Category Archives: Drawing

Side B: Black & White

And now for the flip side of last time’s color-centric post.

The learning continues, thanks to Summer’s slower pace. This month I’ve found myself taking a bit of a detour to focus on composition and value.
My impetus was a Substack entry from Urban Sketcher Suhita Shirodkar, linking to an Ian Roberts’ video about working outside your comfort zone. Watching it reminded me that I have a terrific book Roberts wrote called Mastering Composition. I pulled it out to flip through again and decided to take a stab at his “composition a day” exercise. Refreshers never hurt.

Ian Roberts Mastering Composition

My sole tool has been an HB graphite pencil, making value an integral part of each composition. Repetitively sketching this way for a couple of weeks has made it glaringly obvious the degree to which I gravitate toward, and get caught within, a middle range of values. It’s clear I need to concentrate on pushing for darker darks and blacker blacks.

As an experiment, I converted images of my latest life paintings to black & white in Photoshop. It confirmed, as you can see below, that I need to pay closer attention to my values.

On the bright side, even if this is the only thing I learn this summer, I will consider the season a success.

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My latest art-related treat has been watching videos by artists Sandi Hester and Frances Ives who cover various aspects of their practices on YouTube and Patreon. One of the aspects I most enjoy is they each spend a fair amount of time talking about, experimenting with and swatching new materials, taking a deep dive into the differences between brands and applications.

A screenshot of Sandi Hester’s video “Favorite Color Pencils & Markers”

Regular hauls from Blick and Jackson’s (the UK equivalent to Blick) include all sorts of goodies. I fully acknowledge that for most, watching someone swatch a couple of fistfuls of colored pencils while elaborating on their minute differences might feel akin to joining Edmond Dantès at Chateau d’If (can you tell I’m reading The Count of Monte Cristo this summer?). But for this art nerd, it’s indescribably entertaining. I’m all for learning about the specific details and layering possibilities of unfamiliar materials before buying.
Needless to say, I just placed an order with Blick last weekend.

Consolation Though Art

It’s been a rough week.
And while this is not the place to outline my opinions regarding the crushing Supreme Court decision on Roe, it would be disingenuous for me to blithely write this post as though nothing had happened.

I give this book 5 stars

It often seems that when something sets me reeling, I’ll come across an idea or a sentence in whatever I happen to be currently reading – even if completely unrelated – which points me back to at least a small sense of balance. This has proven true even when regaining my full bearings seems impossible. John Green’s 2021 book The Anthropocene Reviewed has been such an anchor this week.

Yellow Tanktop ©2022 Elizabeth Fram, Ink and watercolor on paper, 8.5 x 11 inches. My thoughts this week have been with the women of this country who will no longer have access to the care that should be their right.

In a series of essays that review a variety of diverse themes on a five-star scale, Green invokes our shared humanity via this quasi memoir that covers such eclectic subjects as “Scratch ‘n’ Sniff Stickers”, “Air Conditioning” and “Diet Dr Pepper”. In times of distress it’s helpful to be reminded that one can find unexpected significance and empathy in the ordinary. Perhaps most appropriate to where I’m going with this post is Green’s essay entitled “Hiroyuki Doi’s Circle Drawings”. It speaks to the consolation of making art.

Doi at work, Photo by Edward M. Gómez, accompanying his article about Doi on Hyperallergic

Addressing Doi’s obsessive abstract drawings, composed of thousands of circles and begun in response to the death of his brother, Green relates that Doi retreated to the act of drawing and the comfort of repetitive mark-making to find relief from his grief.

Creative work often brings one into a “flow state”, inducing a sense of being or, as Green comments, “a present tense that actually feels present”. He writes about this phenomenon in relation not just to Doi’s drawings, but also to the 150,000 hand-written signatures he supplied to his publisher to be bound into copies of one of his books (including my library copy above). He quotes Doi as saying, “I feel calm when I’m drawing”.

I have also found this to be true, and will add that it’s proving a viable means for confronting the shocking reality of American women in the 21st century being stripped of their reproductive rights and autonomy.

While the painted drawings I’ve worked on this past week haven’t softened last Friday’s blow, they have offered a space of gentle reprieve. My work is the closest thing I’ve found to a respite from my anger and despair. Ironically, the flow state that accompanies creative work appears to be a direct route to the end goal of so many meditation apps that reside on our phones. I guess I prefer to find my solace through a needle and thread or via an ink pen and a box of paints.

Know someone who needs help? Here’s a list of resources.
~ with thanks to @owasowfoundphotos via @gollyokate

Head Games

Beginning to feel like I had hit a wall this spring, and hoping to make some headway (no pun intended), I signed up for an online drawing anatomy class through Sktchy in March.

@2021 Elizabeth Fram

This particular course concentrates specifically on the head. It is divided into separate lessons that go over the skeletal and muscular systems of each feature (eyes, nose, mouth & ears), the skull, and surface anatomy. The teacher is a medical illustrator who covers the material in great detail, referencing her own layered and labeled drawings using Procreate. She draws simultaneously as she explains each feature.

@2021 Elizabeth Fram

Every lesson is followed by a real-time portrait study/demonstration reiterating what we just learned. I’ve found it helpful to draw along with her, listening as I work. I seem to absorb the info much better that way.

@2021 Elizabeth Fram

How often do we really look at the faces of those we know and love? The human face is such a rich landscape of information. With other subjects my focus often shifts back and forth between recognizably portraying the object(s) and sliding into an abstraction of shapes and placement. But every time I draw a face I can’t help but get lost in the details. Empathy is always looking over my shoulder, reminding me of the potential depths lying beneath the surface and the ever-present similarities in our differences.

If you’re interested, the class is “Drawing Anatomy with Tiffany S. DaVanzo: Learn How to Draw the Human Face from the Inside Out”. Most of the lessons are between 30-45 minutes long.
As an aside, she really knows her way around the Procreate program, which was fascinating to watch in and of itself. Yikes – another rabbit hole one could very easily drop into and become lost within! I know some of you must have experience with Procreate. I’d love to hear your thoughts – pro or con – and how you rate the size of the learning curve.

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As you might imagine, I have quite a variety of sketchbooks, each with its own advantages and disadvantages. For the drawings shown here, I’ve been using an 8.5″ x 11″ Crescent RendR. I like the size — big enough to not feel constrained, but not so large as to be unwieldy. It has a soft cover, so is relatively lightweight, and the paper is very smooth, similar to hot press. It is advertised as “no show thru”, meaning that ink of any sort won’t bleed through to the back side of a page. My Tombow pens have proven that to be true. Since I’ve been using graphite with these drawings, I’m much more interested in the smooth surface, the heft of each page and the fact that a kneadable eraser removes lines cleanly and without any surface abrasion. The one caveat is the paper has a slight grey cast, which I think is due to whatever it is that makes it “no show thru”. Because of this, photos of drawings made with a hard lead can appear under-exposed. That doesn’t seem to be an issue with scanning — although you can definitely see the cool slant of the paper in the images above. All in all, the advantages win out over that one downside, so I’m happily filling up the pages of my book.

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My Instagram share this week also falls in the portrait drawing arena.
I’m always captivated by the gestural and complicated work of Graceina Samosir who packs a lot of punch and information into every drawing. @graceinasamosir

Down The Rabbit Hole

In looking for new subjects to draw, I’ve been seeking out photos of my artistic heroes. With very little effort, one can find some pretty remarkable images online.

Admittedly, searching in this way can become a bit of a rabbit hole if you aren’t careful. It’s easy to get caught up in unanticipated articles and links. Yet perusing these old photos also offers a tiny peek into the person behind the giant — a touchstone more intimate than critical essays and curatorial art-speak can offer.

As far as practicing my drawing is concerned, the fact that the majority of these resources are black and white plays to my advantage. Their lack of color gives me the opportunity to stretch by adding and working with various hues as I see fit, pushing the limits of what I know so far.

I’m coming to recognize that, even when using a photographic reference, drawing facial features is an exercise in empathy. Unlike a still life, there is a human being behind the shapes and forms one is diligently trying to capture. Alice Neel stated that she was painting her subjects’ souls in addition to their bodies. While I’m still working on more rudimentary levels of portrayal, I do find myself thinking about the person I am drawing, wondering how a conversation might unfold and what I might learn if I were lucky enough to have any of these heroes actually sitting in front of me.

YouTube, it turns out, can be a pretty decent substitute by providing the opportunity to hear artists (at least those from the 20th & 21st centuries) speak for themselves. I thoroughly enjoyed this 1978 video of Neel. She reminds me of my grandmother in many ways — partly because they were born around the same time and Neel’s look with the hat and chunky necklace is very reminiscent of the elder ladies in my family as I was growing up. But beyond that, also like my grandmother, Neel’s confidence and down to earth tell-it-like-it-was attitude captured in this interview is endearingly human.

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I have great admiration for reportage illustrators and have written about them before. For court illustrator Jane Rosenberg, the Derek Chauvin trial in times of COVID presented a far steeper set of challenges than I am experiencing in just trying to keep up a regular practice. It was interesting to see the results of her labors and to read about her experience in this New York Times article. The New York Post published a much deeper article about her career last September, as she remembered “40 years of legendary bad guys”.

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Instagram of the Week

Lara Blanchard is a multi-disciplinary French artist who makes embroidered etchings and textile-based sculptures. That description doesn’t begin to do her work justice. It is both fantastic and fantastical; be sure to check out her Instagram feed @laraorsolupa.

Just Do It

Usually, I think of January as one of the more relaxed months of the year. But somehow that hasn’t turned out to be the case in 2021.

However, no complaints!
With the help of a planning workshop I took with Alyson Stanfield a couple of weeks ago, I’ve managed to keep the most important balls in the air, while also checking off a few chores that typically lurk around the edges of my list, yet somehow always get pushed to the next week, and then the next week, and so on.

Cleaning my drawing pens is one of those tasks that I should tend to more regularly, but just don’t. However, when the lines begin to skip frustratingly and the ink won’t flow despite the converter having just been refilled, I know the time has come.

I draw with Platinum Carbon Ink for its beautiful, rich black line. But the downside is it contains microscopic carbon particles that will gum up the works if one isn’t diligent about pen cleaning.

I have been reading that an inexpensive ultrasonic cleaner (a home version of what jewelers use) is great for loosening the flecks of dried ink that tend to build up in hard to reach places. So far, patiently letting all the components soak in numerous water baths over a period of hours, followed by a gentle brushing with an old toothbrush and a good flush from a slow-running tap, has done the trick. But I’m curious whether one of those cleaners might not be a speedier and more thorough option, which in the long run might encourage me to be more diligent.

Last week I finally took the time to dutifully clean all my pens and converters and I’m now reaping the rewards: smooth flowing lines that could seemingly go on for days. Like so many things, once you finally get a chore done you can’t help but wonder why in the world it took so long.

Seeking Normal

This is the 8th week since our new normal began.
It’s crazy and it’s scary, but at the same time I am heartened to read and to hear daily accounts of resiliency and generosity of spirit that can’t be suppressed. It keeps me going.
Plus, creativity appears to be flourishing. Check out these two recent examples highlighted on the PBS Newshour’s Arts and Culture segment, ‘CANVAS’, for some welcome humor and to be inspired.

For my part, I’ve started working on two new projects, one drawing and one stitching. I’ll save writing about the textile piece for my next post, when it’s a bit farther along.

Meanwhile, as you know, I’ve been using the Sktchy app in my regular drawing routine. It’s hard enough to draw from a photograph but, especially during this time of isolation, it’s gotten to the point where scrolling through endless selfies of anonymous people vogueing and pulling silly faces, in order to find one that is interesting enough to draw, seems pretty hollow.
I, like everyone else, miss spending time with family and friends.

So the idea occurred to me that since we can’t see most people in person anyway, maybe I could coerce a few folks into sending me a selfie to use when I practice. I was quick to preface the request with the caveat that I’m not a portraitist, so best to keep expectations of likeness reigned-in.
But, aside from the fact that drawing people I know and care about is a much more interesting approach to keeping up with my drawing goals, it would also be a wonderful way, especially while socially distant, to spend an hour or two with each of them — even if virtually.

My friend John was quick to dive in. Among other things, he is a fabulous photographer, nature-lover, tree expert, chef, and humanitarian-extraordinaire! It’s entirely appropriate that he would send a picture with his nose buried in a bouquet of daffodils and with a twinkle in his eyes. While drawing him, concentrating on the features of someone who has quietly touched the lives of many, the world seemed a bit more normal again.

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This will be an ongoing project. If you’d like to participate, email me and I’ll send you the basic parameters. It’s very easy, I promise. In return, I’ll send you a high-resolution scan of the finished drawing.

Slow Dancing With Color

Moving out of winter into spring isn’t an overnight event here in Vermont. The transition is a slow roll-out that offers plenty of time to savor the “two steps forward, one step back” nature of spring’s dance of color as it gradually returns to our landscape. Every day there is something else to notice, its discovery made all the more special by a muted backdrop and lack of visual competition.

Mulling this idea over, as one tends to do while out on a walk, it occurred to me that there is a connection between this slow unfolding of spring and the way my daily drawings are currently evolving.

The coronavirus may have stymied our weekly life drawing sessions at Maple Corner for the time being, but there are always other options. Lately I’ve been using the Sktchy app for my daily sketchbook practice. And while ordinarily I wouldn’t chose to draw from a photo, it’s surely better than not drawing at all. As with most limitations, it’s best to just look for any advantages and get on with it.

So, back to how Vermont’s transition to spring might inform my drawings.
First, part of the reason I notice and appreciate the measured changes that arrive as our surroundings reawaken is that I walk the same general route every day with Quinn. In a similar vein, I also tend to make the biggest discoveries in my work through daily repetition. I don’t mean repeating each drawing exactly, but rather echoing the same parameters (coffee cups say, or in this case, head-shot portraits of the same size, all made with ink and colored pencil). In doing so over and over, parallels begin to rise to the surface that, once noticed, plant a seed for how I might play upon and push those ideas further in each new drawing.

The second part of this so-called vernal theory is that limited color, thoughtfully placed in tandem with shapes and patterns composed of black marks and cross-hatching, create a sense of energy and interest (at least I think they do) that might be lacking in a work with more extensive and fully fleshed-out color. I can’t shake the idea that often the strongest work is the most concise. (And that’s a great goal for me to be chipping away at, especially in light of how intricate my current stitched piece is).

In Process ©2020 Elizabeth Fram, Stitched-resist dye and embroidery on silk, stitched area approximately 10 x 8 inches. I still need to try to tone down that bulls-eye circle smack in the middle of her face. Hopefully as I do more to suggest her veil, it will help to solve the issue. I’ll have to keep the lessons from this post in mind, hopefully figuring out a solution without a full cover up.

One of the things I enjoy most about what I do is paying close attention to surrounding details and inferring unexpected connections from them. I can’t think of a better teacher than spring in Vermont to promote the lesson that you can often convey the most by saying the least.

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A recent email from our local library reminds me that even though its doors are closed, our librarians are still hard at work offering our community valuable resources, such as virtual programming for all ages. I know that lot of folks are having trouble concentrating on reading at this time, and to some degree I count myself among them. But I’ve been listening to a ton of audio books while stitching and drawing, all coming through my library’s RB Digital platform, and it’s been exactly what I’ve needed.
See what your library has to offer, and say a quiet thank you to Ben Franklin for ensuring we have this resource in times of calm and of crisis.

Face To Face

January tends to feel more expansive than any other month of the year and thus seems much more open to opportunity. December’s stepped-up pace and the additional chores brought on by the holidays are now behind us, and long snowy days make sticking close to the studio even more attractive than usual. With that in mind, I decided to take an online class this month that revolves around drawing faces. 30 Faces/30 Days, offered by Sktchy, has been a series of daily video lessons from various artists, touching on such subjects as “Capturing Facial Proportions” and “Energizing Your Lines.”

“Drawing Blind”, one lesson encouraged taking the time to do one – or several – blind contours as a way to warm up before tackling a drawing. It’s such a great exercise that always results in something unique.

©2020 Elizabeth Fram, 10 x 6.5 inches, Graphite and colored pencil on paper. This is the more formal rendition of the same image as the contour above. While I’m not a big proponent of drawing from a photograph, it was necessary for the class and I’ve come to realize there is still much that can be learned from the process.

I’m glad I took the leap. What you see here are a sampling of my results.
Each lesson contained some unexpected, helpful nugget, so that as the month ends I feel I’ve reaped plenty of fresh info to keep in the back of my mind, not just during future life-drawing sessions, but when drawing in general. And who knows how it may surface in my textile work. Probably the most fruitful aspect overall has been the push for regular practice.

Thinking along this same general theme, the one element of the impeachment trial that I’ve actually enjoyed has been seeing Art Lien’s sketches of the trial itself. The Senate chamber has been swept clean of all cameras other than the one trained on whoever is speaking. Lien, (who usually covers the Supreme Court — no cameras allowed there either) and two other artists were allowed in to give us a chance to see what’s happening around the edges.

Lien’s drawings are so much more descriptive than TV. His watchful eye captures personality and individual quirks that we might otherwise never see: the sock-less Senator Burr, the press corps literally sitting on the edges of their seats, Senator Portman’s illegal cell phone, and Mitt Romney’s bottle of chocolate milk that had to be quickly decanted into a glass.

For anyone interested in the art of sketching, it’s fascinating to see the depth of information Lien’s deceptively simple lines portray. His work underscores one of the things I love so much about the practice of drawing — by really looking, you catch and solidify details that bring back the richness of an experience long after it has ended.

The January 14th Debate gave me a taste of how hard Art Lien’s job really is. Even though I wasn’t seeing the candidates in person, the fact that they were moving added more life than is possible with a still photo. It was an advantage that they each kept returning to the same general position as they talked to the moderators or the camera. These sketches each took several rounds of answers before I could capture the general essence of what I wanted.

Lien is not the only sketch artist in the room. Read this article for a deeper dive into the weeds about the artists covering the trial, including some discussion on the materials they use, etc.

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If you happen to be nearby and need a reprieve from the snow and ice, check out the show Botanical Blitz (up through March 7) at Studio Place Arts, 201 N Main St. Barre, VT. It is a vibrant and colorful oasis inspired by plants, animals, and insects – a visual respite from the depth of winter. Read Mary Gow’s review in the Rutland Herald for a taste of what is on view.

Living Color

If you had to choose one thing to work on for the next 6 months to a year, what would it be?

I’m still chipping away at my 2019 goal to incorporate more color in my life drawings.
Generally, what I think most about when drawing is line, so I’ve been using hatching to follow through on that plan. However, the more drawings I get under my belt, the more I see a glimmer of where further practice may lead.

The following quote pretty well encapsulates what pulls me into any drawing in the first place while outlining a worthy quality to strive for in 2020.

A line is a visual trail of energy that has been drawn across a surface, and is a manifestation of the life energy of the person that made it. ~Mick Maslen*

Rather than switching gears next year, I’m planning to build on the steps I’ve taken so far, while also working toward stronger color and deeper values. My experimentation with varying papers has shown me how much they contribute to the crispness and clarity of both line and color.

*I was interested in learning more about Mick Maslen since I wasn’t at all familiar with his name. Turns out he is a UK artist who taught drawing and painting for many years before retiring from teaching in 2008.

Through the wonder of the internet, I also learned he was a contributor to The Guardian newspaper’s 2009 Free Guide to Drawing, a treasure trove of interviews and tutorials with leading contemporary artists. Check it out! He, together with Jack Southern, wrote the book The Drawing Projects: An Exploration of the Language of Drawing, a major publication on contemporary drawing practice and theory. Boy, would I love to get my hands on a copy of that (!) – but an extensive search revealed it seems to be either out of stock or available at a too steep price. I will have to keep my eyes peeled for a copy in used bookstores — which may be a challenge outside the UK.

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If you’re interested in using learning more about colored pencils, this is a good place to start. The number of options may make your head spin, but it’s worth wading through the info to see what’s best for you.

Caran D'Ache Pablo

I started out with Prismacolor Verithin because I was drawing on vellum and wanted a pencil that was hard and would keep a strong point. But their colors are limited, and since I was moving to other surfaces, I bought a set of Caran D’Ache Pablo which are reasonably priced while giving me the most bang-for-my-buck, color-wise. The Caran D’Ache are much creamier and blend well, allowing for a strong build-up of color. The Verithin are best for seeing individual lines as you layer colors over each other, so I tend to use them in my life drawings where I want to see the hatching. They each react differently depending on the paper used, so lots of experimentation is worth the time.

Verithin

Back to School

It’s that time of year again.
And while not formally, in my own way I too have gone back to school in an effort to keep my drawing from getting too rusty while I wait for our life drawing sessions to start back up in September. The school I’m referring to is proko.com, a deep well of lessons, videos, demonstrations, and anatomy resources created by drawing instructor Stan Prokopenko. It’s a terrific source of solid information with the added advantage of bending to the convenience of my erratic schedule.

My goal has been to concentrate on hands, which I find one of the most challenging elements to draw. But, as I methodically make my way through promo.com’s free library of lessons that span from rock-bottom basics through figure drawing, portrait/head drawing, and the anatomy of the human figure, it’s quickly become obvious that rather than just polishing up some rough edges, I’ve only just begun to scratch the surface of the expanse of what I need to learn and the work I have ahead of me. It’s daunting, but it’s also very exciting and should keep me busy for a good long while if I stick with it.
For other resources on drawing hands, see this post.

The other thing I really wanted to accomplish during this time that our sessions are on hiatus is to experiment with different papers to see if there is one that stands out as most appealing to my sensibilities and style of drawing. The fact that the subject matter in these practice drawings is relatively repetitious has opened the door to discovering nuances of difference between the various papers I’ve selected. Key questions I’m keeping in mind are: is the paper hard or soft? can I lay down a very light line and still achieve a decent dark? how much will marks smudge? and is it possible to erase without damaging the surface of the paper? Another issue to address will be how each paper receives color, but I’m just going to worry about graphite for now.

If you’re interested, Prokopenko and fellow art instructor Marshall Vandruff have an amusing and enlightening podcast called Draftsmen that touches on a variety of drawing-related subjects.

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I love when the stars seem to align.
We visited the Museum of Fine Arts in Montreal last weekend and one of the first pieces I came across was Cuban artist Yoan Capote’s Abstinence (Freedom) from 2014. It was particularly resonate for obvious reasons.

The piece is quite moving for its meditation on questions of freedom and migration — bronze hand casts of anonymous migrant workers sequenced to spell in sign language the word “Libertad” (Liberty). It also drills home the inherent expressiveness of hands, and in turn their capability to stand in for us as individuals. Capote describes the work as a “metaphor about the absence of voice or the incapacity of decision of common people in front of different aspects of society”.

Abstinence (Freedom), detail, Yoan Capote

Abstinence (Freedom), detail, Yoan Capote

Quite a poignant statement, don’t you think?