Arthouse Co-op at the Brooklyn Art Library. The project includes 28835 artists in 94 countries. Starting this summer, SBP 2011 will tour 8 different cities. Stopping at the Austin Museum of Art in March.

To see more images from my sketchbook check out my Flickr site.

For more info on the project check out the Arthouse Co-op blog.

The Nature Of Sketchbooks

My use of sketchbooks began with a journal in high school. Journaling was a way to sort out and examine all the unexplainable actions and reactions that occur while coexisting in a building filled with hormone driven teenagers. Over the years my artwork and my journals have merged, resulting in sketchbooks filled with images that are maps through a world that still seems to be driven by questionable actions and reactions.

For a long time I used my sketchbooks as a kind of petridish, place to compose my thoughts and images, and then transfer that information to an outside medium such as painting or sculpture. Two things occur by doing this, first there is a shift from the reactionary thought process to the mechanical mind, a change from what do I think about this, to how do I reproduce this. Secondly, processing the imagery remove some of the personal baggage associated with that imagery. This makes the artwork more comfortable to display in public

The sketchbooks have a symbiotic relationship. I work in multiple sketchbooks at the same time. Some of them I have been reexamining and reworking for years. Others seem to fill up over night. All of them feed from each other to expose new possible relationships and directions.

There is a rawness inside the sketchbooks that is related to the subconscious grittiness of reactionary thought. Because of the imperfections and flaws associated with this rawness, the sketchbooks have always been held back from public viewing, but I have come to realize that this rawness also conveys an honesty and truth that is after all the foundation to all great art. 

De Vinci in the Morning

The De Vinci After Dark party at the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History was a big success. The museum was expecting to have a total head count for the event of about 400 people. They sold that many online by that morning. So the unofficial head count was around 600 people. (I'll have to confirm that).

In these times when museums and historical societies are suffering serious cash flow problems, it's great to be part of an event that turns out way better than expected.

As part of the, Show and Tell, I guess you would call it, I had a table in one of the activity rooms where I worked on a sculpture based on one of De Vinci's drawings of street people. As you can see from the photo above I didn't get very far, people really asked lots of questions, and then asked questions about the questions they just asked. I not only talked up De Vinci and the FWMSH, but also community collage art programs, Trinity Ceramic Supplies, the finer points of working in clay, and art conservation just to name a few. I'm a little bit horse this morning, but it was a blast.

They'll be doing it again at the end of September.

An Evening with Da Vinci

My sculpture supplies are packed in the car, and I am just about to head over to the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History. The museum is hosting a Da Vinci After Dark party as part of their exhibit Leonardo da Vinci: Man, Inventor, Genius. There will be 2 bands, wine tastings, a cash bar, a couple of inventors and me working on a sculpture basted on some of Da Vinci's drawings.

This will be my first time to see the new building sense its completion earlier this year. I have heard lots of good things about it.

Color Correct Photographic Reproductions

After 4 failed attempts at photographing the drawings in the Book Page Collection, and getting sad color reproduction, I finally found a friend that has one of those top of the line Epson scanners. With in an hour I had all the drawings scanned in beautiful living color. They are now posted on my Flickr page.

A few days working at SculptCAD

I have been working with the Free Form program for a couple of days now, mostly focusing on making the duck that is part of the tutorial, but I have learned enough to generate this first 3 D model of my sculpture "Chicken Neck Johnson" for the SculptCAD Rapid Artists project. It still needs a lot of work before it is ready to be put through the 3 D printer.

Location for the Privet Sculpture Project

The opening for Make Space: Installation at La Reunion TX is this Saturday, Feb. 27th. With all the rain and snow it has been hard for any of the artists to get out there, but I do have my sculpture sited now, and I have started the framing out of the structure. Above is the concept drawing superimposed at the site.

There has been some interesting issues around using privet as a building material, I'll blog about that later. Right now I need to get into my muddy boots and rain coat, pack up the truck and head out to La Reunion TX.

Privet, Basic Structure and Seed Distribution

The structure and seed zones of privet

Privet growing in the wild sends out branches from a central root ball. It has corresponding small branches that sprout along the main branch. As the main branch grows longer it bends, making an arch. The small branches on the top of the arch grow towards the sun light while the branches on the underside dry up and snap off, leaving rows of small stubs. These stubs are reinforced over the seasons to form a thorn like defense. This pattern of the branch arching, growing and branching out repeats every season resulting in the main branch becoming a series of arches that can extend over 10 feet in length (as observed at La Reunion TX).

With each season, new branches sprout from the root ball and grow straight up, using the older branches as support. Once they have cleared the leafy privet canapé, the small side branches begin. The seeds and new leaves will only form on new growth. The long clusters of hard round seeds tend to be located on the farthest tips of the branches where they can be seen by animals and whipped about in the wind.

Cutting a branch usually results in a growth spurt around the stump and along the branch. Cutting a branch at the base of the plant tends to multiple the amount of new branches sprouting up from the root ball.

New sprouting seeds

Cutting all the branches down to the base allows sun light to reach the unsprouted seeds, this combined with a little rain water will activate all the seeds.

Art Statement for SculpCAD Rapid Artists program

With access to the Rapid Cad technology and its incredible array of tools and casting mediums, I instantly had visions of producing my very own version of the “Homer”, a car designed by Homer Simpson that was so outlandishly stuffed with add-ons that it caused the finial collapse of Powell Motors.

So, with that in mind, I have tried to focus on learning how the Rapid Cad program works, and how to blind this technology with my own artistic direction, resulting in a sculpture that breaks new ground and makes historical sense. I have of course spent a lot of time just playing; this program seems to encourage that sort of “what if I do this” activity. In the end I have slipped the Rapid Cad into my normal creative process, which begins with lots of drawing on paper, those are then reprocessed and reprocessed to create a composite drawing “Chicken Neck Johnson”. This drawing is scanned onto the Rapid Cad desktop, where it is fleshed out, manipulated, and reprocessed. The resulting 18” X 18” X 6” sculpture is a composite of shapes that I love working with, plus a humorous animal reference, which I credit to the playful, toy making aspects of the Rapid Cad program.

The sculpture is made from an almost transparent red plastic. The Rapid Cad program has allowed me to shell the sculpture so that it is hollow and very light. The walls vary in thickness, which causes the red color to become more intense in the areas where the plastic is thicker and almost water clear where the walls are thinner. The shelling process has also allowed me to create a bottom heavy counter balance, which allows the neck and head to be extend in an giraffe like appearance with an almost transparent head.

SculptCAD Rapid Artists role call

Here are the links to the artists that are involved in the SculpCAD Rapid Artist Program being sponsored by SculpCAD. Nancy selected a group of artists that work in a wide range of styles, mediums and disciplines to see what artists would do with a 3-D computer sculpting tool that is normally used by draftsmen to design medical implants and consumer good like tennis shoes.

• Brad Ford Smith
  
• Dave VanNess
  
• Jay Sullivan
  
• Erica Larkin
  
• Heather Ezell
  
• Ginger Fox
  
• Heather Gorham
  
• Katherine Batiste
  
• Mark Grote
  
• Shawn Smith
  
• Tom Lauerman
  
• Bert Scherbarth
  
• Nancy Hairston
  
• Shane Pennington

Drawing app for iTouch

I read an interview in Art in America with David Hockney. He talked about his new large scale paintings of the English landscape, and how some of the original drawings were done on his iPhone. I have downloaded 3 apps to my iTouch: Doodle Buddy, Fountain Pen Free, and MyPaint Free. Each are fun to play with. The above drawing was done with Doodle Buddy.

After Sketching: Evening #4: Draw, Drew, Drawn

For the last night of Sketching in the Galleries at the DMA the group was kind of small so we drew from artwork in the All the World's a Stage exhibit, focusing on a selection of small works on paper, most of which are not put up for displayed very often.

We discussed local galleries like Public Trust, Dunn and Brown, Mighty Fine Arts and art magazines such as Art On Paper, Juxtapoz, Hi Fructose that focus on drawings and works on paper. Also places that offer figure drawing sessions and other museums that have drawing from the collection programs such as the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth (Sundays @ 11:30). The Nasher and the Crow Collection say they have drawing programs but those are never reliably listed, so no body know when to attend. The Meadows and the Irving Art Center are rumored to have programs, but I see nothing listed.

We also talked about next weeks program, the first Thursday Night Multi Media program held in the Center for Creative Connections. There was a lot of interest in this program, although nobody had any hard info on what was happening there next week. So I looked it up this morning.

The artist hosting the month of October will be Mitch Rogers, who among other creative things, has been fabricating body parts, bloody nubs and meaty bits for TV and movies for about 20 years. I assume he will be giving instructions on mold making, life casting and spurting buckets of blood. Just in time for Halloween! It sounds like it will be a lot of fun.

Sketching in the Galleries @ the Dallas Museum of Art: Evening #4: The last

11th Century Durga, from the DMA collection.

Tonight is my last night to lead the Sketching in the Galleries program at the DMA, and it is the last night that the DMA will run this program. Starting next Thursday there will be a new multi media program that will bring in artists from a wide variety of disciplines such as fashion design, animation, and writers to use their unique talents and skills to interpret the collection. I think it will be a really neat way to learn about materials and meet other artists.

As for the last night of Sketching in the Galleries, I am not sure what we will be focusing on tonight because I am not sure how many people will show up. The fact that it is the last night could mean that there will either be a lot more people showing up or a lot fewer people showing up. So if it is a big group we will work in the Southern Asian galleries drawing from the sculptures, focusing on light, SHADOW, and mass. If it's just a few people, then we will draw from some of the smaller works in the All the World's a Stage exhibit.