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The Drawing Board Blog:
"My World Is Round."
part III - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
POSTED: Jan. 29, 2013 | ART PICT: Jan. 27, 2013
Going round-and-round in (pencilled) circles...
I remember my high school art teacher (Mr. Martin), telling me not to scribble my pencils (when darkening an area) ....because people could see the direction of the lines and it looked like crap. Hmmmm. I also noticed, when looking at Van Gogh paintings from extreme close-up (nose just barely an inch away from the paintings in the Amsterdam Museum) ....that in his self portraits... all of the brush strokes went round-and-round... except for the eyes. The eyes were painted flat. The very flatness of those brush strokes, contrasting to the rough circular ones that populated every other square inch of the painting..., made the eyes seem to be staring at you SO HARD. VERY subliminal stuff. VERY effective. Hmmm. Thoughts and ideas bubbling up from below.... For good or bad, I put the two ideas together. The first time this technique appears in one of my works of Art was "The bus to (Pomona); King to Queen's Rook 13". Since then, a center for each drawing has been picked and the penciled lines have circled outwards from there. Not ALL of the pencilled lines directly follow the circular pattern but the basic underlying pencil strokes DO follow that layout. It sure makes life a LOT MORE DIFFICULT. I really need to sit down and talk to my subconscious and tell it to take it easy on me every once in a while. LOL. I don't KNOW if it was worth the effort but I've convinced myself enough to go thataways since then. PLUS it fits in VERY well with the entire subliminal communication thang going down within these surreal drawings. Soooo, as of this moment... it is just a part of the drawing process ...regardless of the effort. Maybe I'll get lazy one day and decide otherwise. Anyway. Look closely at the enlargement (click on the pict to the left) and you can see the circle patterns radiating outwards from the butterfly... NEXT
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POSTED: Mar. 10, 2013 | ART PICT: Mar. 10, 2013
While holding the imaginary stairs firmly in mind...
Stairs. Apologies but I actually facebooked blog details last week because I didn't have time to update the website. This week...I didn't facebook and I AM instead... updating the website. Too funny. Irony rocks. Anyway. The stairs have been driving me crazy. It has to do with a crappy print out that holds the negative image in front of my face...the original photo that I MUST transcribe in my mind (for the detailed pencil work) ...AND the fact that while I'm concentrating on drawing micro-details... my pencil will start drawing blacks as blacks INSTEAD of drawing blacks as white (as I TOLD my pencil TO DO). Let's just say that there was a whole LOT of cussing going down. NOW...add into the fray, the bullet hole (?) that goes through the pane. While holding the imaginary stairs FIRMLY in mind...I have to take a really pixilated photo of shattered glass and figure out how THAT would look over the negative image of the positive stair photo. And, I take my right foot out and I shake it all about. Let's do the hokey pokey. LOL. Ok. While I'm concentrating QUITE FIERCELY on this facet of the artwork... I'll give you something else to focus on: I JUST discovered... symbolic-wise...something about the butterfly.
While sketching in the shattered glass... I had to decide if the shatter went in front of the Marilyn's butt...or behind it. I chose in front. That means that the negative-imaged-pane-of-glass is between the viewer and the Marilyn. Ok. BUT, the butterfly is right in front of the Marilyn. Ok. Still with me? I left the butterfly there. Didn't think about it. Today, the why came to me. Bubbled up from the subconscious levels. Butterflies can be a symbol for change. They start as caterpillars and become butterflies. That equals change (of a monumental sort). It is just one of the many meanings of this symbol. This butterfly is a hole in the drawing. That equals change leaving a hole in things. Wow. That IS what happens. The hole is there and it is not a positive OR a negative thing...it just is. Change is beyond "good" or "bad" ....except in the mind of the beholder. PLUS: change equals subtraction... making room for something new. That is so cool that such a complicated idea can be shown so simply. I am using SO MANY MORE WORDS just trying to explain this idea. Seeing change as good or bad is a subjective thing but change itself is outside of that...it just IS. The fact of the whole hole idea makes sense now too. Wow. Too cool. Can you believe THIS came UP... while I was drawing the bullet hole bit. I wuz FOCUSED baby. Jeez. I really like it. Normally I don't like to "tell" what I see in the drawings....because I don't want to influence YOUR reaction / interpretation / the story YOU see.... BUT, while I was discussing this with Gary...he pointed out that sometimes it can be hard to find a toehold into one of my drawings.... so I thought that maybe I would offer this small insight to anyone with enough diligence to actually read through these meandering art blogs. It's not like I'm explaining ALL of the symbolism in the butterfly hole. LOL. There are ALWAYS layers baby. AND, I am not sure how it all fits together yet... because THAT comes after the drawing is done. Anyway. I have to go now. I will probably post this immediately and not even proof it once. I can't. This week is CRAZY and I need to sleep sometime. Ugh. Anyway.
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POSTED: Mar. 17, 2013 | ART PICT: Mar. 17, 2013
Shadows on the stairs.
This is one RELAXED artist here (blogging from the drawing board). So far...this ENTIRE year... has been SO WEIRD. Weekend after weekend... something would happen that would monopolize SO MUCH OF THE TIME ...in very non-artistic ways. Very little art was being made. It sucked. Don't even ask. Gary and I were DETERMINED to create ART this weekend. We FOCUSED. And, it worked. Yeah. It felt AWESOME to finally get some REAL drawing done. That being said...onto the good stuff (all of the boring technical details I am SURE that you are dying to hear)...
I am TRYING to leave the shadows on the stairs at a minimum because I want the FOCUS to be on the crisp lines of the reversal... BUT, it is VERY hard for me ...NOT to detail any part of the drawing. Really. This is TUFF. My pencil does NOT want to cooperate. This pencil WANTS to draw DETAIL. LOL. So now, I am TRYING to AT LEAST keep the details down a tad AND a bit lighter than that shown in the Photoshopped pict. That should help emphasize the black and white reversal of the stairway. We'll see. I printed out a copy of the drawing and used a marker to test the lines...and I REALLY liked it all stark and unfinished. Oh well. I say that because I just happened to notice that there are a LOT of shadows throughout the stairs that lead the eye in and out and all around ....sooooo... NOW, I am trying to compromise: keep the intense piano key sort of effect (in a negative/positive sort of way) AND maintain compositional eye flow.... We'll see I guess. AND, it bubbled up this weekend that I want to kind of ghost in the fireman. Let me repeat: we'll see. LOL. You'd think that I'd jump at opportunities to NOT detail something...that would make it easier and faster to get this artowrk OFF off of the drawing board and into a frame. Ugh. Go figure. I'm a fool baby. A BIG idiot. I could make this EASIER...right here, right now. Yeah, right. NEXT
...MORE Surreal Artwork by
Chris Eisenbraun.
