Rivalry

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I started out on art early. I started drawing when I was young and kept on drawing until, well, I guess I never stopped. When I went off to High School I was one of the art kids. I spent an unusually large amount of time in the art room and drawing in study hall. I also played sports and was involved in a lot of other activities. Art was my main squeeze.

Being top dog in the art department meant I was asked to submit and participate in a lot of contests. I held a lot of disdain toward art contests, still do, and yet entered them, I still do that too. I may have been one of the top artists at my high school but I went up against this girl from our rival high school during every competition. We’ll call her Mary*. Mary was from a rich family in the town next to mine, her dad was a professor or something like that, and she went to art camp, got to take classes at the local college and played sports. No matter what I did I always came in second place to Mary, except when we played softball. Defeating her on the softball field was nothing compared to losing to her in every art contest I entered.
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After 2 years of competing against her I gave up. I stopped entering contests, declaring them rigged politically in her favor. I actually told my art teacher this on multiple occasions. She always asked how I was jaded so young. The truth though was that Mary was a pretty good artist. She used color well and had been able to spend a lot of time working on her craft with some really great instructors. Mary was a hard person to have as a nemesis because she was also really nice.**
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Our Senior year we had a group art show and our two schools were scheduled to be at the gallery at the same time. My friends and I were somewhat ambivalent and yet excited to have our work hanging in the local college’s gallery. It was a big deal. Somehow, Mary and I ended up working in the same room together and I got to see her work ethic up close. She was deliberate and careful, measuring her art carefully, hanging it perfectly. My friends and I used two tacks, cord and a level to give us a baseline for our art. Our teacher letting us run the show. Ours looked good, Mary’s and her classmates looked better.***
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What set Mary apart from teenage me was her work ethic toward art. While I worked moderately hard at art, I focused most of my attention on my other studies. Which assured me a scholarship to school but, I think, was detrimental to me as an artist.

Now that it’s been nearly 20 years since I got out of high school I realize I was jealous of all of the opportunities Mary had because her family was well off. I also see now that my hard work has paid off for me as an artist and as a person. I’m still making art, what is Mary doing? According to the town paper I read on one of my visits to my parent’s place, Mary is now a successful graphic designer.**** Now that we’re all grown up we both win, we’re both doing something we enjoy. Honestly, I'm really happy for her.

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Drawing a Line

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I draw a lot of people in public places. I try to not stare, glancing here and there not making eye contact, my gaze never resting on them but for a few moments. I work in places where it’s busy, I chose these locations so I blend in and people are less likely to notice me.  I prefer to draw people who are otherwise occupied with their computer, cellphone, digital contraption or books. They stay still longer than people who are talking and interacting. I don’t usually make people uncomfortable. It’s rare I get made as I’m sketching someone. Occasionally an observant student will spot me but the average person, not so much.

Saturday I wandered into my usual watering hole looking for a few faces to sketch for my thank you ATCs. I did a few failures as people moved around a lot and the place was quieter than usual. A couple walked in and I did my typical assessment for sketching. It was clear that the woman was incredibly ill; her gait was slow and deliberate, a wig covered her scalp, limbs too thin through her sweater, and her partner’s nervous look as she walked alone to the table.

As she sat down she noticed me looking. I admit more than anything I wanted to draw her. The contours of her face and eyes were the most interesting that had come into the cafe since I’d been sitting there. I could tell my momentary glances were making her uncomfortable.

I stopped.

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I look at my drawing people in public places as a sort of personal journalism but I could not justify adding to this woman’s pain. Clearly she could feel my momentary glances at her, no matter how I hid them as if I were sketching the cafe tables or my cup of coffee. Perhaps she was hypersensitive to people looking at her perhaps I was less delicate than usual. Whatever it was, I couldn’t nor can I justify making someone in pain more  uncomfortable.

At some point we must draw the line.

Days of Art

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The last few days have been days of art. I’ve been soaking them up and putting them into the reserve to carry me through the next few months. I’m headed back to the DayJob on Monday so I can continue to fund my art activities. The last few days have been nothing short of glorious. It doesn’t get much better than spending days off of the DayJob making art.

I’ve been banging out the thank you ATCs for the ArtJournaling.ning.com sponsors,  I’m 24 into the total of 34. Only 10 left. I’m pretty excited about getting them done so timely. I think I can get another 5 or so done today.

I spent Saturday doing my usual art visit with Jane in Salem.We talked about Put it on Paper, our reviews we’ll be doing, updates on the articles for the next issue and things we’ll be doing on the blog. Pretty exciting stuff. Then we spent the rest of the AM drawing around Salem. I also stopped to snap a lot of pics along the way.

In the afternoon, I switched lenses and C and I wandered up to Atomic for some iced caffeinated goodness and then went to sit in the Common. We stumbled upon [space] having an interactive still life. They invited us to sit down and participate, so I did. Now that I’m 10+ years out of college it was a blast listening to the art school kids talk art. I haven’t heard so much art speak in one place since 1998. It was particularly enjoyable to sit down and sketch an everything and the kitchen sink still life, since I haven’t done that since drawing 1. I should have moved around the still life more and tried a few different angles, I really wanted to draw this parrot sculpture again, but instead stuck to my spot and continued on making muddy sketches. It was fun.

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The vintage 28-50mm Magnum lens performed really well today when I was in Salem. I picked up a lcd viewfinder  so I could focus the manual lenses in harsh light and it made all the difference in using my vintage manual lenses. Where I was unable to get a sharp focus before I did this time. Perfectly sharp. The Star-d 28mm lens(rebranded vivitar) gives me fits in harsh light. I need to get a lens hood. It completely flairs out and I end up with washed out image. I don’t even get good flair with it, just washed out images. So aggravating. But when it was good it was really good.

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magnum lens

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star-d lens

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Fiddle Jam

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On the first and third friday of every month the cafe that I frequent has live traditional music featuring fiddles, banjos, and guitars. The lineup of musicians changes from session to session and they don’t have a list of songs they play, instead they chit chat and play stuff that comes to mind. It’s spontaneous and free flowing music. It’s really cool to watch a bunch of really good musicians jam together. I did a few good drawings but mostly they weren’t very good. Mostly though I simply had a good time drawing and sketching.

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Antithesis of Athletic

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For the last few weeks I’ve been walking a lot. In the summer I walk around town as a matter of habit, it’s nice out and pleasant to walk to the cafe for an iced coffee. Naturally, my walking increases. My doctor said to me during my last visit, “Have you considered walking?” Which I think is a funny way to say to me, “Hey tubby, you need to lose a few pounds and get your blood pressure down, so you know you should walk.” So I’ve increased my usual walks from short pleasant walks to longer less pleasant walks, especially with the heat we’ve been having.

One of the side effects of these walks is that my feet have been hurting because I’ve been walking in my usual shoes; chuck taylors, doc martins and the like. I haven’t had true athletic shoes in a very very long time. So last night I ventured into a big box shoe store and looked for womens’ sneakers that were black with no neon colors or pink, pale purple, or baby blue. Pretty much an impossible task. I found 4 out of 500 pairs of sneakers that were not garish in color.

I am tempted to go on a long tirade about how some women would like plain black sneakers or even black and white without the addition of neon colors, but I think that’s a tirade for another day.

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As I tie these sneakers to my feet I feel like a big fat fraud. I used to be pretty athletic. I used to run, mountain bike and a lot of those athletic things. At some point I ran out of time. When I lace these shoes up it doesn’t feel right, like I'm a fraud. I know I’m not going to do the things these sneakers are suggested for like running or whatever course work is. Instead I’m going to be walking around my city with a camera around my neck, a sketchbook in my bag, and an eye out for interesting things. Pretty much the antithesis of athletic. I took them for a short spin last night and found them to be perfectly comfortable and lovely to wear. IMG_4407
I ended up with navy blue sneakers with a small hint of bright neon blue. I opted for these knowing that in a few short walks I’ll have them dirtied up to being unrecognizably colored.

Cards Full of Faces

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I wanted to show you some of the progress I’m making on the thank you ATC. I’m (as of this writing) on card number 19. I’ve stumbled into some great images in the Flickr Commons of Civil War era people. The great thing about that era is the mustaches on the dudes. There are some seriously awesome mustaches in those archives. The other things that is interesting is the contrast in women’s hair styles, some are completely severe and look like they hurt and others have some unkempt hair.

The interesting thing in the photographs is how washed out many of them are, as if proper lighting wasn’t thought of, or they were purposefully over exposed to hide some wrinkles and other imperfections. The overexposure of much of the face leaves the viewer with sharp contrast around the eyes and clear views of crow’s feet. I really love drawing from these images.

So here you have cards 16 through 19:
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I also wanted to show you the business end of the Uniball Signo Bit 0.18 pen I’m using to start most of these images. It’s so small my camera had a really hard time focusing on it. I put my uni kuru toga in the pic to give you a reference of the size of that tip. The kuru toga is a 0.5 tip. The Signo Bit is a 0.18. It’s tiny and allows me to get miniscule hair thin lines. It’s also waterproof and lightfast. It’s not quite as dark a black as the Signo Bit pens but for a micro tip pen it’s pretty great. I highly recommend this pen to anyone who wants a micro tipped pen to throw in their sketching bag. (You can get it at Jetpens as well as refills!)

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Supported

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Well it’s been a crazy few weeks here in Comfortable Shoes Studio. A few weeks back I had car troubles and it completely depleted my reserves. It came as quite a shock when Ning sent me the email telling me that the yearly fee was coming due soon. Now, I know that the fee is due in the last week of July, it’s an every year sort of thing. It’s also one of those things I set out of my mind, especially when things are rough. So I paid for the brake system on one car and then the muffler on the other and didn’t think of poor Ning.

Like many people, I live paycheck to paycheck with a small reserve of funds built up over time. In fact I had been doing pretty well, I had cashed in my stock options, bought a shiny new computer and video camera and paid a bill or two. Needless to say I had a little buyer’s remorse when both cars decided to break down at once. So when that Ning bill came up as due soon, I decided to do my usual funding drive, but unlike most years where I ask for part of the fee, I asked the members for as much of it as we could get.

The outpouring of support, kind emails, and love of the group has been overwhelming and has on more than one occasion brought tears to my eyes. The members of Artjournaling.ning.com are the best in the world. I received donations from Germany, Australia, Canada, South America, England, and South Africa. I closed donations as soon as we hit the amount needed to pay the fee. After I closed the doors, people still wanted to donate, they sent in tips via the tip jar in the Challenge group. I got many more emails, again positive about the group.

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It was simply overwhelming. We raised the full fee in 18 hours.

I’ve received a few extra donations and I’m finding a way to sink that into the site. I decided straight away that the first thing I’d do to thank everyone who donated was send them a handwritten thank you note. After we reached the funding goal in 18 hours I wanted to do something a little more, so I decided I could fit an ATC into each envelope. I cut a bunch of ATC from some nice watercolor paper grabbed my pens and set to work.
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I thought that the ATC size would be a fast way to get everyone a small token of thanks. Heh. Heh. Heh. It is small, I’m working with smaller pens- Uniball Signo Bit 0.18 and Signo DX 0.28 in black with a wash of watercolor. These pens are tiny and I decided to stretch my artistic muscles by doing tiny little portraits. It took me a few cards to get accustomed to the ATC size but now I’m 13 cards into making a set of 34. Each card is taking much longer to complete than I had expected. Though I’ve shrunk the size of the portraits down I have not shrunk the time of creation down. Each of the ATC takes as long as a 5×7 inch portrait to create. So I’m spending anywhere from 15 to 45 minutes on each card. I was planning on spending a mere 15 min per card, but working with micro tips simply doesn’t allow me to speed the process up. If anyone ever tells you ATC are easy, they are totally wrong.
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I’ve done some of the cards from life while sitting in Atomic Cafe and sipping an iced Americano, the rest have been drawn from images in the Flickr Commons. I’ve been giving my own spin to each image. I’m enjoying the process even if it was unexpected.