Pen and ink drawings

Besides chalk, my favorite drawing material is pen and ink which I use for quick sketching. I draw freehand without preliminary pencil construction lines; I measure by eye alone. I try to ignore the details and just draw the big shapes. The looser and more relaxed my hand is, the faster I can draw. Leaving the tip of the pen on the paper produces loops and squiggles, but saves crucial time trying to capture life’s ephemeral moments. Moving people, expressions, gestures, postures may only be visible for a few minutes or seconds so I have to work fast.  The absolute black of ink provides maximum contrast with the paper's absolute white, accentuating expressive line. There is no substitute for the immediacy and vitality of drawing from life. You can't get that exuberance and spontaneity any other way. I love to draw people wherever I go, especially in planes, airports, subways and trains.

I like pen and ink for quick drawings because ink marks can’t be erased or changed so you can’t dither around - you have to be deliberate and fearless.  It’s also very expressive and flamboyant; the best thing is to just dive in and draw.  Pen and ink are especially useful for croquis drawings, very quick sketches made in just a couple of minutes.  The idea is to ignore the details and draw the fundamental, underlying shapes.  These loose, rapid drawings are meant to capture the gestures.  I like to sketch people in airports, parks and streets; pen and ink are perfect for that.

For ink drawings, I use either reed pens, or a Schaeffer calligraphy pen.  The reed pens are simple dip pens that are practically indestructible - I've had mine for more than forty years. You can use them with India ink, which is the blackest black on earth.  And you can use them with all kinds of funky inks that would clog most pens.  What the heck!  You can even make your own ink and use it with impunity with a reed pen!  The down side of  reed pens is that  it's not always possible to carry around an opened bottle of ink with you, which feels like walking around with a live grenade.  An open bottle of ink isn't welcome in a lot of places, so for those places, I use a Schaeffer calligraphy pen (with the fine point) loaded with a cartridge of black ink.  The ink isn't permanent, nor as black as India ink, but at least you can draw in black ink on the subway or in a restaurant so you don't miss all those free models. Every now and then I use fine Micron pens, but I dislike the uniformity of the line. I switch to Microns if I'm having technical problems in the middle of a drawing I want to finish before the model disappears.

My masonite drawing boards are three sizes:  9 x 12", 11 x 16" and 13 x 15.5."  For ink drawings, I use cheap white copy paper  (8.5 x 11" and 8.5 x 14") clipped to a drawing board, so if  I’ve made an irrevocable mistake in an ink drawing in the first 60 seconds, I just chuck it and start again.  It’s important not to feel intimidated by your materials.

On the other hand, although it's important for an artist to use permanent materials on acid free surfaces, not every drawing has to be archival grade materials. After all, one session of life drawing can produce fifty drawings.  Doing fifty drawings a week (which is a ridiculously small amount) fifty weeks of the year for the last forty years, I've produced over 100,000 drawings. You can't save everything.  When I come up with some good short drawings, I take digital photos, and ultimately the cheap copy paper will go the way of all flesh.

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What just cracked?

Some sculpture packing and loading operations go better than others. A couple of weeks ago, I loaded two sculptures on their way to a show in a museum more than an hour away. First sculpture, a fragile terra-cotta, went into the car fine.  The second, not so much.  The second sculpture is epoxy and bronze, which is pretty indestructible.  Unfortunately, I forgot that since the last time I'd loaded this sculpture into a car, I'd switched cars and my new one has much less cargo space.  So when I shoved the sculpture into the back seat, I jammed it so badly that the arm cracked. Horrified, I got it unwedged from the door, opened the hatch and slid it into the back, jamming it once again, this time against the ceiling, which is lower than my old car. Finally, I managed to get it into position, which I had previously measured to make sure it would fit. I took a deep breath. Due at the museum in a few hours, there was no time to repair and patch the damage properly. So, I rounded up some supplies from the house. I grabbed every temporary repair material I could think of - plaster, clay, epoxy, acrylic, brushes, paper towels, plaster tools, stir sticks and started to drive.  Along the way, I realized that almost none of this repair material was going to be a quick fix that I could do under the critical eyes of museum staff, so I decided to stop by the local Walmart to see what they had. I thought maybe some muffler repair putty would work. Amazingly, in the arts and crafts department, they had a small package of plastalene in five earth colors that must have been geared for diorama makers, because the colors were black, brown, green, tan and white.  I grabbed a package, paid for it and drove.

When I got to the museum, I unloaded the first sculpture and all went well. Before I unloaded the second, I made the mistake of explaining what had happened to the very nice woman receiving work. She was aghast. The more I explained, the more horrified she looked. Obviously not a sculptor. Not everything always works perfectly. I hope for perfection, but I don't expect it. Molds don't separate. Casting materials go bad. Stuff doesn't set correctly. Things blow up. I got the feeling she wasn't an artist of any kind because she was so freaked out. This was obviously not someone who had ever had a day in the studio that looked like a 3 Stooges episode, and I don't know any artists who haven't. What the heck. Accidents happen. Trying to disregard the atmosphere of disbelief and horror, I brought in the damaged sculpture, and showed her what I was talking about. I started smooshing plastalene together to match the epoxy bronze. I filled in the crack, which thankfully was on a sleeve with lots of folds of drapery, and I anchored a couple of places on the base. From a foot away you couldn't even tell there was a repair. I called over the horrified woman and asked her what she thought, and she admitted, "You're right. If you hadn't told me it was there, I never would have seen it."   The museum put the repaired scupture in a glass case that has so many reflections you can barely see the arm, much less see the repair job. This stuff cracks me up.



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Shake it up

I've been agonizing over a sequence of questions for so long that I'm starting to feel like I need some help.  I'm confused about what shows to enter, and what to exhibit, and where, and why.  What I need is a Magic 8 Ball for Artists, to answer questions like, "Should I enter the Blah Blah Blah show?"  or "Should I apply to the "Yada Yada Yada?" No matter who is asking these questions and what it's all about, there are actually only two answers, although the Magic 8 Ball would have to have ten times as many #1 answers as #2:

"Should I enter the National BS Show?"
1.  No.  The juror (or panel of jurors) is an idiot.
2.  Yes.

Of course, one explanation of the incomprehensible choices of jurors in many shows is that the jurors were using a Magic 8 Ball of their own:

"Should I include entry #34?"
1.  No. The artist is a zombie.
2.  Yes.

But there are a whole class of other questions that artists frequently ask:
"Is this (painting, drawing, whatever) a lost cause?"
"Should I bother finishing this?"
"Is this hopelessly out of proportion?" etc.

And these could be answered with a whole lot of cliches:
Try again.
Keep trying.
It's better than you think.
Practice makes perfect.
If at first you don't succeed, shake again.

Altogether, all of an artist's questions could be answered simply, saving the artists' partners, friends and spouses hours of hemming and hawing.  So, what do you think, should I patent this amazing idea?  Drat.  No Magic 8 Ball to give me an answer.


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The fat lady isn't singing yet

American Woman

Last summer, I was cleaning out my studio and hauled out an old sculpture from the closet it had been parked in for more than 20 years. The sculpture is a student work - the first sculpture I ever cast in plaster, in fact. I'd kept it all these years because I really like some things about it. But from one angle it kinda looks like a deoderant check. And there are technical problems.  So, I decided to throw it out. As I put it in the trash can, I wondered, "Is there anything I can do with this besides throw it out?" I remembered an old idea and ideas don't have expiration dates. The idea was one I'd thought of years ago, but had never acted on it. (I have a theory about ideas and actions - there's a 3 minute rule.  Remind me to explain that later.) The idea was to wrap the figure in chains and flowers, sort of a female version of the Laocoon, symbolizing contemporary woman’s struggle with idolization and enslavement over her appearance. The flowers to represent the transitory rewards for a woman’s beauty; the chains to symbolize the trap inherent in the quest for physical beauty and perfection.

So I did it. I pulled the sculpture out of the trash can. I scrounged up some chain, found some little paper roses the right scale, put the whole thing together, and spraypainted it all white. Then I took photos and named it "American Woman." And here's the funny thing. That sculpture from the trash can was accepted in 4 out of 5 things I entered it in. It won an award in the first exhibition, was published in two art and literary magazines, and one publication designated me as a Distinguished Artist. And it was selected to represent my state in a year long online exhibition that's kind of a big deal, Figure50 2016.

After a run of glorious and unexpected successes, of course, "American Woman" got a couple of rejections. Oh well. You can't win them all. I don't know what happens next, but I'm not hearing the fat lady sing.

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