Drawing with a Sculptor's Eye...

With a break from one of the three colleges I am teaching at, I've been able to really get into this new series of drawings I've started.  And the sculpting I've been up to is really changing my outlook! With this I'm planning to push deeper into the 2D intuitive abstraction I have long worked at achieving.  I'm actually using large scraps of paper as my gestural and compositional studies, then taking that work to the gessoed panels hanging on the wall, which are heavily textured.  Often the pose ideas come from simple gestural marks like you see on the left.  From there I am working into the original poses with shifts in the live poses, and photographic sources.  Much of the rest is just intuitive abstraction and imagination.  They change by the hour, and I have no idea what they might become.  Why else would I make them?  That is the fun, and challenging part!

Getting Warmed up with Weekly Life Drawing Again!

Just getting warmed up again with weekly Life Drawing at The Downtown Art Collective I helped to start.  This is a 40 minute drawing from the end of last weekend.  Using mostly subtractive methods, I wanted to see how quickly I could get to the heart of a solid drawing that would still have energy and depth.

Charcoal on paper, 24"X36"

Drawing and Sculpting, An Artistic Duality.

Drawing and sculpting.  The parallels are clear at times, but the different forms that can be achieved striking as well.  Either way, I am having a blast!

Live Music in the Life Drawing Room!

So, I'm teaching so much lately this appears to be becoming a teaching blog!  But drawing and teaching are both considerable art forms, so there is no end to the potential overlaps.

The Community College has asked me to arrange another Drawing on Jazz Event to help promote the art and music programs as their Open House for high school seniors comes through.  It has always been a HUGE attraction for the school when I have put it on to end my Life Drawing Classes.  Now I imagine the number of people that will see us drawing will be greater than ever.  We are sure to attract some new students into the art program when they see just how much fun and intensity we can bring up!  This is unique among interdisciplinary events at ANY college, let alone our little Community College!

I thought I'd dig up some videos and work from the live groups that have played for my classes.    Jazz, classical, either way, it not only gives the students a chance to relate the proportional, gestural, compositional and color work we have done in the class to a real life event, but gives them greater appreciation for these musical art forms that cannot thoroughly be experienced from recordings alone.   What a great way to sum up a semester, and in this coming case, draw in new interest and engagement with our classes!

The Skeleton in the Anatomy Section of My Life Drawing Class

Last week we had a really good couple of sessions studying how the skeletal structure fits within a live model.  We started with a male model in 20 minute standing poses where students where asked to draw one of the best-proportioned linear figures they could so far (it was only week 4!).  We then alternated between the model and the skeleton for awhile, and eventually just the skeleton.  They were asked to put the model in red pastel pencil, and the skeleton in charcoal pencil.

As you'll see I asked some of the more advanced or talented students to draw very large, a first time experience for many of them.  Those were some of the best drawings.  You can see the final results in the showcases on the first floor of the LA building at Washtenaw Community College.  I think they learned a lot, now it's on to the musculature system with live models and plastic anatomical models this week!

And the Artist's Statement, As it Stands Now:

Represented are 30 of the 100 portraits I am creating as an exploration of the complexities of human identity.  This is pursued through the searching and creative act of drawing. The drawings strive to represent the proper physiognomy and acute identities of the tremendous diversity of people I meet as a college art instructor. It is this diversity that inspired my initial thoughts of documenting these faces.

Though the repetitive nature of the grid serves to bind and unite the series, I am allowing myself a degree of experimentation with form.  Intuitive abstraction, gesture, erasure, and re-creation become important aspects in mirroring the diversity represented. In the response to each face I choose to draw, I am looking for the ways I can push and pull these drawings from what is expected.  We are wired to recognize faces, so I am particularly interested in how I can play with this instant ability.  I am exploring shifts in pose, focus, and layering to get my viewers to look a bit longer, a bit harder. This suggests the drawings in a constant state of change, analogous to the shifts inherent in physical and psychological identity.  

Often artifacts of society help build our identities.  Beyond their physiognomy I am responding to what I think will get viewers to think most about who I am drawing.  It could be a pair of glasses, the way hair is styled, suggestions of the clothing choices, and more.  This potentially builds complexities and pushes up against what we expect out of a certain face. Finally, an encaustic seal is torched, carved and scraped into the drawings to shift surface quality and visual density.  The way they are drawn is as diverse as those who are drawn.

This portrait series will continue to grow, as I envision that it must be large in scale to become a regiment of human identities.  Even as I look at the 30 I’ve made so far the most impactful part is how the eye jumps from face to face, scanning and seeing the shifts I have been working on.  The ideas I'm generating for future and bigger work will spawn from the concepts and formal work in these. 100 portraits? Yes, but I doubt the form will stay entirely consistent as I continue to work on this series.

Art Fair, ArtPrize, and a Solo Exhibition: From Ann Arbor to Grand Rapids and Beyond

It has been an intensive summer and fall since I last posted on here, with my portrait series making it into several venues as it has grown.

Here are 15 of them at The Necto Night Club in Ann Arbor in July for Art Fair:

And 18 of them in ArtPrize.

Now 30 of these little encaustic encased drawings hang in a solo exhibition at the NCCA-Artsplace in Fremont, Mi.  I'm waiting for the gallery to send me images of the final installation.

This work was also featured in a few articles: 
The Rapidian in Grand Rapids
And The Voice in Ann Arbor

I really enjoyed ArtPrize, it is a professionally run event that has gotten my work more exposure than anywhere.  The venue I had was great to work with, and just down the street from the Grand Rapids Art Museum.  I can see why it is becoming an internationally-known event.  I think tens of thousands of people saw my drawings, and I have had several requests for sales!

So far I have created 30 of these 15"X16" drawings representing a regiment of identities, and this feels like a good benchmark to shift into new directions.  Interestingly, I'm just getting warmed up on this project. Bigger is where I'm heading next, and I've learned so much from the little ones that I cannot wait to see what happens when I scale up!  The levels of abstraction I have been playing with, the textures in the surface (which cannot be experienced through the web), and the sense of all the shifts in identity I have been working with all hold great promise for bigger work.  Once midterm grading is over at the colleges, I think the creative floodgates will open!