The Golfer?

[campsart]

Pen and Ink study for the painting

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"Art is a jealous mistress and if a man has a genius for painting, poetry, music, architecture or philosophy, he makes a bad husband and an ill provider."
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1888), American essayist, critic, and philosopher.

[Gary B]

I admire the work you go through, Camp, before you begin the painting. I just don't have the patience and have to get to colors. But planning is very important unless we "profit from accident" more than perhaps we should.

Great work...Have you ever showed your painting of the child with the dark woodsy background here?...that's awsome. At least I think that was yours I saw on AC Gallery.

Gary

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"First you get you a pen and a ink."

[campsart]

Thanks Gary B. I'll post it here in case you come back by but I don't believe people would appreciate me posting it again in this forum. I posted it here back in February.

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"Art is a jealous mistress and if a man has a genius for painting, poetry, music, architecture or philosophy, he makes a bad husband and an ill provider."
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1888), American essayist, critic, and philosopher.

[Gary B]

Thanks Camp...I love this.

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"First you get you a pen and a ink."

[sandge]

I remember the painting -- not easy to forget as it's so terrific!

I'd be interested to hear more about your drawing technique. It looks like you've used pointellist marks. Do you build up the tones with dots? How do you start?

best wishes
sandra

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http://www.fletcherfineart.com

[campsart]

Originally posted by sandrafletcher:
I remember the painting -- not easy to forget as it's so terrific!

I'd be interested to hear more about your drawing technique. It looks like you've used pointellist marks. Do you build up the tones with dots? How do you start?

best wishes
sandra



Thanks Sandra. I start with a faint outline of the subject, usually done with a hard lead...9h. I just "peck" away with dots creating the values where I see them. If I need a darker value, I place more dots in that area using technical pens or quill. For lighter values I space the dots further and further apart, eventually, utilizing the white of the paper for the lightest of highlights. The nib size I use varies from .18 - .70. For fine detail I use the smaller nibs being careful where I place the dots...pen and ink does not allow much in the way of correction - another reason for initial planning of every little portion that you work on. Speaking of correcting, I can't seem to find a white ink that remains opaque enough to cover over any mistakes and fluid enough to work properly in refillable cartridge pens. Usually, I have to use pen and quill for applying white. The white ink usually turns a very slight "blue" when trying to cover the black ink and this ends up contrasting with the white of the support. This has never caused a problem when reproducing the original into a lithograph because it seems the slight blue hue doesn't get picked up by the reproduction process. I have gotten away, at times, with using anything "abrasive" to sort of "sand" or "pluck" away the mistaken lines or dots. Emory cloth has worked and an xacto knife has come in handy. All in all, it's best if I carefully "think" my way through each area and preplan how I will approach the laying in of dots. Then I have a much cleaner original. As far as people thinking I have the "patience" to complete this type of work, I have to say I use this technique because I'm afraid of the others such as, cross hatching, parallel lines, ink washes, etc. I must confess...sometimes I project the subject onto my support for "speed" sake. Although it makes it easier to capture a more accurate likeness, I'm still very challenged to "free hand" the detail and come up with an accurate likeness. I say for speed sake because I know that I can free hand the subject and be pretty accurate. I started projecting lately on personal "promised" projects like this one so I don't have to sit there and draw, erase, correct and take the time to get it "exactly" right in proportion, etc. I'm backed up with all these "freebies". I prefer to draw totally free hand and do many times in my work. An example, my little late in life girl that is painted in the scene above is totally free handed and worked out on scketch paper, using no projection whatsoever. Once I got the drawing the way I wanted it...then I scanned the large sketch down to a size that would fit the glass on my Artograph projector. I would then project that image onto my canvas, trace out the outline, then freehand in all the detail as I paint. If you were to see the super faint lines that I use, you would still see that I have quite a challenge to make it come up as a true likeness. The faint impression left after projecting doesn't end up looking too much like the subject I started with. I totally free handed my daughter so I wouldn't feel a "twinge" (sp?) of guilt depicting someone I love so much. However, the family cat in the scene? I projected his image to speed things up. Nothing against cats mind you. I just never was as close to him as I was my Brittany Spaniel. I usually keep pen and ink renderings rather small using this technique or I would probably go out or my mind. This image was no bigger than a 5x7. The largest I've ever completed was an 11x17. I thought I would never finish it!!

I'll post a couple of other examples in this forum shortly. Thanks again for asking.

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"Art is a jealous mistress and if a man has a genius for painting, poetry, music, architecture or philosophy, he makes a bad husband and an ill provider."
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1888), American essayist, critic, and philosopher.

[This message has been edited by campsart (edited June 05, 2001).]

[sandge]

Thanks for sharing your working methods. It's really interesting to find out how others approach their work. (Talking of which I have posted a reply about my measuring marks for 15 min life pose (http://www.wetcanvas.com/ubb/Forum12/HTML/001060.html) ).

You've really mastered this technique -- maybe you should try hatching or wash, just so as not to be afraid.

best wishes
sandra

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http://www.fletcherfineart.com

[This message has been edited by sandrafletcher (edited June 06, 2001).]

[campsart]

Thanks for your explantion in the 15 min post my lady! Please consider my posted response there. I promise I will try and overcome my fear of "loosening" up. I have my 19 year old son living with me. He said he would be more than glad to "live" sit for me (Not in the nude of course...HA). I'll need to read up and understand a little more about gesture drawing before I attempt anything. I would be so proud of myself if I could create renderings like yours. I see you as being more "free" in your work than I am. There have been times that I have been so "intense" and tight in my style that I actually sometimes leave a work feeling sore muscles in the arms, neck and back. I don't know the reason except that I must be tense in my attitude. There has to be something wrong with that. I see your standing nude figure as a wonderful work of art that can stand alone as is. Whenever I've attempted that sort of loose expression, I end up feeling as though it's not "finished" and ultimately I end up overworking.

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"Art is a jealous mistress and if a man has a genius for painting, poetry, music, architecture or philosophy, he makes a bad husband and an ill provider."
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1888), American essayist, critic, and philosopher.

[This message has been edited by campsart (edited June 07, 2001).]

[sandge]

You have been talking about loosening up for some time. I think now is the time for action! The trouble is you can draw and it's going to be difficult to let go of the safety net of familiar methods. I have some suggestions for things you could try seperately and together. You've got nothing to lose because you can always just go back to how you were drawing before, so why not just have a go?

1. Get your son to pose but make the poses 1 min or 30 seconds. Use a kitchen timer so as to have an objective count (plus you can concentrate on your drawing without worrying about timing).

2. Do some blind contour drawing. (See http://www.wetcanvas.com/ArtSchool/Drawing/BlindContour/). The difficulty is arranging yourself so you can draw without looking at your paper and are also comfortable. When you have finished and you finally look at what you've drawn, it of course doesn't look realistic. But you should find there is an expressive element to it -- somehow you have captured an essence of the subject.

3. Pick 3 pastels (such as a red, a yellow and a blue) and make a picture with only those. Pastels are great because it's difficult to get intricate detail with them so it keeps you loose. The result should be quite a dramatically colourful picture.

The idea with the above methods is to impose a structure which makes it impossible for you to draw in the way you are used to and they also will not produce 'realistic' results. So you've got to try something new! http://www.wetcanvas.com/ubb/smile.gif

Hope you find these ideas interesting and fun.
best wishes
sandra

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http://www.fletcherfineart.com