Art

“All artists are two-headed calves.” – Truman Capote

February 3, 2020

January 1, 2020
January 2, 2020
January 3, 2020
January 4, 2020
January 5, 2020
January 6, 2020
January 7, 2020
January 8, 2020
January 9, 2020
January 10, 2020
January 11, 2020
January 12, 2020
January 13, 2020
January 14, 2020
January 15, 2020
January 16, 2020
January 17, 2020
January 18, 2020
January 19, 2020
January 20, 2020
January 21, 2020
January 22, 2020
January 24, 2020
January 25, 2020
January 25, 2020 Abstact
January 26, 2020
January 27, 2020
January 28, 2020
January 29, 2020
January 30, 2020
January 31, 2020
These are the products of my 2020 Daily Art Project in January. In 2020 I am trying to replace one of my drawings with a small painting each week and so far this is going well. If I can manage more than one painting in a week that will be great, but once a week is my starting point.
My theme for the month was basic forms and I chose as my subject matter a set of 6 geometric forms. In most of my drawings and my paintings I was trying to pay attention to the variations of tones within the planes of the shapes – the side of the square that is totally in the shade is not just a flat tone but changes from side to side, etc. I was also trying to avoid lines where I could and instead emphasize the change of tone on either side of the line and trying to keep those lines soft. 
 
For the paintings, I’ve been using Gamblin FastMatte oil paints. Although this line of paint was designed for underpainting, I was attracted to their matte quality and in practice, I like that aspect of them, but I’m not really fond of the texture of the paint itself. Some of the colours are quite stiff out of the tube and I am mixing them with Gamblin Galkyd Gel and Gamsol which helps, but they really do dry quite quickly and often by the time I’m finishing they are no longer that easy to blend into. I intend to continue with them until I either change my mind or run out of the colours I have. We’ll see which comes first. 
I returned to graphite for the last four drawings in January mainly as I found myself short of time and graphite is an old friend that feels comfortable and quick – and I have a variety of options in the graphite family. In order to keep my drawing loose, I like to use a dull pencil – as I did for the drawings on the 28th and 29th. Then for a contrasting experience on the 30th and 31st, I switched to a series of mechanical pencils with different grades of graphite. I find the precision of the fine-points influences me to approach the drawing differently and I quite like the result I achieved. It has made me think it might be fun to spend an entire month on graphite in varying forms to explore the options and results. But not in February…..

“There are no happy endings. Endings are the saddest part, So just give me a happy middle. And a very happy start.” – Shel Silverstein

December 31, 2019

Dec 1, 2019
Dec 2, 2019
Dec 3, 2019
Dec 4, 2019
Dec 5, 2019
Dec 6, 2019
Dec 7, 2019
Dec 8, 2019
Dec 9, 2019
Dec 10, 2019
Dec 11, 2019
Dec 12, 2019
Dec 13, 2019
Dec 14, 2019
Dec 15, 2019
Dec 16, 2019
Dec 17, 2019
Dec 18, 2019
Dec 19, 2019
Dec 20, 2019
Dec 21, 2019
Dec 22, 2019
Dec 23, 2019
Dec 24, 2019
Dec 26, 2019
Dec 27, 2019
Dec 28, 2019
Dec 29, 2019
Dec 30, 2019
Dec 31, 2019

Happy New Year!

Another month of daily drawings completed and my third year of daily drawings done. I have big plans for 2020, but they will take time – good thing I have the entire year! I will continue creating art every day (or most every day) and will post the results here as I go. Just for fun, here are my images from December 2017 and December 2018.

“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” – Leonardo da Vinci

December 9, 2019

November 1, 2019, Jill Hennessy
November 2, 2019, Michael J. Fox
November 3, 2019, Linda Evangelista
November 4, 2019, Leonard Cohen
November 5, 2019, Carrie-Anne Moss
November 6, 2019, Keanu Reeves
November 7, 2019, Margaret Atwood
November 8, 2019, Donald Sutherland
November 9, 2019, Neve Campbell
November 10, 2019, Ryan Reynolds
November 11, 2019, Alanis Morissette
November 12, 2019, Chris Hadfield
November 13, 2019, K.D. Lang
November 14, 2019, Gord Downie
November 16, 2019, Diana Krall
November 17, 2019, Marshall McLuhan
November 18, 2019, David Bowie
November 19, 2019, Molly Ringwald
November 20, 2019, Andy Warhol
November 21, 2019, Sandra Bullock
November 22, 2019, John Lennon
November 23, 2019, Julia Roberts
November 24, 2019, Alan Alda
November 25, 2019, Sheryl Crow
November 26, 2019, Stephen King
November 27, 2019, Ellen Degeneres
November 28, 2019, Hugh Jackman
November 29, 2019, Aldous Huxley
November 30, 2019, Edward Scissorhands
November was month three of faces as my drawing subject and, to be honest, I’m pretty much done with this for the year. The fact that the year is almost done as well is a relief. In November I redrew 29 of the same faces that I chose in October. The first 17 were Canadians that I admire with the remainder originating from other countries.
I changed my medium for November, starting with pencil and adding ink. I had thought that drawing first in pencil – eraser in hand – would result in a lot more accurate likenesses – and in some cases it did. I think I did somewhat better in having eyes that lined up and jaw lines that made sense, etc. Some of the individuals are even recognizable, but the improvement was not to the degree I had hoped for. When I next return to drawing faces I will work to level up some more.
Throughout the month, I played a lot with various approaches to achieve an effect I liked. My initial pencil drawings were quick and simplified. For the first five drawings, I continued by laying down light grey washes of India ink, slowly building up to black and finishing with the dip pen in black ink. I did this to avoid the ink washes smearing when I laid them down over the lines, but this left me feeling like I was outlining things at the end and not actually drawing. So with the November 6 drawing, I just stopped using the pen altogether and I continued on that way for a bit, adding all of the lines with a brush and ink. This wasn’t ideal as I was unable to achieve the same fine lines with the brush – and I really missed the variety of line thickness that I can create with the dip pen. On the November 17 drawing, I returned to my dip pen but used alcohol ink for the drawing before adding the India ink washes over top. This ink behaved a little differently – it tended to bleed a bit more and as a result, all of my lines were thicker. I liked the look of some of these drawings though. I switched back to the India ink on November 26 with Stephen King because I needed to use finer lines on his glasses. There was a bit of smearing when I put my washes down over top, but not that bad. And frankly, I was a bit bored with all of the faces by then. I finished the month with this same process and I feel my last few drawings turned out fairly well.
Overall I’m pleased with the results this month, even though I did not come up with a single approach that I consistently liked. And I never really found a great way to represent hair, eyebrows or teeth. I learned quite a lot and I enjoyed drawing this past month. Sometime in 2020, I’m sure I will return to faces again in some form. In the meantime, on to Christmas subject matter for December….

“I am not altogether displeased with the shirt-front.” – Paul Cezanne, after about 115 sittings for a portrait of Ambroise Vollard…

November 4, 2019

October 1, 2019
October 2, 2019
October 3, 2019
October 4, 2019
October 5, 2019
October 6, 2019
October 7, 2019
October 8, 2019
October 9, 2019
October 10, 2019
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October 15, 2019
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October 20, 2019
October 21, 2019
October 22, 2019
October 23, 2019
October 24, 2019
October 25, 2019
October 26, 2019
October 27, 2019
October 28, 2019
October 29, 2019
October 30, 2019
October 31, 2019

For my daily drawings in October I decided to continue drawing faces, but to increase the challenge a little. Before last June I had always shied away from drawing faces as I found it very intimidating. Last year and again in September, I used other artists’ work as my reference. This made it a little easier as the original drawings or paintings were already artistic interpretations and therefore once removed from realistic representations. The artist had already made decisions about what to keep in and what to leave out, etc. The fact that I could never reproduce the finished drawing or painting accurately didn’t bother me – I was happy if it looked like a face.

In October, it was a real challenge to turn to photographs as reference. Now I had to make my own decisions about how to simplify the visual information in the photos into a line drawing. I continued to use a dip pen and ink in order to avoid getting too precious. Of course, it meant that my accuracy is sacrificed, often resulting in uneven eyes and bizarre proportions – and I’m ok with that. Overall I am pretty pleased with my drawings in October. Some of them are even recognizable as SPECIFIC people.

In November I am leveling up again. This time I am working with photos, but I am going to begin in pencil and then build up both line and tone with a dip pen, a brush and ink washes. It’s all experimental and I’m working to come up with a process that works well for me and provides a result I’m happy with.

I’ve decided to redraw all of the same faces from October to make it a bit more interesting. So far it’s been fun to look at the two drawings of the same face side by side. I’m posting my drawings every day or so on Instagram and will post all of the drawings together in early December.

“I paint German artists whom I admire….

Oct 7, 2019
“I paint German artists whom I admire. I paint their pictures, their work as painters, and their portraits too. But oddly enough, each of these portraits ends up as a picture of a woman with blonde hair. I myself have never been able to work out why this happens.” – Georg Baselitz
September 1, 2019
September 2, 2019
September 3, 2019
September 4, 2019
September 5, 2019
September 6, 2019
September 7, 2019
September 8, 2019
September 9, 2019
September 10, 2019
September 11, 2019
September 12, 2019
September 13, 2019
September 14, 2019
September 15, 2019
September 15, 2019
September 17, 2019
September 18, 2019
September 19, 2019
September 20, 2019
September 21, 2019
September 22, 2019
September 23, 2019
September 24, 2019
September 25, 2019
September 26, 2019

In September I chose to draw faces for my daily drawings project. I restricted myself to a dip pen and ink in order to play with line weight and simplified drawings. My reference material consisted of portraits drawn or painted by some of my favourite artists.

I was trying to create faces, but I wasn’t too concerned if I was creating recognizable drawings of the original artworks; instead, it was more about studying how other artists used various brush or pen strokes to create marks that resemble facial features. In some cases, like the Modigliani faces, they are very stylized and I wanted to understand the simplification process he used. After working like this for a month, I feel like I have only brushed against something that I would like to thoroughly dig into in order to develop my own personal shorthand of strokes to render eyes and noses and profiles. I’ve decided to continue on with this subject matter for October and I will post my results in early November. I will continue to post my drawings most days on Instagram for anyone that wants to see how it’s going.

“The whole culture is telling you to hurry, while the art tells you to take your time. Always listen to the art.” – Junot Diaz

August 6, 2019

My June daily drawings:

Jun 1, 2019
Jun 2, 2019
Jun 3, 2019
Jun 4, 2019
Jun 5, 2019
Jun 6, 2019
Jun 7, 2019
Jun 8, 2019
Jun 9, 2019
Jun 10, 2019
Jun 11, 2019
Jun 12, 2019
Jun 13, 2019
Jun 14, 2019
Jun 15, 2019
Jun 16, 2019
Jun 17, 2019
Jun 18, 2019
Jun 19, 2019
Jun 20, 2019
Jun 21, 2019
Jun 22, 2019
Jun 23, 2019
Jun 24, 2019
Jun 25, 2019
Jun 26, 2019
Jun 27, 2019
Jun 28, 2019
Jun 29, 2019
Jun 30, 2019
This is the third time in the last three years that I’ve spent a month drawing hands and this time around I decided to make sure my hands were always holding something. I chose five different media to use for six consecutive days each, starting with a black pigment pen and then moved to graphite. In these first drawings I was playing around with leaving some parts of the drawing less developed than other parts. Third up was Copic pigment liner with Koi Watercolour Brush Pens. For the last twelve days I worked with India ink and a brush – first on white paper, then on a grey ground for the last six drawings. I like to use the ink mixed with water, creating a series of washes that get darker as I proceed. I added a bit of white to a few of these as well.
Overall, I think the drawings went well and I really enjoyed creating them – even if some are kind of weird (like those odd fingers and the tiny pear on the 19th and the weird boneless hand on the 21st). For a little walk down memory lane, here are my 2018 hand drawings and my 2017 hand drawings. Next year I’ll have to come up with some new variation, but I will definitely return to this subject.

“Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time. – Thomas Merton

June 24, 2019

Nov 13, 2018
Nov 14, 2018
Nov 28, 2018
Nov 29, 2018
Dec 14, 2018
Dec 15, 2018
Dec 16, 2018
Dec 20, 2018
Jan 1, 2019
Jan 7, 2019
Jan 18, 2019
Jan 18, 2019
Feb 4, 2019
Apr 1, 2019
Apr 2, 2019
Apr 4, 2019
Apr 9, 2019
Apr 17, 2019
Apr 18, 2019
Apr 20, 2019
Apr 29, 2019
Jun 4, 2019
Jun 3, 2019
Jun 8, 2019

These drawings are from my sketchbook from late 2018 to earlier this month. Looking back as far as November reminds me of some of the ideas that caught my attention for more than a day or so. One of the reasons that I skip warm-up drawings in my sketchbook – other than a shortage of time – is that I can’t think of anything I want to draw. But when I look back, I don’t find the drawings boring – even when I’m looking at the same stack of white cups drawn over and over. And that is what I love about art – the way it makes normal everyday ‘stuff’ seem interesting again – even if it didn’t seem that way when I was drawing it.