starting anywhere

Drawing of a compotier with fruit, colored pencil, 4×6 inches

I have begun writing a book about drawing. This post includes a very rough, first draft of an early portion of the book, which is why one part of the text below refers to “this book.” In the current outline, this section is one of ten parts. Reader comments and suggestions are most welcome.

It’s challenging to describe the process of seeing. It’s hard to capture the interest. The perception is experiential. The connection is hard to put into words. But I aim to try. I may edit the material at this same post as I get new ideas for its rewriting. The illustrations are provisional.

The natural beginning of drawing is the desire to do it. You have looked around at the world of visual things and learned that you want to make pictures of the phenomena you see. Maybe the desire arose because of drawings that you have seen that you love. These drawings prompted a desire to make your own drawings. The meditations that follow will get behind desire and lead into observation and description. These writings are not about technique. So many such books exist already, and while it is perfectly fine to create yet another book on technique; this one leaves all technical questions unanswered. My focus will be simply perception and the unfolding thoughts that arise while looking at things with a pencil in hand.

If you were drawing for the first time, where should you begin? Your notion of what a thing looks like might suggest that you begin “here” rather than “there.” You’ve probably heard that in drawing a face you begin with an oval. An oval generalizes the shape of the face into one simple element. It’s a good beginning. However, you could as readily start by describing the contours of a face and then you really have to begin that linear path somewhere. Should you start with the brow, or the shape of the left eye, or the bridge of the nose, and so on? The pencil has to drop onto the paper and begin a line somewhere. What I am counseling now as a form of meditation is to let go even of the choice, to allow intuition or some hunch to direct the first motions so that you find yourself simply looking at something (it could be a face or could be something else). You just begin where you begin. It doesn’t even matter.

You pick a beginning point and then let the pencil describe lines that you see as you see them. When you notice something next, you draw that. You follow a series of perceptions and each one finds expression on this page in a sequence of time that is not logical but which is temporal. It is what you noticed. That was the order. Your pencil lines follow lines that seem to occur in the scene — the edges of objects or the lines that mark visual contrasts of one sort or another.

On my table sits a blue pedestal dish, a compotier. I found it in a thrift store and it has been my delight. I have loved the compotier as a form since encountering this type of bowl in the paintings of Henri Matisse, Pierre Bonnard and others. I wanted to find one myself (and now I have several of different design). The blue glass compotier is a favorite because its shape is lovely and also because the fruits that you put inside it are colored by the blue glass which adds an enjoyable element of complexity to the image.

Right now, my blue bowl has bright colored, artificial fruits sitting inside it.

I can draw the same arrangement whenever I want since the fruit isn’t real and only gets a bit dusty but otherwise doesn’t change. Only the light changes. Of course, changing light changes everything. It’s not for avoidance of change that I use the artificial fruits. Real fruits are lovely, but then I would have to create precise times for drawing because fruit spoils; whereas this bowl is always available, always ready to look at and draw. If you want to draw suddenly, spontaneously, having something prearranged is helpful. But everything that I say could be applied to anything that you see — whether it is steady and solid, or whether it is moving and ephemeral.

I always seem to start with the largest fruit, drawing it as a loosely circular shape and then I begin indicating its relationship to the bowl. The edge of this bowl follows a series of curves that are decorated with little “tear drops” in each place where two curves intersect. I draw those curves as they pass in front of the large fruit — which is supposed to be a pomegranate, but which could as easily seem to be an apple. Next to the pomegranate, a fake bright yellow lemon rests in the bowl. Its color is greener and darker where visible inside the bowl and is brighter and more yellow where it rises above the bowl’s edges. There’s a gap between the lemon and the pomegranate. These gaps between things are often the most beautiful elements of seeing. At these gaps we are not looking at “things” anymore. We see what in art is called the “negative space.” The gaps are composed of somewhat random parts of objects.

In the case of this fruit bowl, in the gap between pomegranate and lemon, part of a pear is visible under and mostly covered by the fruits around it. The bottom contour of the pear appears through the glass. Its edges lie below the pomegranate and the lemon. The pear is dark, shadowed by its surroundings, its edges, softened by the glass. Not all edges are equally crisp. You notice that some edges fuse into adjacent colors. You are aware of light diminishing next to the lemon. Only in one place is the pear lit even a little, where its surface curves out and catches a faint glow.

As I look notice these effects that lack names. I draw in a meditative way. I am not in any hurry. I have an eraser to use if there’s any stray line that seems to interfere with my ideas as I go forward. But since I am not insistent about accuracy, I leave most of the preliminary lines exactly where they fell. I only change them if they seem to confuse my next decision. As I notice shapes, I put them down. In this instance I am using color, so I place the local color with similar directness and immediacy. If I were using only pencil, then instead of noticing color, I would think about the variations between dark and light. (1,016 words)

Drawing of a compotier, colored pencil, 8×10 inches

These are visual thoughts. I don’t worry about any need to be correct. I do want the observations to be true. I draw what I thought I saw. That’s important to me. If what I thought I saw doesn’t look like the actual objects that will be interesting in its own way. Then I can compare — meditatively — the drawing and its subject and can ask myself what differences are evident.

The large pomegranate looks dark and almost brownish. I make it redder because I just want to. Some green grapes drape over the other fruits. I generalize the group of grapes as chiefly one shape. Later I will draw some individual grapes. They are confusing if I try to draw the individual grapes. But I try to draw some of them anyway. One the rightside edge part of an apple appears as a curve behind and beside the pomegranate. Only a sliver can be seen, like a red sliver moon. The contour touches the right rim of the bowl, creating another of those “gaps” where complex bits of visual effect occurs. The bottom of the apple is also visible underneath the pomegranate, darkened by the blue of the glass. Parts of the bowl interior are empty. They are variations on the color blue. In some places they are lighter or darker, warmer or cooler. The bottom edge is darker than the rest and that darkness is easily drawn as thick contour: inside that thickness the darkness diminishes into a softened effect. The diminishing darkness is like the diminishing sound of a bell.

I can render edges as lines and allow them to be ideas — ideas about the boundaries of objects and ideas about shapes on a page. Or I can imitate the light effects I see and have parts that are dark and firm or diminished and softened. I have lots of choices about what I notice and how I decide to imitate it. These observations and choices I decide to make intuitively. I am in no hurry. I decide as I go. I have lots of time to look at the object in front of me. As I look, I discover a jewel-like aspect of reality: that wherever you look, the deeper you look, the more you see. Each corner of the visual world is filled with light and sensation. Each interior gives way to more incident. There is always more to see than you can describe.

Certain kinds of drawing or painting instruction teach ways that you can generalize what you see so that you create one kind of facsimile. You learn techniques for imitating the visual effects, and can sometimes imitate so well, that the thing seems to sit there on the page. All that is wonderful. But throughout this book, we are using drawing differently. We are using drawing as a way of noticing things that we see, including some things that might be too difficult to draw (or too difficult right now at one’s level of observation). We are drawing them anyway. We draw them to increase our notice of them. We draw them to deepen our experience of them. When we stay with the drawing, trusting a process. We will create some drawings that we’ll enjoy. But we are not doing the drawings for that purpose either — not yet. And we don’t necessarily ever have to draw with a preconceived plan if we decide that we love this journey. Those are future oriented choices, and the drawing is only about the drawing that you are making right now.

How am I most aware that I have “started anywhere”?

By doing the same drawing again and now beginning in a new place. If I began with the shape of the pomegranate in the first drawing, now I begin with the lemon — or with the grapes that drape over everything — or with part of the shape of the bowl. Or I can even begin with the “gap” — I can draw the pear first, that which I cannot fully see, drawing only the part. I can choose any random feature of the scene and begin observing there. It can seem very counterproductive to start this way because you lose some of the sense of the thingness of the thing. A parabolic area of murky gray-green is cognitively different from a partly visible pear. Perhaps sometimes I even lose track of what I am drawing and see only colors and shapes.

When I begin with the pomegranate I can tell myself it is round. If I begin with one of the gaps — the bits of light, shape and color that are parts of some object that is mostly hidden — then I am not describing any “thing” — I am instead describing percepts. This color that I see seems to have this shape. It appears thus dark or thus light. The thing is gone. Drawing the perceptions that are detached from identifiable things allows you to notice the entire scene in a new way. This reframing of the experience helps us into the meditative aspect. Because I am just looking and just recording, it doesn’t matter what the things are. If I were to visually describe the perceptions in my drawing with great accuracy, of course, all the “things” will seem to rematerialize. But before we let lose such ambitions, it’s wise first to merely notice what you notice. Whatever happens on the page, we’ll just call that the drawing.

So, in order to learn how to “begin anywhere,” it is helpful to do more than one drawing. In the first drawing I start in one spot and in the second drawing I start somewhere else. Then I can afterwards compare the two drawings not only with their subject but with each other. I can note how I saw things differently (or perhaps I saw them in fundamentally the same way) even though I began the drawings from different initial observations.

This is the essence of beginning anywhere. The process starts somewhat randomly. No conventions intrude. No particular order gets imposed, but instead the image is allowed to emerge.

The beginning has temporal depth. An experience unfolds. When we “begin anywhere” we challenge our preconceptions about what we’re seeing. We are taking the image apart and putting it back together again conceptually. If each time we start from a new place, we reorganize the ideas. Each iteration forces one to think about ensemble in a new fashion. And since the visual reality is densely complex, there will always be more to see, not less. In any moment there is more reality sitting in front of the artist than he can possibly record. This fact is wonderful.

The reality is wealthy, and we can dip into its riches whenever we please. (additional 1,140 words)

my Bonnard & Bonnard’s Bonnard

Pierre Bonnard, Still Life with Melon (Nature Morte au Melon), 1941, private collection

Bonnard’s Still Life with Melon seems to be about the color red, as though asserting how the color red is so rich and attractive. Bonnard had a red tablecloth that we know about, which is often present in photographs of his home Le Cannet. That tablecloth appears in many of his still lifes and interiors. In this particular painting above, the composition seems to be predominantly an excuse to paint the color. And everything else in the picture plays a subordinate role and seems to be present to make the red more powerful. You could conclude that you don’t need any more compelling reason to paint than to put down certain colors. The use of the color is enough. But the objects of Bonnard’s still life provide shapes to fill with color. We might not know, sometimes, what they represent — what shapes they are, but a whole picture is there to color. He is not making it up. There was a motif of real-life things that provided an ensemble to be observed. The picture cannot be exclusively about the red because the red needs an environment in which it can be as bold as it is.

Moreover, the other objects keep Bonnard from having to guess what other colors to use to express this red. Rather than guessing at and inventing surrounding colors (as one would do in abstraction), he can look at actual things and see the color relationships among them. The objects also create a composition of shapes that inter-relate with each other in forms of line and space. So he can explore not only the red which he finds so beautiful, but the character of line, arrangement, light and shadow, and can discover that the red affects and participates in all these elements. Each portion of the picture takes on a particular character from being in the deep, ruby red setting. And once there, each part draws the artist into a localized passage of beauty.

Paper Bowl with Blue Bottle, oil on paper, 9×12 inches. Aletha Kuschan.

So, for example, the grapes in the upper righthand corner, which are so easy to overlook, particularly as they are at the picture’s edge, have a wonderful simplicity and tactile presence. He has simplified them radically, yet we know they are grapes. One peach among a plate of peaches occupies almost the exact center of the canvas. It’s slightly off just enough to create some visual movement. The choice of location is probably subliminal, but easily becomes the first item of one’s attention. That peach is the most realistically portrayed item of the painting. We know it’s a peach. We are not as sure what fruits sit in another plate to the right. And the grapes above are not realistic, rather are stylized, almost cartoonish. Yet there’s no doubt what they are. The melon is identifiable too, and we observe subtle indications of the ridges in its form. Why does Bonnard describe some things and not others? Beside the melon sits a large plum or an avocado. It’s not clear. We find that identities of things are shaky, instead surfaces abound in beautiful, jewel-like color.

Compotier of Fruit, Blue & Pink (detail), oil on canvas panel. Aletha Kuschan.

The way that Bonnard draws lines with paint adds picture-thought to beauty. His way of outlining is sensitive. Some lines drawn with diluted paint are faint, shadowy whispers of line. Other passages for unknown reasons warrant firm painting. These differences in touch we discover relate to something like moods or feeling. The last identifiable object of the still life seems to be a pitcher. Behind it on the left side of the canvas are shapes that shatter into color, possibly a teapot and tea cozy … it’s unclear. What occasions the non-identifiability of these shapes is indeterminant. The painting is obviously not a description of the motif but more like a dream of it. And as in a dream, some objects completely emerge while others fold back into the subconscious.

With this painting of Bonnard’s, as with any finished painting, we are seeing an end result. We don’t know how the painting evolved. We don’t know what changes Bonnard made to it. What does Bonnard’s painting look like when he changes his mind? How does he change his mind? Did he rub paint out? Did he paint over some element? Unless there’s visible pentimenti, there’s no way to know. We know he drew often, making little sketches that sort out parts of his pictures. Did he make drawings to rehearse a thought after the painting had commenced? Or do all the drawings happen before painting?

Vase of Flowers (work in progress, detail), oil on canvas, 36×48 (whole picture).

In a way it doesn’t matter because we’re simply enjoying the result. In regard to our own paintings, we find our own paths. But for one’s own art, as a painting unfolds, an artist is wise to be aware that we don’t know the end result of our own picture while its progress is on-going. To stay on the path, to see where the picture goes, can be a form of freedom. A determination to see the process to its natural conclusion is particularly pertinent when you recognize that there appear to be lots of “off ramps.” How many times has someone told you, “Stop. It’s looks good now. You don’t want to overwork it.” Or you tell yourself, “Perhaps I should quit here. Might spoil it.” If you are pursuing a fullness of the perception, you must stay with the picture even at the risk of spoiling it, because you don’t know what experience you’re going to miss seeing by taking that off ramp. At least some of the time, be willing to spoil a picture (though you might be able to fix it once again at some later stage). Be willing to stay with it while you have ideas. And when ideas dry up, if the painting is still not right, be willing sometimes to wait through the pause, to set the picture aside, not to abandon it but just to wait a while for new ideas to emerge. People talk about experimentation, but it’s not exploration when you give up half-way.

The kind of painting that Bonnard did is not helped by realism. You cannot say, “I’ll know when the painting is finished because it will look very much like its subject.” Actually that kind of painting is also filled with uncertainties even as the realism emerges more and more because there’s a lot of realism in this world. How much is enough? When is the realism overdone? When does it erase the poetry? Realism has its own challenges not the least of which is its demand upon drawing, tonal and coloristic skill. But even having the image resemble the world is not an assurance. In the kind of painting Bonnard does, of course, you’ll find no life raft in that direction. Realism is not even relevant. Bonnard is painting poetry. Whether the poem will be profound or simplistic is a hazard that the artist must be willing to face.

Still life with Shells and Bottles, oil on panel, 11×14 inches.

We can start on a pictorial journey like innocent children. Bonnard provides a naive way. Thus we elect not to worry about anything at all. We merely rouse ourselves to leap into the unknown. The only rule is to try to avoid ending the game too soon or beginning it too timidly. Keep playing for a long time because certain wonders of the art of painting happen near the very end, long past that point when you thought the painting was “done.” And another drawing or another painting will let us re-indulge that pleasure of a simple beginning.

The merit of this approach lies in its grasping at big things. You dive straight in after whatever you find most compelling and don’t wait until you’ve set things up first with drawing or perspective or masses or outlines or whatever. You thought the color was rich so you went there first – RED – or there was a shape that you wanted so you grabbed as much of it as you could with line before elaborating it. Or you knew you wanted the whole center of the image to be a woman stretched out in a tub so with no concern for anatomy you just put a humanish-like form into the center of the horizontal format. Maybe you were randomly responding to an ensemble of things and drew each one quickly as it came into your notice, leaving the details to appear (if at all) when they will.

Bonnard is a strange master of ceremonies. His art is not to everyone’s taste. But the deep dive he offers into psychology and perception is rich. It’s worth having a go at his method. It’s a flexible approach and leads one’s skill into more directions than you might at first imagine.

Detail of a still life drawing, one with lots of chaos. Neopastel on paper. Aletha Kuschan.

where’d it go?

Little Creamer with Yellow Vase, drawing using neocolors

Little drawings like this one go straight to the heart of what I love about art. A thought process that’s so direct, one where you just gaze at things and make images of them, following your perception, makes me happy. What sort of art it is, I don’t know, but I like it. Drawing the shapes of objects, the colors that surround them, the features of their surfaces, the spaces between things, all these elements offer endless chances to be fascinated. This little drawing, for some reason, particularly pleases me. It feels cheerful. You can lose yourself in drawing, becoming united to whatever it is that you’re seeing. That said, only now I notice that the edge of the yellow vase is missing from behind the handle of the creamer. Where’d it go?

I am fairly certain I was looking at the things when I made the drawing. Still life objects are not known for wandering around on the table. And yet, the curved edge of the vase should appear in the area inside the pitcher’s handle. It’s not there. One’s mind plays the most curious tricks.

I still love the drawing.

the shape my thoughts take

Dutch Gold Honey bottle and Pimenton de la vera tin, pencil in an old calendar journal, pencil, 6.25×5.5 inches (image size)

Pierre Bonnard taught me how to like the shape my thoughts take. Well, actually I already liked the shapes my thoughts took (at least some of the time) even before I had ever heard of Bonnard but using the great old painter’s name lends a tincture of authority to the claims that follow. Or at least I think it does…. (Do others love Bonnard as much as I do?) Does the general public love this man who drew like someone who is talking to himself?

If you like the shapes your thoughts take or are willing to let thoughts take what shape they will, then drawing becomes a very different game. You can go deeper and deeper into a subject, despite “mistakes,” adding more and more visual information or incident. You can continue to probe a motif until the paper simply won’t take any more alteration or until you collapse from drawing exhaustion (whichever comes first). Especially if you allow yourself not to care what other people think, you can gain an enormous supply of freedom. This freedom is especially desirable because you cannot possibly actually even know what other people think. Moreover, as Brian Tracy so wisely observed, people are not thinking about you at all most of the time. They are busy thinking about their own lives. Thus, it’s very helpful to recognize that all sensibilities and anxieties about what other people might think are projections. You can note what people say. You can recall and quote it back to your recollection that So-n-So said, “blah, blah, blah.” But what they think is altogether another matter. That’s their mystery. Mind-reading is great as far as it goes. It tells you gobs about yourself. It may even occasionally tell you something about other people, revealing what your intuition noted in peoples’ words and body language. But it only provides reliable information about other people to the extent that you can separate the impressions from your own projection. The projection is about you, not so much about them.

detail of the pimenton tin

But I digress. See how I did that? That entire digression was literary or verbal incident, composed of tangential thoughts. Did I care that you might not enjoy my rambling advice and commentary about projection? Noooo. The same can hold true for drawing. Draw to please yourself. Draw to satisfy your own curiosity about the visual world around you. In a decisively imperfect still life drawing you can marvel at the light and dark shapes, lines, passages and forms. You can put down the bit that your perception has fastened onto, can travel willy nilly through the landscape of accidental effects in a drawing that is perhaps a bit errant, maybe like mine: a little jar drawn lovingly out of proportion as my attention fixed on this contour, then that one without taking into account the shape of the whole. These were details that my brain found delightful in the moment. So, I bent my attention to them, too impatient to figure out the proper shape.

Inside such a thought process you put the line where it seems to belong. Such a drawing only begins to break down when you find that you want to put a line where another already exists. You want to put the edge of the tin here, only to find that when you were thinking about the forms a few minutes ago and coming from the other direction the edge was over there, a centimeter away perhaps. That’s awkward. But so what? One will have to do. Pick one location then move on. In an imperfect drawing in an imperfect world, these bits of divergence from exactitude are fine. You can erase what you must of an earlier thought and let a new thought reign. Or you can draw the new thought over top of the old one (which explains why people have so many more than just two arms in various J.A.D. Ingres drawings). Or, you can say “that spot is taken” and turn your attention to other features of the motif.

Let’s say, however, that you opted for erasure and erasure ruined the drawing. You can choose to just deal with it. You draw over a smudge or you smudge some more, and you find a way to incorporate the smudge into the picture, going for an evocative effect. Or you find a superior eraser around the house and clean up the smudge. Or in desperation you even resort to gluing a bit of white paper over the spoiled part and draw anew.

You find ways to keep going because. You don’t care because. You decide not to care because. You certainly don’t care about imaginary public opinion. Maybe you decide not to care even about your own opinion! Instead, you stay in the game. You travel into a drawing. You keep going forward into this 2-d Flatland and adopt a tourist outlook. While I’m here, I might as well see all the sights. And you record what you see, diligently though imperfectly. You continue a visual journey by putting the line where it seems to belong right now. With considerable determination, resilience and fortitude you draw what you think you see. These images are not the things — they are not even pictures of the things (necessarily) — they are pictures of your thoughts about the things.

early stage of the drawing before I changed the flowers on the label of the honey bottle

If you’re like me, you ask the daring question what does a Pimenton de la vera pepper tin really look like? It might as well be the Grand Canyon. I cannot draw all the amazing incident found on even the surface of that black but reflective little tin’s beautiful form. What about the flowers on the label of the Dutch Gold Wildflower Blossom honey bottle? Some other artist’s design made very small! What does it look like from where I’m perched? I’m going to take into consideration my myopia too, which changes reality somewhat. What does my brain see? What do my mind and soul see? All these are varieties of realism though not the brand of realism usually associated with realism as a style. Recall I began by invoking the authority of dear old Bonnard. What do MY thoughts — my true thoughts — tell me of these objects? Where are the clouds of my heart’s desire that float over these things? What do the thoughts look like? And what will my pencil let me record? Because the pencil has some say in the matter as well.

I drew features, and afterwards I redrew them. I made changes not because the first version was “wrong” but because I had seen more and I wanted to include this more. When you make up your mind to hike through the terrain that the motif offers you, and you let no disturbing weather hinder you, and you decide that you will just keep putting one line into the page after another, you just never know where that might lead. It’s a kind of travel that I want to pursue further. Perhaps you’d care to join me, Reader. But love you as I do, dear Reader, your opinion makes no difference. And my opinion (which shall be forever a mystery to you) shouldn’t matter to you.

The journey into the drawing is totally personal. You will think for yourself. You ask yourself, after Brian Tracy’s dicta, “What do I really want to do? What would make me the happiest? Then make your decisions for the person who is going to have to live with them — yourself.”

Brainstorming

detail of a bouquet, cropped and flipped

New abstract art me is looking for ways to compose intriguing designs. What makes a good abstract design? The same features that make a strong composition in realism. Why knock yourself out when Mother Nature stands there willing to do the heavy lifting for you?

Thus have I been looking at some of my representational pictures, drawn from life, for design ideas to exploit in new contexts. The detail above comes from my pastel drawing of the flowers in the pickle jar.

Pickle Jar, 12.5 x 17 inches, Pastel

A cropped detail of the picture sits in a file on my computer where I see it often, and suddenly one morning I realized that the area around the chief flower could make a dynamic Diebenkornesque abstract image (Richard Diebenkorn is my favorite abstract artist). All I did was turn it around to make it less familiar.

I haven’t yet attempted making a drawing from my drawing. Do you think I should?

That would be the next step in removing it from its context. However, I would note that all the colors and shapes that make up my drawing were representations of some wonderful perceptions that Mother Nature created using eyesight, roses, colors, shadows, reflections of the glass — to say nothing of what she accomplishes in producing pigments for pastel sticks, those sticks whose marks are so mesmerizing. Reality deserves the first order of gratitude and praise.

Things I like to Look at

detail of a koi drawing, a fish’s tail

Thinking about shapes for their own sakes has me pondering questions about what I like in art. I used to visit the museum and press my nose as close to a canvas as the guards would permit. I loved looking at the surfaces up close, then standing back and seeing how shapes, edges and colors transformed into things. The pure loveliness of colors enchanted me. Now I’m the one creating the color combinations and finding my enchantments at home.

It’s a little different when it’s your drawing — but only a little different. For instance, I love the purple marks in parallel formation at the end of the fish’s tail. I don’t know what I was looking at that translated into these lines, but absent the source material, I just enjoy the lines themselves. Seen this close, it isn’t even evident that the yellow tapering shape belongs to a fish. It’s just a tapering yellow of slightly different hues, some more orangish, some dull ochre-ish and some slightly green.

closer view of marks

Anything verging in the direction of orange looks more intense against the pale blue. The brilliant cobalt blue contour line against the fish turns into deep jade in places. There’s a spot of brown-almost-becoming red which becomes a vortex for the curving fish tail energy. I have no idea what that was, but I like its presence here.

blue – orange contrast

In all these details my drawings of things are not so different from my drawings of not-things. Colors are beautiful in themselves. I try to immerse myself mentally in color, just as the fishes are immersed in their water-world. Color in life is seamlessly everywhere. It genuinely is our mental environment out of which emotion and thought happen just as surely as the water is the fish’s living environment.

What makes something beautiful?

detail of an abstract drawing

To find beauty, I think we begin by recognizing it. Beauty is something that is pre-existent. It exists both “out there” and “in here.” Nature creates beauty. We discern it. I would liken it to sonar or radar. You scan your surroundings (basically the landscape of your life), and there’s a “ping” that certain perceptions evoke. Something attracts. (Some things repel too.) That initial sense you have of finding something lovely, that was there even before you were conditioned to life in a society, that is nature’s product. You first experienced it as a child.

How does one go about finding beautiful forms? Someday soon I’m going to schedule a day during which I do nothing but search for beauty from morning to night. I’ll be like that famous old Greek who shouted “eureka.” (If you see a lady wandering around a city poking her head into shrubbery or staring into the sky, flushing out birds and exclaiming “Eureka!” — I guess you’ll know that’s me.

In the meantime I can be crazy for beauty on a small scale. I drew the green shape above that sits next to a patch of sky blue — violet colored line, green uneven coloring with neocolor crayon, and afterwards I was struck by the beauty of the gesture. (Other people don’t have to think it’s beautiful.) What I am wondering though for myself, and perhaps you have a version of this you can relate to, is: what makes a gesture beautiful?

Assessment & Introspection

loosely after a Poussin drawing

What are your strengths? You can make your strengths stronger. In my humble opinion the best way to improve your game is to get better at those things you’re already good at doing. You can work on weaknesses too (but that will be a topic for another time). People often don’t think about the things they already do well in terms of improvement. Maybe it’s about not fixing what’s not broken, and there’s some wisdom in that thought. But it’s not so much about repair as it’s about exploration.

The strong skills you have are exactly the ones you need for the learning of new ideas. I feel like the thoughtscape is a New World, it’s an internal geography that’s always available to explore. While many kind viewers have complimented me for the ways I use color (many hearty thanks), I feel like my strongest skill is drawing. I don’t typically draw in a realist way and often that’s a metric used to gauge the quality of drawing. And I’m not knocking that impulse: realism is a good, rigorous metric. However, my drawing superpower is wild carelessness. It’s a skill that was hard won. I am now very good at connecting my visible perception to a line. I will keenly look and draw what I see with little concern whether the drawing provides all the clues needed to identify the object, and instead I let myself seek a percept.

It’s something that Delacroix wrote about in his journals and which I took much to heart.

“Une belle suggestion, un croquis avec une grande sensation, peut être aussi expressif que le produit le plus fini .” A fine suggestion, a sketch with great feeling, can be as expressive as the most finished product.

This careless or carefree approach to drawing serves me well, and from it I can even pursue a careful realism for it connects me most keenly to my visual perception.

What are your strengths, and what means can you use to deepen your connection to the skills you already possess? It’s time to toot your own horn in a most felicitous way. It will make your art better. It will make your perception keener. It will make your appreciation of life fuller.

Looking at Colors

random little cheat-sheet painting, acrylic on paper

Spending some time just looking at colors, looking at them and trying to reproduce them heightens one’s color senses. Reproducing them can take many forms and need not be limited to artists. Seeing a color you like and getting a color swatch to match the color with objects in your decor is a way of making your color senses more alert.

The keenness is the thing. Making yourself more and more aware is the goal.

color palette, matching paints to wax crayons

I made the palette above to match my acrylic paints (as closely as practicable) to the colors in the wax crayon set I use. [Caran d’Ache, Neocolor 1, wax crayons, water resistant.] Some of the acrylic paints are pre-mixed colors, so the idea here (a palette is itself a visual idea) is to move painting closer to drawing through the use of linear limited palette lines and paint patches. (Limited palette doesn’t require that the palette be small.)

painting detail

Colors can be savored. Colors are everywhere around us. The whole world is wonderfully colored. So there’s a lot to savor! Best to get started and to realize – with delight! – that there’s always more.

Art lovers, follow me! (You’ll be glad you did.)

Trace Elements Blog (also know by its URL, fantabulous koi) is just getting revved up. It will explore so many art topics. You’ll be amazed. And you can be amazed even faster by commenting and offering your ideas. The world of art is huge. So many things to explore, and I intend to explore as much of that realm here as I can. Come join me.