I’ve been enjoying a 3 week Artist-In-Residency at Anchor Graphics/Columbia College Chicago. So, between working on a couple of prints there and giving 10 slide presentations/lectures/demonstrations at AG/CCC, the College Arts Association, and Northern Illinois University, I’ve managed just a few pages in my sketchbooks by snatching the minutes I spend commuting on the CTA.
Well, I haven’t been able to get to life drawing for a couple of weeks, and though I’ve been racking up the “live” sketches of commuters and cafe dwellers, I felt like posting some working studies from 4-9 years ago.
For much of the last 35 years my principal friend and workhorse in the sketchbooks has been the much available and unassuming ballpoint pen. I don’t say “underappreciated” as a few hours of surfing the internet yields myriad fans and examples of the wonders of the ugly duckling of drawing tools. There are gobs of sites and shows dedicated to the bravura, immediacy, flash amd elegance which the little spheres of ceramic and metal are capable of in the right and respectful hands. No bank lobby, street corner, waiter, certified public accountant, pen-corralling coffee can, or friend was exempt or safe from the possibility that I might leave the meeting or transaction with their formerly valued la plume nestled in my shirt pocket or discreetly cupped in my hand with the otherwise obvious length of it’s barrel tucked up my sleeve. All that was necessary was for that liquid line to unwind from it’s rolling origin in a seductive color with ample flow. And I was easily seduced. I liked lines sharp and crisp or fat and juicy. Especially the juicy, likely to gob pens. Paintbrush in a barrel to my eyes. I had absolutely no hard and fast allegience to any one brand. On a previous posting from Dec. 19, titled “Vomit”, there is a drawing from 2001 in blue ballpoints of a couple of chaps getting roughed up. The top figure is drawn using a Papermate, as identified, and the poor creature with boot in face, on the bottom of the page has been rendered in a darker more violet blue, compliments Bic. Loved ’em both. Went through hundreds of ’em. The hue of the Papermate was perhaps a prettier Ultramarine blue, but I always dug that hard tone of a number of blue ballpoints, Bic being classically mean in character. If you built up enough ink and got right down there to look at the surface they sometimes produced a subtle oily irridescence.
The ballpoints worth stabbing a friend in the back for were the red Papermates. Those long slender Daredevil red jobs with the cap. Those suckers, the prized ones, produced a darker, bloodier, more concentrated line than the Bics. I found the Bics to be lighter and a touch orange. When ever I landed one that gave me that wet, broad line, I did everything to hang onto the point. Notched the barrel to identify it from the others. On an exceptional Bic I’d carve a “+”on the end cap so it’d look like a Phillips head screw. When the ink ran out, I’d pull off the filler or ink tube and immediately replace it taking care not to get an air bubble trapped between the ink and the ball. I had some other practices that might strike those not of the craft as obsessive, but, anyone who’s read this far understands the ways of the brood.
Sometimes I pulled the ink tube out of the ballpoint collar and drew with those slightly flexible plastic tubes, smearing that dark thick lava around the page. Before the page could absorb it, if in fact it could, I’d take X-acto blades and scrape the gooey puddles around. Did a portrait of Tchaikovsky that way for a Record Company illustration some years back. A few drawings had the ink on so rich that after considerable time they had formed crusty little thin scabs where the buildup was thick enough. Weird stuff. I’ve yet to discovered the chemistry of those inks.
For the last 6 or 7 years I’ve had a preference for the gels, Uniball in particular. If swiped or rubbed immediately after making a mark you get a nice watery smear and can transfer finger prints producing marks that are at times brushy, dusty and pastelish or textured, and stamp like . It’s just distinct enuff from the oilier quality of the old ballpoints that I grew up loving. There is a prior posting, dated October, 9, 2009, titled “Life Drawing From …& Chisel”, of a triple portrait in blue ink, of a young female model with glasses. It’s the bottom left drawing in the post. All of the soft and ambient shading is achieved by first drawing a contour then dragging the ink one way or the other. I wanted subtle, hazy tones to help establish form and indicate light souce. It’s much quicker than all that hatching. I love to hatch, but smearing’s just faster and gives a different feel.
So, how was ’09 for you? It was productive in a sense for me in that I drew reams of studies, but in many other ways it was quite an ass kicker. I hope y’all are hanging in there money wise. It seems that there’s been a shortage of wise handling of money, and the art market is seriously hobbled but squeezing thru tough times is a hallmark of artists, so, onward, into the fog.
I try to make the New Year’s Day life drawing marthon, 7 AM – 7 PM, at the Palette & Chisel but jobs kept me away again this year, so I’m posting some stuff from years past. Oh, and the last drawing is for Rich, who can’t understand why so many of us revere Egon Schiele. Rich, a nice enough guy who comes to many of the sessions, feels you can’t really draw if you don’t master realist rendering and proportion and yadda yadda…. Well, Rich, how’s this?
My final entry for the year 2009. I found myself a bit in the ditch this year as far as producing finished paintings and pieces of a more ambitious nature. Thanks to my lucky rabbit’s foot for sketchbooks; wherein I have prroductively and theraputically dwelled. Had to move in the middle of the year to save some dough and though that was disruptive I wound up with a studio that is larger, brighter, and more comfortable. In a year when I had no sales and no shows outside Chicago, I finally discovered this thing called a computer that gives one access to a very big stage indeed. And thanks to my bodhisattva, (a dude named Dave Harrod, who set up my website and has continued to assist and counsel me on the mysteries and operation of this binary beast), I have seen unimaginable hours and rivers of tears swallowed by the learning of new tricks by an aged and curmudgeonly dog.
I have also trolled the internet and websites of others relentlessly and am here to say that drawing and the flourishing of eye poppin’ sketchbooks is very much alive and thriving. As I have stumbled into others’ sites, so too have others found their way to mine. Here I’d like to give a shout out to one Clive Powsey, one humble and gifted artist in the wilds of British Columbia whose acquaintence would not have been made without the internet and who has been both helpful and incouraging as a kindred spirit best can. Check him out.
My dear friend and partner Jennifer has been patient in Biblical proportions as her “old school” housemate has wrangled red-faced and blue tongued with the lessons of the new-fangled text book. To the rest of you who’ve saved me from auto strangulation with timely encouragement and technical assistance, my mother thanks you.
See you in the new year. W.Y.A.O. Thanks for stopping by.