Comic books and bedtime snacks
After a busy semester teaching, I am faced with the realization that I have not updated this page for a while. Months, actually. I have been busy teaching a bunch of art and design courses, my kids are all in school and there seems to be a never-ending, growing list of things to do.
With all of this, it seems like my art stuff has taken a firm back seat and won’t be budging for a while. I’ve stopped waiting for a huge block of time to start new work. I take the time that I have and find something special in quiet, everyday moments. The sketching happens sometimes in weird places, like piano lessons and the hospital.
I just finished my lovely moleskin sketchbook. It’s the end of the year and it feels like new things are ahead. Or more of the same. I can’t tell yet.
the white bed.
My favourite things this week: fluorescent paint and graphite on mylar.
tronies.
My work focuses on memory and collective experience. The photographs and video stills I take act as a starting point from which I extract part of an image. Using an eraser, parts of the image are blurred or sometimes completely obliterated. Like memory, what remains is often imprecise.
A traditional portrait, according to R.H. Fuchs, “is not just a likeness of an individual to be preserved for posterity; it was also an image of pride, a projection of social position.” By contrast, a tronie was traditionally a painting of a person who was not intended to be identified. Artists were often free to focus on the facial features of the person sitting – knowing it was not a commissioned portrait allowed some freedom in interpreting the sitter’s facial features and expressions.
My recent works on mylar have been inspired by tronies. Unlike traditional portraits, where the likeness and identity of the sitter is paramount, the person portrayed in a tronie was not intended to be identified. It is this ambiguity of the subject that interests me.
kids watching TV make great models.
Yep, it’s true. They sit like statues when the TV is on.
self portrait
It’s rather cool and windy today, so I’m not inclined to sketch outdoors. Without a model on hand, I thought I would draw myself in my sketchbook. This sidelong view of myself is one I have drawn many times – in art school, I often drew and painted myself at home (again, no model). It’s an interesting exercise to sit and observe one’s face objectively in the mirror. It’s been many years since I was in art school, and my face has changed in that time. I am older, more tired. But age and imperfections don’t seem to matter as much when one is drawing - one aims to capture the likeness and the mood of the sitter.
more playgrounds.
It’s summer, and I have young kids, which means I spend a lot of time in playgrounds. On Monday morning, my youngest and I hung out at East Lynn while waiting to pick up the middle child in kindergarten. I like to go early, when the sun is not too hot, the shadows are long, and kids are still relatively chipper. East Lynn Park is a favourite for the young ones, especially on Thursdays when the Farmer’s Market is here. This part of Toronto’s east end has lots of great stuff going on, from the market to craft shows - check it out here.
everything’s coming up roses
I filled my last sketchbook when in France, so I’ve bought myself one of the moleskin watercolour ones. At about 8″ x 5″, it’s much more portable than the last one I was using (9″x12″. not so portable.) I am fond of spiral sketchbooks, so this one is a bit of a departure from what I’ve used before. It’s nice as you can span 2 pages, which is hard to do in a spiral-bound book.
Now that I’m back and settled here in a regular routine, stuff keeps getting in the way of my regular drawing time. I’ve tried getting up earlier to find some quiet moments to myself (rose sketch #1 was done at 6am on a Saturday morning). I’ve enjoyed drawing from observation lately, instead of from photographs, which means the subject material is changing.
And so I’m drawing roses. There is a lovely rosebush right outside our house. We have been in this house for 11 years. I have never really done anything to the rosebush. Sometimes I cut it back, sometimes not. And every year, it produces tons of beautiful roses. It needs very little attention to flourish.
I wish I could say the same of one’s creative life. When not nurtured, this part of one’s life can shrink to almost nothing. And so, for the time being, I’ll be getting up early or trying to find a few minutes in the day to draw and take some time for myself.
For my father
Today is Father’s Day. My dad doesn’t live in Toronto, so I’m not able to see him today, and I find myself looking through old photo albums. I have many more recent photos of my dad, but I’ve always liked this one of me and my dad and my twin sister. It was taken over 20 years ago at a train station in Ottawa. My twin was going to Toronto for most of the summer to study dance (I remember that I missed her terribly). I have this photo in an album, so I first attempted to take a photo of the photo. This strange, blurry image, which I really like, is the result. I later scanned it on my flatbed scanner and got a better likeness of all of us, but this image still intriques me. The identity of the people is not clear. I love the ambiguity of the shot. If one doesn’t know the story, I’m curious as to how one would perceive this image.
back to heads
I’ve returned to one of my favourite subjects – heads. They are not portraits; the identity of the sitter is not important. This is the most successful one I did this week. I’m trying to keep them loose and not focus too much on details.
my sketchbook from France
I’ve just returned from France and thought I would share some of the work from my sketchbook.
I recently bought Dan Gregory’s book, ‘An Illustrated Life’, which is a compilation of artists’ sketchbooks. Reading how other artists and designers use their sketchbooks has motivated me to draw more often and experiment a bit more in different media.
