For this, my last class of the Emory oil painting series, our teacher had us paint portraits of each other.  His music of choice this week was Spanish guitar.  I chose the lovely woman across from me.  As a painter, I’m much more subtle and economic than oil painting requires and this predilection is quite apparent in my oil portraiture.  I’m still learning how to throw caution and color to the wind and just push the colors around, experiment.  I am a painter who is used to conservation of paint, of saving every last drop because I don’t know where the next tube is coming from.

But those days are (hopefully) long gone.  And even if they’re not, I can’t really afford to worry about it anymore.

I’m not saving anything for the swim back.

An old high school classmate and fb friend of mine put in a request for me to draw her in one of my NS entries so…here it is.  Next up, color…

In our penultimate session of my short summer oil-painting seminar at Emory, we did a still-life involving glass in order to get the feel of painting things in a manner that displayed reflection and transparency.  Not my strong-suit, I must confess, which means I will be doing thins over and over until I am absolutely perfect at it…

Today, in class, we had a mini-seminar on composition and how the ideas of the day throughout history reflected compositional theory.  Then, our instructor threw on a jazz medley (last week it was opera) and told us to fill up the page with an abstract work.  He told us to avoid referencing any specific thing, to get away from the “tyranny of the object”.  “All we needed to ask ourselves was one thing”, he said.

“What does this surface need next?”

Not what do I want to put in, or what would make it prettier, or what would make it look more like [insert masterpiece here].

“What does it need next?”

It’s a work in progress.  (read:  it’s always a work in progress)

Sometimes, when I’m drawing/painting, something very interesting happens.

I begin with a simple picture:  in my head, from a photo, carefully arranged right in front of me, etc

From this picture, I attempt to replicate and interpret what I see.

However, every time, every single time, there is a fork in the road.  A point in which what I’m painting *stops* being a copy of a subject, and becomes a subject of its own, complete with its own separate stories, nuances, reference points.  In fact, by this stage, I’m barely even looking at the original object, as the two have split so far apart from each other that their relation has become moot.  Everything I need to know about shadows, highlights, color has already been mapped out on the World that has been created on the canvas.

And that tells me all I need to know.

The picture in my head, the original plan was an idea, a beautiful idea.

The finished painting, however, doesn’t look quite like it.

It never does.

It’s either more abstract, darker, more colorful, bigger, more minimalist, less *something*, than I thought it would be.

But it always seems looks *feels* right.

Feels more right than the picture in my head.

And it always makes me smile:  sometimes from joy, sometimes in melancholy, but always with sincerity.

Joseph Vallence Bevan

Spent some time sketching at Colonial Park Cemetery today.  It’s not nearly as elaborate and decadent as Bonaventure, but there’s a certain elegance in its Spartan simplicity.  Placed in the center of historical Savannah, it’s a tiny little nook which nests some of Georgia history’s most prominent figures.

Coincidentally, it also happened to be one of the hottest days of the hottest month of the year in the South.  Having forgotten this, I was so enraptured in my sketching that it wasn’t until I stood up to move onto a new site, that the dehydration caught up with me and my knees went a bit weak.  Walking quickly, albeit wobbly, to the closest shaded area I could find, I stood quietly and breathed slowly, in and out, until the ground below me felt fully horizontal again.

I found this strange sculpture/fountain along River Street and, always making a point to draw or describe things that confuse me, I immediately got to work on sketching it out.  Across the way, a painter was in the middle of one of his colorful oils, an abstract piece that reminded me a bit of Jacob Lawrence‘s work with a dash of Caribbean flair.  On the other side of the sculpture, an extroverted musician sang everything from “You’ve Got What It Takes” to “Purple Rain”, while his flamboyant pal in the violet zuit suit and matching, flashing, neon glasses danced along.

As I sketched, I caught the eye of a friendly gentleman by the name of Chico, a cook at one of the local nearby restaurants.  We chatted, keeping the conversation light and pleasant thanks to a fictional boyfriend I often pull out of my bag of tricks to ward off unwanted romantic overtures.  He was charming and friendly and invited me to stop by the restaurant and say hello whenever I was in town again.  He also offered to show me around and jokingly remarked that he would keep his hands to his side at all times.  I smiled at him sideways and kept drawing.

Our assignment for today was to bring in something small or miniscule to paint enlarged.  Being the procrastinator that I am, I grabbed some stuff off the desk at my day job:  some colorful thumbtacks, a rubber band, a penny, a USB drive and a binder clip.  My teacher felt something more organic would be easier to do in terms of mechanics and improvisation, so he gave me an ocean shell.  I turned it into this oddly shaped thing above.

One thing I worry about for myself is that, while my strength is an elegant line and use of the brush, a smoothness, sometimes I fall back on this very thing in lieu of strong technique or technical accuracy.  Sometimes, the very thing that makes me good can become a crutch, a handicap.

I’ll have to watch out for that.

After a month of sitting in a box in all of its original packaging, I finally wiped the dust off of my brand new scanner and installed it.  Predictably, what should have taken 5 simple minutes actually took 3 hours as I had to install and spend countless time looking for the driver update that matched my OS.  Good times.

But here is my first official scan on my personal scanner (as opposed to Kinko’s or the one at my day job):  a post-it doodle done during yet another conversation in which some person droned on and on about their life while I listened.

Truly, drawing keeps me sane in a decidedly insane world.

Got the keys…can’t find the door.