Filming At LRTX With Mark Birnbaum

I spent a crisp Sunday morning at La Reunion TX with the filmmaker Mark Birnbaum. You might recall previous posting about his videos on this blog.

He was there shooting footage for a short film that will highlight the natural setting of LRTX.

And how the artwork is integrated into the landscape. I was there to mostly carry his tripod, but also to take advantage of this opportunity to learn more about the art of filmmaking.

Panning the horizon, the sun cut beautiful blue holes in the cloud cover turning the dry prairie grass into a field of shifting gold.

Back at the studio, with the raw footage downloaded into one of the dozen backup hard drives, Mark cuts and splices the best of the footage and sound recordings, then adds a few lines of text. We watch the results over hot cups of coffee and homemade oatmeal cookies. The video will be posted on the LRTX website soon, I'll let you all know when that happens.

First Steps To A Wall Installation

Here's a quick snapshot of a wall installation in the mud and plaster stage.

My sketchbook is getting filled with drawings of elongated forms that often have knobs, forks, and horns. I am turning some of these into small ceramic sculptures that will eventually be installed as a random scattering on a wall.

In the photo above, in the bottom left corner is an oil clay model on a 5"X 7" MDF panel. The white block next to it is a plaster mold cast from one of the oil clay models. Above that, to the left is a plaster mold filled with clay. Next, shows the extra clay cleared away from the mold surface. On the blue board are the clay sculptures after being removed from the molds. 

From here the sculptures go into the kiln to be bisque fired, then glazed, and then high fired. The ones that survive this torturous trial will become part of a large wall installation.

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.

Tin Time In The Studio

There's a strange winter garden growing in the studio. A catfood can garden.

After burning away hours/months on my Wordpress website, I've decided that my humble Blogspot blog is really very nice, and that I should drop the mantra Right after the website is up, and just get back to blogging.

Negative Space In The Drawing Class

When drawing from life, it's just as important to see what is NOT there as it is to see what is there. So, in tonight's drawing class we focused on Negative Space. Those spaces between the things we normally think of as the objects that fill our world.

We all know what a chair looks like. You can probably picture one clearly in our minds eye. But, unless you develop the ability to see the negative spaces between the legs and runners, you will always struggle with drawing from life, because you are only looking at half the story.

In Kevin's drawing above, you can see how his focus on the spaces between the chair legs transforms the drawing, turning the chair into an empty void.

This seeing technique flattens the world into 2 dimension, which makes it easier to capture the relationships of ALL the elements in front of you. These relationships; positive and negative, are the building blocks for the construction a solid pictorial composition.

Next week, we explore making marks.

Walking With Ants At The Creative Arts Center

In each of the Drawing Fundamentals classes I focus on one element of drawing. In this second class, it's Contour Line drawing. This, the most common type of drawing, focuses on the outline of an object. So when drawing an apple, you end up with basically a wobbly circle. When drawing a lemon, you end up with basically a wobbly circle. When drawing a pear, you end up with basically a lopsided wobbly circle.

This generalization of course fits right into the brain's massive backlog of symbols, which in turn means that instead of really looking at THE apple, your brain simply projects the symbol of an apple, basically a wobbly circle.

Think about an apple, one with a bite taken out of it...

Does it look juicy and delicious, or more like the logo of the computer you might be reading this blog on? Which one is clearer to see in your minds eye? For this class we are derailing those backlogged symbols by taking the ant's eye view of the world.

Exercise #1- Blind Contour- Place your paper so you cannot see it while you are drawing. Look at your left hand (your right if you are left handed). Now imagine you are watching an ant crawling slowly along the contours, cracks and creases of your hand. Your pencil is the mechanical recorder of that ant's travels. When the ant goes up, your pencil draws a line upward. When that ant traverse your life line, your pencil continues to record that trail. Do not cheat by looking at your drawing!

Ants are very slow, the recorded path pictured above took 30 minutes. Try it out. Repeat twice. How did that make you feel? Did you sense a shift in your perception? Was it hard to draw so slow? Did you look at your drawing before the time was up?

Other drawing adventures followed, filling our night with undulating, descriptive lines. Next week we'll be looking at the spaces that are not there. Negative Space.