Spot illustration assignment
Author: coffeehousejunkie
Better together
Before mobile devices with cameras — and software applications that capture images and store and share them — there was the sketchbook. A hard case, cloth-cover book featuring at least a hundred blank archival pages was always within reach. As a young art student it was my practice to draw advertisement layouts, images, typographic arrangements, or other sources of inspiration that I might use in future creative projects. Occasionally a sketch was a hand-drawn duplication of a photo, print ad, or poster. More often it was an interpretation, re-imagining, or riff on an original source of inspiration. It was, and is, how I learn — how I study. It is tactile.
The practice of drawing develops the interaction of muscle and neural growth. Drawing is a skill that will not improve by machine learning or multimodal image creation software applications. It is a dance between the muscles of the hands and fingers in coordination with the eyes and the cerebral cortex. Outsourcing these skills only lead to atrophy of intellect and muscle. Looking at my hands as they hover over the keyboard, I wonder why I am not drawing instead of typing. This too is a dance. The delicate steps navigating life’s dance among digital and analog tasks.
November sky
A sketch a day
At Mulfinger’s Art Studio
November breeze rattles the brown leaves on the tree
A perfect day for reading books and drinking tea
Autumn in the Piedmont
Coat rack collection
A record of days
Reading at bookstore
An afternoon reading comic strips
Lost confessions
Some days all you need…
October quickly fades
I raise my cup to invite the bright moon
Haiku a morning in a thousand pixels
Gather ’round the radio
Legend
After the storm
15 year anniversary
Vision in motion, an exercise
Never waste money on purchasing a tube of black paint, I was told.
With three or four colors you can mix a pigment as dark as black. And a richer shade of pigment. Is black even a color?
These thoughts remind me of color theory and composition class at the university. My professor was a student of Josef Albers. At the time, that fact did not have a great impression on me. But I wonder about the lessons he must have learned. Not so much the academic rigor of craftsmanship and applied fine arts. That is important. But lessons of integrity and legacy. Was it Albers who taught him that quip about black paint? Or did that come from Willem de Kooning?
A couple days later, the middle child looks at this project. “What’s this about?”
I do not answer. It is an exercise. It is practice.
Vision in motion, paint big
This is practice. An exercise. Form and color.
Do you see a character? As in, a letter of the alphabet.
Or do you see a character in human form?
The daylight quickly fades for this January afternoon. I chose a larger brush to apply pigment. At the university, the art professor instructed, “If you can’t paint well, paint big.”
It was not criticism, but rather a modernist declaration. He provided an atmosphere that allowed guidance rather than dogma.
I load the larger brush with the muddy water from the tray and a touch of pigment found between two watercolor cakes. The transparent layer is applied to the dry paint. A technique called glazing.
This is not an art lesson. It is a conjuring up of an image.
Vision in motion, layer upon layer
This is an exercise. Form and color. Loading the brush with pigment and applying it to the paper. Quick strokes. Vision in motion.
Painting by the light of the apartment’s living room window. The sun light is best in the morning. But I have continued this project well past the noon hour.
“Why do you keep painting,” asks my child.
“It’s underpainting,” I say as I clean the brushes and prepare for an afternoon walk. “The lighter tones provide the base. When the paint dries I add more color layers.”
It is January. It is Winter. The outdoor temperature is above the freezing point. We walk to the library and return books. We continue to talk.
Coffeehouse Junkie 