Reading about Creating Art

I have been re-reading Chaim Potok's My Name is Asher Lev.  I have already come across some great quotes that I have tweeted on Twitter.  The first one was this: "I grew up encrusted with led and spectrumed with crayons.  My dearest companions were Eberhard and Crayola.  Washing for meals was a cosmic enterprise" (Potok 6).  We all have our favorite art supplies that we used as a kid.  I still have a penchant for Dixon Ticonderoga pencils, something about the green and yellow color scheme.  At the moment, I will choose the Staedtler Mars Lumograph pencils (blue with a black end) over most any.  Are they any better?  I am honestly not sure, but I like the way they look and how I can pick out my 2B's and 4B's quickly.  I don't like it when the softness is printed on the barrel of the pencil.

Potok also writes,

"Inside my room, I lay on my bed with my eyes closed and thought about the man from Russia.  I saw his face clearly: the nervous eyes, the beaked nose, the pinched features.  That face had lived eleven years in a land of ice and darkness.  I could not imagaine what it was like to live in ice and darkness.  I put my hands over my eyes.  There was his face, very clearly; not truly his face, but the way I felt about his face.  I drew his face inside my head.  I went to my desk and on a piece of blank white paper drew how I felt about his face" (Potok, 41).

I can really relate to this imagery.  I have said myself on this very blog that the drawings I make of myself and of other people are not from life studies.  First, my family, friends, and co-workers might find me a bit suspicious if I just plopped down next to them with a sketchpad, but also, I think there is something about capturing how you envision someone.  I rely heavily on my memory and what I see in my mind's eye.  It's not necessarily my POV as I saw it when it happens.  I often depict myself and another subject from a third person point of view, sometimes drawing things that I could not possibly have seen.

I also tend to use visual markers.  For myself, it's my glasses, my beard, and a swoop to my hair.  Certainly my body type and my typical wearing of either a button down shirt or a T-Shirt come into play, too.  For other people, I do the same, I take inventory of the visual markers.  It could be something they wear (glasses, clothing, etc.) or a hairstyle, or an exaggerated physical feature.  Sometimes I can capture an expression or a singular moment or a genuine likeness, but I am fine with "representing" someone with a caricature or a readable set of codes.  ITEM #1 (GLASSES) + SPECIFIC HAIRSTYLE = PERSON X.  I also liken it to how William Wordsworth characterizes poetry: "the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility."  Emotion recollected in tranquility in artistic form can be quite different than the immediate sketching of a subject.  When I am drawing someone from real life, it can be quite frenetic, eyes darting back and forth, pencil moving back and forth, trying to capture that moment, that likeness.  Erasing, more drawing, more erasing, blending, fine tuning.  Drawing a cartoon of someone or just a general likeness afterwards with the subject absent is much slower, easier, more deliberate yet relaxed.  Neither is a photograph.  Which is more accurate?

The way I look at it, even the most famous portrait by the most famous and skilled painter is still a memory impression of the subject.  No living subject (read: human being) can sit perfectly still.  The light from the sun moves slowly yet constantly on the subject, shifting shadows and highlights.  An errant thought running through the mind of the subject can make subtle shifts in his/her emotional state and therefore how they look, how they are perceived, and what they project to the world.  Therefore, all portraits, all painting depicting something in real life, is sequential.  Light, shadow, the subject, the subject's emotions all change minute by minute and second by second.  One portrait captures an enormity of poses and facets of the subject, which culminates in one "impression."

Pencil and oil pastel on watercolor paper. From life, using a mirror.

"Stylized realism" ink drawing  done from a photograph.

Visual marker-based cartoon depiction of myself (glasses + beard + hair swoop + button down shirt = ME).

Sources: Potok, Chaim.  My Name is Asher Lev.  New York: Anchor, 2003.