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.
The top 2 on the left are from different books by the same company. I know they’re gonna burn themselves up one day, but I love how they “bronze” like a meerschaum pipe. That’s Claudia at the top right, draped like death, or a pair of coveralls, on the model stand. I’m hit or miss when it comes to facial likenesses, but the drawings across the 2nd row of 3 different women are all in the neighborhood. Horseshoes, hand grenades, and the occassional portrait.
I occassionally return for a visit to Philadelphia, and when I do, I go to life drawing sessions at a few venues with Matt McGoff, a friend of mine who’s a very good painter and vigorous draftsman. The 2 models in the opposite corners of the bottom row, were drawn at The Fleisher Art Memorial. The figure on the couch, smack in the middle, was drawn at The Woodmere Art Museum. I’ve posted drawings previously from The Sketch Club, also a venue we like in Philadelphia.
I’m often running off the page with the figure, but I managed to get all the figures in black and grey tones completely within the perimeter of that particular book. That ledger book was a gift from Tony Fitzpatrick, as was the one in the middle of the top row, and at 10 1/2 ” wide and 17″ long, was too big for my scanner.
Sorry for the dispeptic posting, but some of us are feeling like fools for backing the guys who’ve handed our heads over to the pirates that really run things. Our friends north of the border are probably bracing for a tsunami fleeing the sell out on health care.
I’m an admitted political heckler when it comes to the main thrust of my art, but this site was just to have featured my life drawings. Work that my dealers have had little use for but that I feel is and has been of fundamental importance to my craft. I have my other venues to jump up on my soap box. But Goddamn! I’m feeling stark naked as I and the grand haul of my countrymen keep gettin’ the rights and attributes of citizenship stripped from us. Until the progressives in this country find representatives who’ve got some spine and a taste for bareknuckle back room negotiations we aren’t likely to see our bellicosity and craven disregard for others abate. DAMN!
OK, it’s now been just over two weeks since I gave a drawing demo at The Norman Rockwell Museum. I highly recommend dropping in if you find yourself in western Massachusetts. My contact there was the engaging and way gracious Tom Daly, the NR Museum’s curator of education. Tom, a blast to hang with, hails from the area, is quite the historical resource about the region and recalls seeing the elderly Norman as he trekked about.
   The Museum building, designed by Robert Stern, is handsomely layed out in a wooded area with ample parking about a 2 mile drive west of Stockbridge’s main drag. During the peak seasons for the museum, that would be during foliage, the skiing season, and summer, they really pack ’em in. I had missed the throngs by a couple weeks and found viewing the work comfortable and noncompetetive. Tom even provided me with a chair so I could sit and draw from the paintings at length. Did you get that? They actually encourage folks to really study the exhibits and draw from the work. I brought 2 sketch books with me; a 10″ x 7 1/2″ leather bound ruled journal and a 17″ x 11″ cloth bound ledger with prior entries from 1932 -1946. I love them old ledger books. God knows many of them are archivally challenged because they aren’t always 100% rag, but, they’re meant for linear clarity so they have a smooth surface and usually have some sizing or gelatin which partially seals the paper and means that ink stays pretty much where you put it. That is unless you’re using some of the solvent based markers that will penetrate the page giving you “ghost” images on the reverse side. I was drawing with ball point pens and gel pens and water based pigmented brush pens, drawing tools actually discouraged in some Museums and I don’t really want to mention a couple of those places even though I do still love the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Chicago Art Institute. Still draw on site when I visit. With the required pencil? Uhhhhh…….
   Anyway, the two head studies, first column third row and second column third row, were draw on the spot in the old ledger. You can see if you blow ’em up that I was able to get crisp lines and edges as well as hazy tones by smearing the inks before they set up. The 3 drawings, third column first row, third column third row, and first column fourth row, were drawn in the newer journal. Nice enuff book and size, flexible leather cover, but the bleached white paper has  little or no sizing so it tends to wick the ink just enough that I don’t get quite as fine an edge and hampers my ability to smear the quickly absorbed ink.
   The other drawings in this post were draw on planes or in airports in route to the NRM or are studies for my paintings, some based on hands and figures of Norman’s. I like a number of his poses, postures, groupings, how objects like shoes, prevoiusly mentioned in another post, can feel so sculptural and how one can feel form and structure under clothes and skin. Sure, he made extensive use of photos,  but for that matter so have Degas, Picasso, Richard Estes, Chuck Close, combat artists, and truck loads of mid century book, magazine and pulp fiction illustrators. The NRM had an exhibit running of NR’s photos of himself and models acting out the scenarios for the paintings. He could be pretty faithful to some foto’s while taking liberties with others. The Museum’s extensive collection of photograhs, preparatory and finished drawings and paintings give real insght to his working methods as well as his capabilities which to this pair of eyes were considerable. He liked solidity and Mr. Bridgeman must of hammered on him sufficiently in those life drawing sessions at The Art Students League. It was NR after all who composed the images which brings me to the last image of this post. A figure drawing from a session at one of the area art centers where I drop in for open life drawing.
  Norman Rockwell was a narrative artist and as such everything about the people in his paintings, their postures, expressions, clothing and props, were all maipulated to convey the theme behind the image. At those life drawing sessions, I sit and watch, sometimes for more than 10 minutes, as some of those who attend the workshops look to get an interesting arrangement for the longer poses. Moving a spot light back and forth and back and…never minding the flock of fluorescent tubes overhead. Most agree that the quicker the pose the more the model is capable of holding something athletic and dynamic. Now static or “quiet”, contemplative poses can be just as interesting, no? In fact, getting the right balance, sense of weight, contraposto and subtlety of a standing figure just so, so that it doesn’t come off wooden is hard. You know, that Apollonian thing. At rest but with latent energy and all the promise of action. Always found that challenging.
     Also, I’m one who subscribes to the belief that there are no bad poses, just bad drawings of poses. I show up, shut up, and just try to go to work. But, I do think there are such things as dumb arrangements and dumb drawings. Again the last drawing. I sat there wondering what in the world they were going for? The throned virginal and shrouded Fatima as apple offering temptress? Norman has meant a lot of things to a lot of folks; I get a little sticky from all the corn syrup. And boy howdy, would it have been fun if economics had forced his hand to wring out some greasy and sordid James Avatiesque pulpy noir covers. It didn’t. But spend time with a big body of his work and tell me you don’t come away with a sense of an intelligent guy, with buckets of ability and a sense of humor, that honored his craft and pushed himself hard. A guy who just happened to make a couple handfuls of iconic images.