Quick Lion Sketch

A couple of little ACEOs

Life Drawing at the Gladstone

I find myself wondering why I feel the need to keep this blog alive.. maybe because closing it seems like it would signify some sort of resignation about Cat-in-a-Box which I'm not prepared to do? It's been a hectic and roller-coaster-ish sort of year and the fact that my art has suffered a backseat through the ride is not shocking or unreasonable given the circumstances. Nor does it mean that my art is dead or without hope. Things are settling down now, and my right brain is quietly asserting it's position again. Fortunately I am better able to hear it than I have been at times in the past.


I am currently living near Toronto. Near enough that I was able to attend life drawing night at the Gladstone Hotel this week. Apparently the Art Bar at the Gladstone has had an ongoing weekly figure drawing meeting since 1957. Going down there took a bit of mental effort on my part. To be perfectly frank, the idea of interjecting myself into a completely new and unknown social situation is nerve-wracking for me. The stress can be alleviated somewhat by knowing exactly what is expected during said situation, however in this case I could find precious little about the life drawing session other than the location, date/time and cover cost (can we say 'stressful' boys and girls?) But life drawing... I LOVE life drawing!



I NEED to sometimes do some structured gesture drawing (is that an oxymoron?). Left to my own devices I know too well what will happen... after a long break in making art I will dive in to a complex scratchboard or something similarly detailed and demanding, I will of course fail miserably because I've been living left-brained for so long, and then I will quail and give up. The left brain will tell me that I have more important things to do anyway, and my right brain will wither and fade. I know this, I know how far this can go, but I also know the solution.



After a hiatus (all the time really, but especially after a hiatus) I need gesture drawing to work the art muscles. I need low expectation, fast paced, right-brain directed activity to loosen up, build confidence, and get the creative juices flowing. The more I do it the less stilted and stiff my work is, and the more I enjoy what I do. My work turns out better and it smooths the pathway for doing the complex and detailed scratchboard. It's like an athlete warming up, in a way.


So armed with the conviction that this was necessary and good for me, I decided that I WAS going to this session. Social anxiety or no. I plotted the location into my iPhone and set off with plenty of time to get there (and a secret plan to scope it out knowing that if it was too much I could always run away and go back home :D). Of course I somehow got the wrong address entered into my phone and spent some confusing minutes wondering if the whole thing was a hoax as I drove around a slightly scary downtown area of Toronto. iPhone to the rescue though, the correct address was found and I arrived... late. Nothing helps the social anxiety of putting oneself into a new situation like showing up late, interrupting the session, and oh... entering through the wrong door.

*sigh*

Yet despite all of that I made myself press on, I went around to the correct door, slid in as quietly as I could, and despite some annoyed looks from a few people the suffering ended there. And what I can say is that the anxiety was well worth it. I arrived in the middle of a pose, quietly took out my art supplies (which were kind of sad since my spectacular organizing skills have resulted in being unable to find most of my dry media stuff since the move) and started sketching. The room was quiet and every five minutes or so the leader would announce the change and the model would reposition herself for the next pose.




I say 'quiet' because there was no talking - there was a background supply of jazz music and the scratching of pencils or occasional swish of a brush in water, but no human speech. There is something about being in a room of a dozen people who are all in right-brain mode. It is out of the ordinary, for my day to day life at least, and it is really, really refreshing. There is no chitchat, almost no interaction, everyone is focused on the model and the page in front of them. Unlike so many other social interactions each person is doing their own thing, being in their own mind, you don't have to measure and weigh what you say, how you look, what the other person is thinking, how they are responding to you. You can sit and enjoy the presence of other humans, sharing an experience, in some ways likely sharing a similar state of mind - and there are no expectations or judgments.





I remember such situations throughout my life fondly - sitting on the periphery of the group, drawing, resting in the right side of my brain where there is no need for speech (indeed, sometimes it's hard to deal with speech when I'm really into the 'right brain'), but also soaking up the energy of people being nearby whether they are engaging each other or, as in the life drawing session, each in their own right-brain world. I wonder if it's an introvert thing, or an art thing. I wonder if other people enjoy that sort of interaction. I have to assume so, but perhaps it's a sign of personal growth that at the end of the day I don't care anymore whether other people do enjoy it - as much as I'd like to know that I share this with someone else, even if I don't it's enough for me to know that I like it.

So one point to the Gladstone, one point to the right brain, and one point to blogging :)

Random day at the Museum...

So here's the first post of my non-art blog. What's it about?

Art.

I am going to choose to ignore the irony of that and push onward.

I am only going to be in Chicago for a limited period of time, and one of my goals this time around is to not repeat my own history of living here for years and not partaking of the city itself. I adamantly do ~not~ have a 'bucket list', because although I love lists, I really don't use them properly. That being said, one thing I ~did~ want to do was take the Metra from the burbs where I live to the City (that's City with a capital 'C' mind you) and go dink around the Chicago Institute of Art.

Going to the museum by myself was awesome, and also interesting. I will ask you this - do you know how you would experience a museum if you were in complete control of the pacing and route? If you do then share it with us in the comments section. If you don't know, I urge you to go by yourself someday and let loose, then observe what you do and report back here!

My pace and pattern can best be described as... erratic.

I had looked at the website in advance and I knew I wanted to see the Arms and Armour exhibit. What? I love fantasy, so sue me. So that's where my feet took me first, straight there without so much as a slow-down for what lay between me and my goal. I was a woman on a mission. It turned out that the Arms and Armour was a bit disappointing - a bunch of polearms and a few suits of armour.

The armour was interesting enough, I found myself wondering how much of the pieces they had were ceremonial or if they truly put that much craftsmanship on every footsoldier destined to have his spleen poked out with a sword.

The polearms were actually fascinating... I recall diagrams from my old D&D books of the different types of polearms, which various male friends actually paid attention to while I was (and am) content to lump them all together as 'sharp bits on long stems for enemy-poking'. I'm sure my husband will not be surprised to read that, but possibly just a tad disappointed (sorry hon!). What I can say, after today, is that a halberd looks like this:


I still don't know if it's just the pretty shape that makes it a halberd, but I guess I am of a peculiar generation that I have to remind myself that these items were used for slaying enemy humans long before they were used to slay orcs.

So the arms and armour section didn't take much time (actually I have no idea how long I stook there sketching.. it could have been hours for all I know). Then I really didn't have a plan.. so I wandered. And when I started wandering with my no-plan I began to just follow my eyes. I stumbled into rooms with italian paintings from the sixteenth century. Well, I love me some Caravaggio.. my eyeballs dragged me from room to room - and that's how I discovered my pace.

After blowing through two or three rooms (man, people walk slow in museums!) I would come across something that piqued my interest and spend 15 minutes studying it. Like "Still-Life with Dead Game Fruits and Vegetables in a Market by Frans Snyders, 1614".


It is huge! I was first was invited into the painting by the very amiable merchant and proceeded to look over his wares, marveling over the textures in the fur and feathers and the handling of light and shadow around the collander on the right. I couldn't help but note that the game was all so clean and pristine and the blood, where present, was very fluid and light red (none of this dark, congealed clotty stuff or other 'liquids' that would in reality have been present). Then I see the cocks fighting. Then oh! There's a sneaky cat looking at me. Clearly he's seen that I spotted him and is watching to see if my eyes move on. Then I spot the pickpocket on the left. Oh cheerful merchant, you will be cursing whatever epithets were appropriate in 1614 when you realize your day's profits have disappeared into thin air!

Though pure morbid fascination caused me to pause my steps to look at several medieval pieces, and appreciation of beauty paused them in some other areas, I wasn't really brought to a halt again until I stumbled upon Jules Adolph Breton's 'The Song of the Lark'. I promptly sat down and sketched:


Now clearly my quick sketch doesn't do justice to the original piece by any means. Sketching the painting was almost a way to commune with it, to really 'see' it. Looking over it inch by inch, paying attention to the proportions even as the repeated viewing helped me to figure out what it was that captivated me.

(Thanks to Art History Daily)

The obvious things - I love the color palette, her pose is lovely and has a spiritual feel to it, and she is beautiful in an unpretentious way.

Then I realized that she is doing something. Later I noted that I was attracted to paintings where the subject is doing something mundane. The heroic poses of the biblical paintings of the renaissance are very intriguing, but this girl walking and singing I liked even more. I was also drawn to Camille Dissaro's 'Woman bathing her feet in a brook' (even if it is impressionist).

Then it occurred to me that the girl is entirely in shadow. The colour palette is muted. The whole thing creates an effect of serenity and quiet. You can almost hear her voice cutting through the soft quiet of predawn with the first birdsong of the day. I more often encounter this time of day when I stay up way too late than actually getting up early, but that does not make me appreciate it any less.

And finally I realized that the rising sun, painted in almost fluorescent colours, draws your attention to the upper left of the painting which causes you to see her face in your peripheral vision. I wonder if that was intentional? Using averted vision to see the low contrast of the subject differently?

I'm probably reading more into it than necessary. But suffice it to say, I enjoyed sitting with one painting for the better part of an hour much more than I would have dividing that time among many other works that didn't intrigue me as much. I also have a new artist to add to my favorite list and will have to look over the rest of his stuff.

I was getting a bit tired by that point though. After some aimless wandering through the impressionists (beautiful, yes, but just not my cup of tea). I was kind of lost and stumbled into the Alsdorf Galleries containing a collection of Indian, Southeast Asian and Himalayan art. I didn't really have any intention of doing more sketching at all, except that Ganesha called to me.

This was an Indonesian sculpture of the God, and the serenity of his face is what made me pause. Then after looking at it a few minutes I had to sketch it. And as I started sketching I read the plaque that identified Ganesha as the 'Remover of Obstacles'. Well hot damn! I do have a few obstacles that need removing. He is also the Lord of Beginnings. This just gets better and better.

Here is my meagre homage to Ganesha:

So overall this was a very pleasing day. I figure it's a good thing this isn't an art blog anymore. It's nice to explore 'other things' :)

~ Pam