Pop Goes the Artist!

There are a number of things I find very intimidating to draw: clear and reflective objects (like glass), drapery, and trees (something about branches and foliage confounds me, I don’t know why). Lately, though, I’ve been inspired by the example of my lovely roommate, who happens to be a talented artist (she can do watercolor!), and I’ve been spending more time drawing things I find challenging.

Today, for instance, the weather was so beautiful that I practically had no choice but to go outside and draw. So I gathered my charcoal, my sketch pad, and my iPod (loaded up with the Ramones and Edith Piaf) and went outside to draw trees. I mostly focused on the trunks and the bottom few branches (baby steps), but I’m happy enough with the results that I’d like to spend more time drawing trees soon. The combination of willow charcoal + kraft pad makes for particularly nice texture in the bark.

A few weeks ago, I finally sat myself down to practice drapery, which is a fantastic and frustrating exercise in forcing yourself to see exactly what is there, because drawing what you think is there makes for a mess. It takes some patience, and I am not a particularly patient person. But maybe I’m getting there. Besides, who could resist all those lovely curves?

Maybe I should do this sort of thing more often.

Friday afternoon I went downtown to visit the National Portrait Gallery and the Smithsonian American Art Museum, two museums conveniently housed in the same building. My intention was to find a nice portrait bust and sketch it, but that didn’t pan out. There were a lot of nice portrait busts, but none of them was located anywhere near a bench. So I took photos instead. Some of the nicer ones are below the fold.

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I recently decided to participate in the 101 Things In 1001 Days project. I’m doing this for a variety of reasons, including my love for list-making and the feeling that the upcoming changes in my life will go more easily if I take a more pro-active approach to other areas of my life. Not all of these things are about art, so I’m just going to post the art-related ones here. I’ll come back to this post periodically to cross off items I’ve accomplished and link to posts about them as I write them.

So without further ado, here are the items from the section “arts, with a side order of crafts.”

1. Do Illustration Friday for at least two months. Post the results here.
2. Sell a painting.
3. Open an Etsy shop.
4. Finish the quilt I started three years ago. I’m three-quarters of the way done already.
5. Paint a self-portrait.
6. Take a life drawing class.
7. Take (and post) a photo daily for a month.
8. Give all handmade gifts for Christmas or birthdays one year. (Made by me or by someone else.)
9. Fill a sketchbook, cover to cover.
10. Paint in public.
11. Enter a juried art competition.
12. Try oil painting.
13. Participate in a print exchange.
14. Crochet an afghan.
15. Finally do that track scrapbook I’ve been meaning to do since the day I graduated.
16. Buy a big sketchbook (at least 18×24″) and use it.

My 1001 days end on Saturday, December 11, 2010. By that time I’ll be out of college, employed, and who knows what else. We’ll see how many of these things (and the other 85) I’ve finished by then. No matter how well or badly I do, though, someone wins: item #101 is “donate $1 to charity for everything I don’t complete on this list.” Just the right sort of motivation!

I’ve been having some problems renewing my domain name, problems which the company I got it from are still trying to figure out, so things may (but probably won’t) be weird around here at some point, until they figure it out.  I’m not really sure; the tech support person was sort of vague on things, and by that point in the conversation (which I conducted outside, on my cell phone) I was just really cold and wanted to go inside.  Anyway, just wanted to give a heads-up.

Sketches coming tomorrow.

“The humility of the early Italian painters constantly compels me to imitate them. Personality cults by contemporary painters infuriate me. One must seek the opposite, fade away more every day, find exactness only in the art of painting, and always forget oneself. Instead, one sees nothing but self exhibitionism, personal confessions, intimate avowals, auto voyeurism, and egoistic declarations. I often say that one mustn’t try to explain oneself, but rather the world and its darkness and mystery… But I’ve always persisted on the path of solitude and exactingness. Painting cannot be done amid the world’s hubbub, by adopting its rhythm and complaisance. It is better to seek solitude and silence, to be surrounded by past masters, to reinvent the world, not to be cradled by false sirens, cash, galleries, fashionable games, etc…”