Drawing: Horse, Rider and Dog Day 1

 

 

Started a new project. It will be a little more complicated than my normal artwork. Usually I have a single subject which I work on in detail or a large overall landscape. This time while I have a subject, it is more complicated than a single object or collection of objects. It is a group portrait?

 

A horse, its rider and a dog. I love the composition. It has something I really love in art, humor.

 

The surface I am using is colourfix paper, from its cool pack, Fresh Grey. This is a pretinted, toothy paper designed for pastels, charcoals, etc. It is good for colored pencil as it is strong enough to allow the use of multiple layers. It allows for blending and burnishing without crushing the paper fibers.  I used a similar surface for my pelican drawing. This surface also takes most paints.

 

This time I am using the paper form, not the board form, in a smaller size. The finished work will be 8 x 10. Maybe a little small for the detail I plan.

 

I did the basic sketch on tracing paper and then used white graphite paper to transfer the drawing to the work surface. Then using erasable colored pencils I blocked in the basic design.

 

Often I will do the base layer in water soluble pencils and then “float” the colors in a wash to lay down the basic design, but decided this time to simply use the eraseables.

 

 

So here we start

So here we start
At the beginning of time?
Back to stone & fire
Grease and dirt
Marks in the sand

Ideas
By gestures & looks
Conveyed

Change from running away
To stalking
Grazing to gathering
Saving and planning

Now we have time.

Destination

Destination

Washed up
Dragged up
Flotsam

Battered & Beaten by life

Scarred
Bruised

No one get out alive!

This is where we Start

This is were we start

With dirty hands scratching in the dirt

Searching

Hunting and gathering eating as we go

With dirty hands~sticky hands

Hunting nuts and berries eating as we go

With dirty sticky hands

They touch hairless arms
And leave a mark

They touch faces
And leave a mark

They laugh
With dirty, sticky hands.

Streams within streams

This is where we start-

Not at the beginning, but somewhere in the middle.

We are born into an existing world to parents who have expectations.

A history of which we are ignorant but must exist in.

We are all born into this pond and struggle to learn its ebbs and flows.

Currents pull us where we don’t understand.

To survive we must learn to chart them, they shape us, determine our values & goals.

~

[This is the first page of the Fiction Project, and the first idea sketch]

The Fiction Project

It is time to ship off my Fiction Project to Art House Gallery in Brooklyn, NY. I am rather anxious about it.

I know it is not such a big deal, but there is so much of me in it, that it feels a lot like walking naked in public, sending this off.

Of course, it has all the necessary evils of a book, the title page, dedication, prologue, and Introduction. All those pages we all skip over!

But here it is, such as it is.

The Fiction Project

The Art House Sketchbook Fiction Project

My new sketchbook project has arrived from Art House. The Fiction project, a sketchbook library, is to marry artwork with fiction. It is a sister project to the previous sketchbook library project, where we did sketchbooks for addition into a library of artist sketchbooks. This project is to be an illustrated narrative. Each artist/writer is given a topic, or theme to use and develop into a work of fiction, with illustrations. The theme can be as closely or loosely followed as desired, but each sketchbook should be 51% literature.

These books are to be part of a permanent collection of sketchbooks, creating a library of them. The public will be able to come and look through them free. What a good resource for new artists and simply people interested in art and literature!

http://arthousecoop.com/projects/fictionproject

These are not really aimed at children, but they can be. Any prose or poetry is acceptable or any combination there of. But quality is what I am aiming at.

I received my sketchbook yesterday, and with it my theme: This is Where We Start.

Now, this is where I start!

Its Gone, the Sketchbook Library Project

The sketchbook is gone. Mailed off today. I have mixed feeling about it. There was so much work and worry into it. I wanted to be true to the idea of a sketch book, a place for taking graphic notes, but also wanted it to be interesting for someone else to look at, which frankly, most sketch books are not.

And they are not supposed to be. The idea is for the artist to make quick sketches, more like notes or visual records of things seen to be used as reference when back in the studio.

Also they are a great way to learn. Because they are quick, you have to locate and record the most important lines and details, reduce what you see to the key lines and images. Because what you are doing is out in public, or plein aire, they have to be quick. Life does not wait for the artist to record it.