and around

Researching the novel, I have been reading Wei Jingsheng's astonishing letters. Which include his letters to Hu Yaobang in the early 1980s... delivered or not at the time, they will have been received in the novel, they will be discussed, as the liberal minded leaders n Beijing struggle with the ideal and the possible, between dinosaurs and impatient reformers. Informed by He Yuhuai's wonderful Dictionary of Political Thought of the People's Republic of China, plus my knowledge of the Hu Yaobang and Hu Qili... albeit knowing so little at the time of what they were doing behind the scenes.

Drawing remains an important balance, a mental diversion. I recall hearing the incomparable Joni Mitchell say she needed a second art form (painting plus poetry, she said: perhaps, just perhaps, she has three?) for balance and creative energy. And drawing requires some courage, the plunging in is like the plunging into fiction.

I have a dislike of the rigidities of rectangles, hence some preference along the way for painting objects. But having some time ago picked up in someone's kerbside chuckout in Sydney (how to furnish your house well and interestingly for cost of travel) about 20 old canvases, I have just done a life-size drawing over three canvases, something of a triptych, not a rectangle, nor separation between the canvases. The textures of the three canvases differ and thus the mood of the three parts, impacting on the three figures. In total about 150cm wide, 135 high.

Fun, light relief...Title is:

"No, he's not here, but we're looking for a soprano"

charcoal start to two new works

These works will probably remain charcoal sketchy with wash. I am really more happy drawing than painting.

Life is freely expressed in sketch lines and shades.

For me, when painting on from such a start, there becomes a need to work out the balance between the literal and artifice... with concern to avoid artiness and obscurantism. Involving a lot of thought about process... and all that becomes contrived, somehow, too much thought. Also the drawings take just moments or minutes, or a number of moments, after taking the eyes away for a time.

People have done various humorous things with the label of the old record company HMV ("His Master's Voice", including of Gromit from Wallace and Gromit and by the wonderful Michael Sowa (with whom the devil - or the cat in this case - is in the detail.

The original 'Little Nipper'

Gromit

 

Michael Sowa's vision

Now I offer:

His Mistress's Poise  draft at 7 May 2012, charcoal sketch on acrylic on canvas 76x84cm

and ...

This second new work is just a ghost of an idea on a large canvas, but when to stop?

Already she asks 'Are you going to stop now?'

These drawings begin to talk.

Hopefully the characters in the novel will be talking again soon. I have to create for my female protagonist the office of General Secretary Hu Yaobang in the 1980s with whom and with Hu Qili I was privileged to spend quite a lot of time, though I knew so little of their lives or struggles at the time.. This is a gold mine for understanding the period, the history of ideas and debates, as also this is important.


For I am a Minimalist Girl draft 7 May 2012, charcoal on acrylic on canvas, 48x113cm
apologies for the bad lighting.

(These are both on large canvases (old, found canvases, painted over). So much more lively to work in a large space, it reduces my distaste for fitting the world into a two dimensional rectangle)

life drawing

One of the riddles for me about life drawing is that while there is much to be achieved in drawing the nude form, and much beauty to portray - in anyone - the hands and feet, the head and face are critically important. I find that I don't get it, don't begin to draw the person well, without coming to terms with their character as revealed in their face or the excruciating difficulty of drawing a person's hands or feet.

I have been copping out, in a way, by using conté crayons, much like charcoal but less mess on the floor, allowing you to fuzz up and erase. Last week I could not find my box of tricky drawing stuff so I went out with paper and B4 pencil and discovered that I could find lines and could show light and shade and also, I think, mood.

The model was young and appropriately apprehensive, modelling for the first time. I could not quite catch the broad softness (and underlying strength) of a young face but I did catch her mood, I think. Her eyes - deep, dark, large - were almost constantly on the move and she chewed the inside of her lip, a full lower lip with a ring in it. How to represent the restless energy and emotion of such movement?

I am also trying not just to draw known features but light and shade, to approach minimalism.

Huh! When I edit this blog entry, Google (as it does with gmail) displays ads like "How to draw eyes." I remain happily uninstructed. I am attending a life drawing group, not a class. There is a freedom in being uninstructed. I do not know how I draw what I draw. I am constantly surprised at things that appear in front of me. If the artist does not know what he is doing (as Fellini maintained and I agree) do I want someone to tell me her/his ideas of what I am or should be doing? Much of the value, for me, in drawing, is in the struggle to produce: the birthing process, as well as the surprising baby. So exciting to discover this emerging on the page...

This is one of four drawings from a 15 minute pose. 15 minutes is a huge length of time when you look for the essence... and it's a huge time if you want to muck something up, not knowing when to stop.

update

The kitchen bench was finished.

The writing remains on hold, physical problems writing/typing.

Some valuable life drawing, very meditative experience and pleased with these my first results, improving, wanting to work also on details and abstraction of light and shade after assuring myself of basic drawing skill. See below.

First, though, the kitchen bench with stove working well, bench constructed from ancient timber slab washed up by flood, also some paulownia slab, rot gaps filled with water-based putty coloured with red pigment, seven coats Estapol gloss varnish finish, some acrylic metallic colours added along the way. Painted (irises) bread maker behind.

Life drawing sketches, with conté on paper

26 May 2011

16 June 2011

9 June 2011

16 June 2011, trying especially to deal with strong shadows

back to table size

I had been trying to understand how to combine light and dark and also physiology and form in painting with acrylic, back mid year. There is an image here showing a photo from the internet and small charcoal drawing [A4] and washy attempt at rendering it with acrylic. I hung this up for some weeks as a lesson to myself, to study, repent, revise... but rather than revise the same - I was getting bored with the look of it anyway - I took this door (120cm x 78cm) back to rough white acrylic undercoat (interior house paint, the base of everything I do) and last Tuesday, while awaiting the arrival of my local Berry Writers' Group, I painted "Waiting for the Rain on Tuesday 6 October 2009". Violent rain and thunder and lightning arrived as I finished. Very pleased with the listless calm and preoccupation in the picture. You will see a slight Caribbean influence, I had been reading the web site of Nalo Hopkinson. It looks like my work will have one continuing factor, of being done very quickly. This may define media I use. There is a current preoccupation with the female form, the highest form of geography in my opinion. It is also a form that it seems one must paint, must acquire competence to paint, or nothing. Later maybe who knows what... but also sensuality will be a constant, I expect.

work above experiment in understanding light and dark and form

painted over as below

acrylic above,

charcoal on acrylic on 120cm x 78cm plywood

click image to enlarge, use the back button to return

modestly drawing from marble image

In January 2009 Clare Vivian had taken me for a walk around the Abbotsford Convent in Melbourne, where we spent some time admiring the Venus de Milo-like figure of Rosina, in the nunnery courtyard... one could speculate on the role of such a figure in such a place in former times, with generations of nuns passing by... it was an opportunity to photograph and sketch. Light and shade and more difficulty with face than else. As with the writing, one thing to tell a story, another to define and build characters.

To Drawing Group

I spent a little time late 2008 in a drawing group, getting some basics of charcoal and conte crayon, teaching myself largely, in the company of others.

to begin at the beginning

Drawing at Crams Road with Ruth, December 2008. Looking down at Ruth drawing, when two teenage boys hastened by to dive into the river, one after the other.