Buttnekkiddoodles

Back at the Palette & Chisel where I drew Anne sporting a new hairdo. You may have seen her, a model I’ve drawn several time (refer to posts “Sprints and Longer Poses” and “Nudes from the Past Month” where she can be seen with her signature Page Boy cut. A very good model, imaginative poses and really clear definition of muscles. She brings a very bright personality and baked goods. Drawn with Pitt Artist Pens and white China marker on recycled Utrecht paper.

The above drawings are from the tremendous show of WWII posters at the Art Institute of Chicago “Windows On The War”. Go on line and check out the large format, stenciled prints by the Soviet print collective TASS. I got stopped from sketching in the galleries by the guards who informed me of a sign I had walked right by without noticing that precludes tripods, flash photography, and sketching. I’ll make an effort to secure permission next week to do so but I’m not holding my breath. I guess it’s largely for insurance reasons but it’s gotten to be more of a pain in the ass trying to draw in some museums.

The blue ink is largely Noodler’s Bad Blue Heron though I make some use of Pitt Artist Brush Pens.

I’m chained to the drawing board with an illustration job, hence not much drawing from out and about the town. So……..I thought I’d post drawings from sketchbooks past. Some of the drawings go back 30 years. The sketch books usually have titles, you’ll see that plus the dates they were done when you put the cursor over the image.

This is about the time I was playing around with fountain pens. Just little affordable Sheaffers, since I had ruined a Pelikan by putting the wrong ink in the reservoir. This was the late 80’s early 90′, and about that time I discovered brush pens and got very excited about those. I initially used Tom Bow and Staedtler but was never happy about the inks not being waterproof. After a several pages got ruined from a water spill I started pulling ’em apart and filling ’em with Higgins, or Pelikan, or FW acrylic inks, or special inks Robert Doak in Brooklyn made for me.

So there’s a bit of drawing from life, drawing from references and just drawing straight out of my head which I haven’t done so much of over the lest couple of years. That I hope to return to in greater measure this fall.

Matt McGoff was an artist of real power and a devoted friend of mine. He left an assertive body of work that has been witnessed by too meager an audience. Wednesday, June 8th, would have been his 50th birthday. This post is dedicated to Matt, his art, and our friendship. A wisecrackin’ Irish kid from the working class Philadelphia suburb of Folcroft, Matt was, save a couple months in New Orleans, a life long resident of the City of Brotherly Love and an alumnus of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts.

He wasn’t at the Hussian School of Art long before a teacher there told him he was a natural painter and chased him off to PAFA. Oil painting was just in the boy’s bones. Bright, if not somewhat naive regarding the “fine arts,” motivated, a voracious reader, and a talented athlete whose principle craft heretofore had been baseball, The Academy suited Matt. The young artist flourished under the discipline and let’s just say the social environment suited the good looking young jock’s philandering ways.

This picture of youth is, I believe, from circa 1980. The pompadour would be gone in a bit over a decade.

Next to the image of our young friend is a painting of a dancer who was a principle model during the late 90’s and in whose father’s house I was a boarder for my last 18 months in Philly. To the right of her is a watercolor of the occasional male nude.

It wasn’t his style to dawdle over details. He attacked the basic structure with a brush or palette knife as evident in the unfinished female nude on the left, the slightly more developed painting of Kathy in the center, or a completed sketch from a 10-15 minute pose. Matt worked from life, at great expense over the years. Just ask any artist who plies their trade dependent on a hired subject. The landscapes are there, and the still lives, as harshly lit as the nudes, but it was the body of work with a model that he pursued when finances allowed.

As someone who still goes to life drawing on a regular basis, it’s an impetus to focus. Not that he was one to brood quietly working himself into a Sturm Und Drang sweat. He was a pretty lively guy and couldn’t harness his humor and need to interact for long. I drew alongside Matt on several occasions when I made one of many return trips to Philly. We ‘d head off to The Sketch Club or The Plastic Club on Camac Street or pop over to The Fleisher Art Memorial for open life sessions. He was pretty loose and jocular, knew a lot of the models and many of the artists present. He definitely worked fast, in ink, ballpoints and later gels, in old ledger books. A material preference he copped from me. There might be a period of time when he just sat there doodlin’ away; the noise coming from a pen that was being worked furiously by a heavy hand. He might crack a joke or bust your chops about something. And I most surely heard him humming some Celtic diddy when had his Blarney Stone on. But even when we were dorkin’ around and trading barbs he was focused. The ball field was long in his past, but a vibrant sense of competitiveness thrived in Matt’s marrow. We had mutual respect for each others’ abilities and gobs of self confidence so that when we went off to the drawing clubs, game was on. I’ve had some of my loosest moments, especially with the short poses, sittin’ next to ol’ Irish Eyes.

Below are drawings I did at some of those sessions. It is my hope that as friends of Matt’s send me scans of his that I can add them to this post. Including some drawn from the same poses I drew from.

I did this drawing of Matt in his studio one winter night in 2006, before we headed off to the Sketch Club. He was living in his studio at that time. Just a work space, no kitchen, no shower, virtually no heat. His much adored Boxer, Wilma, had passed away after 13 years, and Matt, no longer needing a home for his dog, cut his expenses and lived exclusively out of the studio.

Sorry, but I’ve had no end to technical problems posting these images and must now retire before I throw this fuckin’ computer thru the window. I’ll try and clean it up this week as I add more about Matt and more images. Thanks.

As you who come here from time to time may have noticed, I haven’t posted new work in a couple of months. I have been bedeviled by computer gliches. Currently the scanner isn’t cooperating with the computer so I’ve been handcuffed, for the moment, in putting up new work. My apologies to those who checked in looking for updates. I do hope to remedy this but as I’m woefully inept at ferretting out the bugs and then correcting them, the solution drags on. This is the month that a solution must emerge, or I throw yet another computer out the window. One day I may follow the beast out the same window.  Now’s not the time as the massive snow drifts beneath my window would cushion the fall. Stay warm and be well.