7/5, Indoors, resolving and hopefully completing...

...two studio paintings.  With only one drawing completed, the rain has disrupted my work out of doors, so I must retreat to the studio for the remainder of the day.

Sketchbook page, Riverbanks Zoo for long term drawing #10, marker, 

watercolor, ink and pen on paper, 9" x 12"

"This is what you shall do; Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body."

- Walt Whitman, from the preface of Leaves of Grass. 

7/4, Its in Plein Sight, Plein Air Sight...

Morning spent drawing in the sketchbook, and I survived the mugginess long enough to complete two drawings...I think that there is some good stuff which can be incorporated in long term works.

Sketchbook page, Riverbanks Zoo for long term drawing #8, marker, 

watercolor, ink and pen on paper, 9" x 12"

Sketchbook page, Riverbanks Zoo for long term drawing #9, marker, 

watercolor, ink and pen on paper, 9" x 12"

Fine art is that in which the hand, the head, and the heart of man go together.

- John Ruskin

7/3, Starting at the bottom

Today begins with working out details of the embellishments in the foliage at the bottom of the drawing.  During college, Richard Mattson reminded me to think about each painting's outer edges, and Lester Goldman reminded me to think of the bottom of the composition.  Frequently Lester would have me raise the bottom edge of my paintings to my eye level while I worked on them.  He was right, of course, and the composition and cohesion in each work benefited greatly as a result.  I will be following Lester's advice again today, and jump start the day's work with a sketchbook study of that area.

Sketchbook page, for long term drawing #7, marker, ink and pen on paper, 9" x 12"

Long term drawing sketchbook drawings are based on.  Area of pictorial study is highlighted.

The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward 
significance.  - Aristotle

7/2, Its all in the details, the layering of details

Today, I made significant strides in the long term large drawing.  Figures, space, and shapes are now much more unified with the addition of a buttery yellow.

Zoomed in area detail of long term, large scale drawing.

Reflexes and instincts are not pretty.  It is their decoration that initiates art.  

- Martin H. Fischer

7/1, Simple Gestures, Simple Beginnings

Sometimes I think a painting should only take one hour.  If only each work could be built with an endless flow of simple lines and simple gestures that never needed to be erased, re-proportioned, or reconfigured.

Great art is as irrational as great music.  - George Jean Nathan

6/29, Afternoon Studio

There is work still to be done but time in the studio progresses the long term work to a denser and warmer pictorial space.

Sometimes, to pursue a new idea, the artist must forfeit his deposit on an old idea.  
- Robert Brault

6/28: Sketchbook destination by air *plein*:

Productive morning drawing at the Zoo as I continue to build the visual environmental vocabulary for my large long term drawing -- ready for an afternoon in the studio.

Sketchbook page, Riverbanks Zoo for long term drawing #6, marker, 

watercolor, ink and pen on paper, 9" x 12"

There is no surer method of evading the world than by following art, and no surer method of linking oneself to it than by art.  – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe