Lewis Carroll’s Mock-Turtle called it “drawling, stretching, and fainting in coils” (drawing, sketching, and painting in oils). How many MBers are artists? What are your favorite media and implements? Any technical suggestions? Here’s a place to spill it all.
Patience, Please
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Well, I really lean more toward graphic design I suppose, if you could call it that. Photoshop. Not your run of the mill Paint-style slapped together stuff either. I have my own website thanks to my pal Cathy. Yay sub-domains! And web-design is an art form in my opinion, so there’s that.
…But anyway, I draw too. Though I’m honestly more of a literary person, since my drawings are, in a word, lacking.
I draw manga fairly well, I suppose. Chibi is super-fun to draw. My favorite media? Pencils, just plain old regular pencils that you find lying around your house. Maybe if I can persuade my parents to let me use their printer/copier/fax machine/scanner, I can beam some of my work to MuseBlog.
Since we are on the topic of visual artistry, it won’t hurt me to inform you about this keen website called elfwood.com. It’s the largest sci-fi and fantasy website in the world. There’s tons of pictures that you can download, and you can comment on them without even having to give e-mail or personal info. And they do first-post dances, just like us.
Thanks for making this thread, GAPAs.
I draw in charcoal and chalk pastels- figure drawing is my favorite.
I also paint in acrylics a lot. Right now, I am working on an acrlyic landscape painting and I’m trying to apply an impressionist technique. I saw a Pissaro exhibit in Sydney and it really inspired me. I like impressionism because it’s so fresh and dynamic.
I also like cartooning, usually just on scraps of paper and such. I’ve got really random characters that just pop into my head- The Killer Teabag, The Nutcracker Martini Glass, The Clarinet Viper.
I had a really interesting conversation about the differences between physical and digital art with my parents last night. In way, a digital piece of art is more like a book, because it’s more a set of instructions for viewing the art than it is an
exact object. Does that make sense to anyone else?
Art is one of my favorite things. Music pwns, but I think I’m more naturally compatable with the visual and physical.
Can’t draw. At all. Very sad. I love looking at other peoples’ drawings though.
I like drawing cute little cartoons, but I can’t draw people well. Circular heads, triangular shirts, no fingers. I do stick figures too!!!
I just amaze myself. :]
4-ditto. Echser is cool. (did i spell that right Ess-ser)?
opps. i meant sher
It’s Escher, but yeah, his work is excellent. It’s amazing how well he drew, not to mention how clever his work is.
Yay! Art.
10th Post : )
(5) Yeah… I can’t draw people either. I usually draw horses, dragons and giant praying mantises.
i love drawing. even tho last year i wasn’t even in art i spent forever in the art room staring at the pictures. i like to draw with pencils, paint with oils, and chalks pwn.
I luv M.C. Escher’s works. I like the one with the stairs a lot. I also like Monet’s(sp?) water lilly pictures. Lovely.
All atempts to recreate this work have failed. I’m planing to try again soon, tho.
I also luv to draw. I mostly use pencils, and every now and then add some color. I mostly do lots of little detail, and can never seem to find a small enough paint brush. And or those people who say they can’t draw, hey, that’s the beauty of abstract. And things like an all white board with a black dot in the middle. Though some people like pictures better. I mostly enjoy stuff with nature, not people. Like trees and lakes and such. I drew a really nice picture of a tree, sorta curved to the right, and a swing on it. It had only one leaf(bright green) and a girl wearing a really pretty blue dress sitting on the rope&board swing. The leaf and the dress were the only things in color, the rest was pencil. It was really good, if I do say so myself. Unfortunatly, it’s on lined paper in a old school journel.
I love to draw.
My most favorite activities include:
Watching Law & Order-Special Victim’s Unit
Reading about bonobos (yum, yum)
And drawing.
I draw all sorts of things. A lot of it having to do with the Muse Movie these days.
I gotta go now.
Dinner is ready.
Se you later.
#3: the Nutcracker Martini Glass? that is schweet! make a comic for it + post it here or something!
thats better than my friends picture of the Sad Spoon – it was this crying spoon she drew one day in govt class (& we were inc bored, so thats probably why it seemed so funny), and it was jumping off a cliff. oh, i luff impressionism also, esp monet. i actually have an entire book about impressionism.
i just paint stuff on clothes! funfunfun.
I doodle more than I draw. Most of my notebooks have swirls and squiggles on half the pages or so. Even my tests have things written in the margins.
I love the impressionists and Sandy and alot of others like Van go Picasso you get the point but, alas I lack at being a well drawer! I have a recomendation for those members 13 and older who like the impressionists there is a book called Marie, dancing it is about The story behind degas’ little dancer aged 14 great book!!!!
VanGogh pwns. thats all there is to it.
Me? I can’t draw. Worth beans. My people look like monkeys, my monkeys look like people. My hands look like mutated feet, my mutated feet look like even more mutated feet. Even my stick figures are disproportionate and weird.
(14)… yeah, except the name really says it all. I invented him on a napkin once after dinner. He’s a martini glass, with a big cheesy smile and large round teeth, and he’s saying “I’m really good at cracking nuts.” and he has a walnut in his teeth.
I do a lot of these… just random cartoonish thing. They aren’t exactly doodle, because they are more focused than that, but they make me feel better sometimes, like a nice way to let emotions out.
… your friend drew a Sad Spoon? That’s really weird because I clearly remember in 5th grade my friend and I had this character who was a sad teaspoon eho had fallen behind the stove and was depressed.
I finished my painting today.
One Impressionist artist who I feel doesn’t get enough attention from mainstream culture is Pissaro, which is weird, because he is often refered to as “Father of Impressionists”. I got to see an exhibit of his work in Sydney and it’s amazing! His work is more earthy and domestic than Monet’s. I like that he show everyday people going about their work on farms, with plants, and dirt and old houses. He captures the feeling and action so well, it’s like a snapshot.
I can draw birdies. And that’s it.
I can hold my own in Pictionary. w00t. However, my (younger) brother is an incredible artist, and can do it all: clay, colored pencils, calligraphy, regular pencil. He draws realistic things, like our dog Fang. Most people can’t draw as well as him.
It’s driving me crazy. Since we both play violin and he is better than me at that, and he’s recently become interested in writing like me, and since he can read 3/4 as fast as me, I feel shoved. He’s taking over all my avenues of excellence! Now he’s teaching himself to play the guitar, too. There’s almost nothing left that I do that he doesn’t.
Oh vell. At least I am still better at languages than him. And I can play the keyboard quite well for having had only three lessons.
Escher is one of my favorites, too. I even tried to create an HPB homage but never could get the ears to tessellate attractively.
His official college report described Escher as “a young man too lacking in feeling or caprice, too little of an artist.” Scientists and mathematicians embraced him long before the art critics. Yet I find his work moving, very spiritual, as well as playful. You won’t be surprised to know he was a big fan of Lewis Carroll.
(12) Jadestone — I met an artist who does fabulous doodles on notebook paper, frames them up as is, and sells them. (He started drawing as a way to protect himself from the chaos of growing up in an orphanage.) Toulouse-Lautrec painted some of his best works on cardboard. Another of my favorite artists, Walter Anderson, painted most of his watercolors on typing paper. The world is made up of art supplies and art subjects, and many things are both.
Yes, Walter Inglis Anderson is in Wikipedia, and the bibliography section has a link to the Walter Anderson Museum, which shows examples of his work, though you have to hunt around the site for many of them. (I hope the citation passes GAPA scrutiny. I doubt Anderson is easy to find elsewhere.) His best paintings combine elements of Escher with the color and ecstasy of Van Gogh.
Those of you who draw, do you work mostly from your imagination or sketch what’s around you? Not that I’ve seen many Clarinet Vipers waltzing about lately . . . though I may have spotted one near Union Station the other day.
I’ve never played Pictionary. is it fun?
I mostly draw during the school year during school.. I get really bored and a lot of my papers have little drawings in the margins.. For a while I was doing “The adventures of Superduck” on all of my math homework in 8th grade..
has anybody ever heard of somebody named Ikki Matsumoto?
(21) Quintessentia — I know what you mean. My younger brother could draw easy as a breeze. He was a better writer, musician, actor, impressionist, you name it. And he was funny. And everyone liked him. Including me. My sole advantage was singing.
I doodled and drew cutesy cartoon animals and no one would have guessed I had any special gift for visual art. Now I’m working to become a professional watercolorist. Don’t know when my brother last drew anything. So, you never know.
Sometimes I think he got too much attention for being too good too soon and he became afraid of making mistakes. You can’t make art without making mistakes. Lots and lots of really big and embarrassing mistakes.
For anyone who came in late, Ms. Lasley is the creator of the sinister hypnotic hot-pink bunnies.
Cool! Me and my sister printed those out and turned them into stickers. We have a sticker maker. The bunnies you did were the most populer…I’m planing to make a lot and stick them on my homework next year and write muse under each one…:)
The mistakes are the most interesting.
…says the girl whose entire experience is doodles in math class and various quick scribbles designed solely to allow her to pass her unfortunately mandatory art classes in middle skool. And who can’t draw a straight line (i seriously can’t. at all.).
I guess i’m an extremely interesting artist then.
Sculpture’s way better. It’s fun. Clay is fun to mush around with. And Play-Do is edible. Yum.
Mine uncle’s a sculptor. it’s pretty kewl.
I have a lot of friends who can draw really well though. Like sam. She’s probably the best i know at drawing. And alicia, megan, jen wasn’t bad…
And i most unfortunately knew alex carlberg, the best drawer in the skool. I say unfortunately because he was a complete jerk and has no concept of hygiene. Not to mention his inability to listen to three seconds of anything without arguing. (I say “he was” because i moved and so thankfully haven’t seen him lately, but rach tells me he’s actually a lot nicer now. I’m not sure though. Nothing against rach, but she tends to see people how they treat her personally.)
All this is slightly off-topic and i doubt anybody cares about my exciting *coughboringcough* life’s memories, but whatever.
I’m really bored and hungry. i’m gonna go make dad order pizza now. He said we could have pizza. Yesssssssss.
Btw, all the pizza here is cut into little strips. Is that just a columbus thing, or what? Like a few days ago at sarah’s party, her mom was figuring out how much pizza to get, and she’s like “how many pieces do you all want?” I was really hungry, so i said 3, and everybody’s like “3? Wow, that’s not a lot. You must not be very hungry.” and i was like “what? Oh yah, they have messed pizza-cutting techniques” But seriously, you can’t find regularly sliced pizza anywhere. Unless you go to the pool and get it by the slice, but i have it on excellent authority that their pizza is disgusting, and anyway i’m not about to waste money finding out-most of their food is disgusting.
And again, completely off-topic. Apols to alls. I can’t rhyme worth a dime. I shall eat and be back on my feet. Pizza time, just not lime.
Wow i’m weird. Lime pizza? That actually sounds kinda good…mebbe i should try it sometime.
I am really confused about the whole hot pink bunny thing. I started subscribing this year and I think I’ve read every one I have about 5 times, but I just am lost with the pink bunny thing. If someone would be so kind as to explain them to me?
anyway…
I like to draw, faces mostly. I especially like drawing portraits with charcoal. I’m not that good with acrylic or watercolor. My stronsuit is defianently portraits.
Ecila,
Perhaps the Muse Glossary will help clear things up. Or perhaps not.
(22) It depends on what the situation is. Often, if I’m just sitting a the table with a pen, I draw out of my head. That also goes for much of my sketchbook and paintings. However, I do try to draw from life fairly often, because my teachers always encourage me to, and I feel like that’s when I do my best work. I really like being able to draw people from a live model (in charcoal) but I have to actually go down to a drawing studio to do that. I like the challenge of measurement and proportion, and being able to see how the light falls. The studio I go to is a really freindly environment, but that doesn’t stop from feeling uncomfortable with the fact that I’m usually the youngest person there by 20 years.
In a way, though, even the things I do from my head are from real life. The Clarinet Viper was invented when I was feeling frusterated with having to practice so much over summer.
We made stickers out of the HPBs too!!
They were fun. We stuck them on my Social Studies teacher one day and she wore them all day. hehe
I paint in arcrylics, too. I also like impressionsism. I usually paint landscapes and outdoor scenes, because they are the most interesting to paint (in my opinion). I tried painting in oils, too, but the clean-up was a bit more than I was up for, and they dried slowly. Linseed oil and Liquin helped make them more usable, though.
I try to draw manga, but I’m terrible. I’m better with words than images, especially since pictures that aren’t coloured perfectly drive me crazy. (That’s why I like manga; it’s mostly black-and-white.) I’m currently in an art class where we had to draw popcorn. Popcorn is outrageously hard to draw, and attempting it makes me sad. And then we had to COLOUR it. Poor Penty, who messed up the colour, had to lean on her drawing board and then look at Claire W.’s perfect popcorn, which actually looked like popcorn and was nice and yellow, with a pretty red-purply background. Mine was just depressing.
And THIS, Comrades in Mostly Harmeless Armes, is why my friends are betting on what kind of disorder I have.
I use pastels and charcoal and a CAMERA. And I act. And I write poetry. And I dance and sing in my basement. I’m best at acting though I enjoy the rest.
(28) I really first learned to draw by taking a sculpture class. And it took me years to draw a straight line freehand. Now I draw them when I want to show off — oh, look at me, I can do what anyone with a ruler can do.
(33) A friend of mine took a class in which they had to draw crumpled tin foil endlessly. About drove her insane. Some art classes seem to be designed to drive students away. I don’t get that. Art class shouldn’t be about torture. We do enough of that to ourselves.
Yes, I love black and white, too. It’s calming somehow. When I’m stuck or frustrated, monochrome is my refuge. Sometimes I’ll pick one color at random and paint just with it. It’s a good way to learn about one’s paints, as well, as each pigment has different properties. But don’t let color get you down. Half what they teach you about color is wrong, anyway, the rest is either useless, misleading, or too confusing to be helpful. Uh, don’t tell anyone I said that.
(31) Sounds as if you already think like an artist. Do you notice that after awhile, if you keep painting or drawing what you see, what you see begins to change? The details, the colors, the structure. Like it pops out to another whole level?
To all: the HPBs were great fun to do, even when I became thrall to their diabolical hypnotic powers. They still pop up on my computer screen when I least expect it. By the way, my other claim to fame is making paint brushes out of cat whiskers.
Cat whiskers? *inches away* Don’t the cat’s mind?
Anywhee, I like monochramatic. It’s nic to use when you just want to mess around with paints and stuff. I cna’t draw stright lines at all.
i made a hot pink bunny out of hot pink floam the other day!
What about hot pink bunny whiskers? I’m sure those would make some very interesting brushes…
(35) Yes! Almost as if all the sudden there’s a bunch of lines on my eyes, like a grid connecting everything in 3 dimensions, and everything just… makes more sense, the depth and proportion and shadow, it all connects, and when I draw one thing, it starts to works with everything else, instead of me trying to force it all onto the page. Someone (a teacher of a teacher I think) said something about “getting a new set of eyes.”
Think like an artist? Thank you, it’s encouraging.
Cat whisker brushes? Aren’t they a bit stiff? I remember once my when we were 8 my friend tried to paint with her hair…
Cats shed their whiskers, so I just collect them and tie them to bamboo skewers. It took some experimenting to make the brushes truly useful. They work best with watercolor painted on yupo rather than on paper. Yupo is a synthetic paper made of polypropylene, and the whiskers just glide over the surface, dragging the paint along. Really cool effects.
(24) 100% Cotton, THANK YOU for mentioning Ikki Matsumoto. I looked up his website. What delightful birds and cats and fish! Some of my favorite subjects. I’m so glad to make his acquaintance.
(37) emogirl, I’ve seen floam in the stores but haven’t tried it. Do you like it? How well does it hold up?
(39) Skipper Nancy, that’s the coolest feeling, isn’t it, though sometimes a little unsettling, what with the world transforming right before your eyes. It’s almost like crossing into another dimension. Or as if your subject suddenly couldn’t help revealing some deep secret. Drawing teaches me stuff I couldn’t learn any other way.
A while back I went to see an exhibit of minerals at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences. I spent the day drawing these amazing rock formations, and that deep vision we’ve been talking about set in. I was seeing them so intently, it felt like I actually held them in my hands. I glanced around at the other people visiting the exhibit and actually felt sorry for them. All they could do was look. I could draw. I could touch.
im quite the artist
i paint
i draw
i sculpt
i write
i sing
i dance
i act
(11) Yeah, chalk pastells pwn. Well, they do if pwn’s a bad thing. (I don’t understand chatspeak) They get all messy and don’t even go on smooth. Oil pastels are cool.
Andy Goldburg does some really odd sculptures. There’s one really amazing seiries carved into thin slabs of snow.
No, “to pwn” is a good thing.
Do you mean Andy Goldsworthy, the British nature sculptor?
what sorts of things do you like to draw shriya?
I love to draw. My best friend is a relly good artist. Makes mine look not as good, but I don’t mind.
Every year at my school we go to an environmental center, and we do Andy Goldsworthy part. We get to make things like andy Goldsworthy outside, It’s really fun!
#40: you have to wait about a week for it to dry.
well, it might not take as long if you live in a dry climate.
Kali, i shall conjugate “to pwn” for you.
*to pwn: to totally rock
i pwn
you pwn
he / she / it pwns
we pwn
you all pwn
they pwn
now, does that clear up the confusion?
if you want to see some purty schweet “visual art,” you can visit:
1. the alden dow house in midland, MI
(which will be mine one day if i ever come to own several million dollars – and if im able to bribe the ppls who own it now!) its actually a museum now. the house is built in a pond (its halfway underwater) and is surrounded by the prettiest gardens ive ever seen. the house itself is full of hidden passages, and has a lot of windows that look out underwater. i relly cant explain it v well, but if you google it youll probably find something.
2. the falling water house by frank lloyd wright. i think theres a replica of it in Kalamazoo, MI
oh gosh i know there was at least one other place i wanted to mention but i forgot silly me.
46- ooh, is he the guy that lay down in the rain for a few hours to make a person-shaped dry spot? I saw a movie showing him making stuff- that is so cool
Did he catch an awful cold? Did it work? That sounds like a really good idea!
I like to do all kinds of art stuff, but I’m not extremely good at it. Good enough for my art teacher to hang it up with some of the other good stuff.
yeah, it did work, it was in the movie. He does all this stuff which takes hours to build and seconds to destroy
(42) I love chalk pastels! I love the texture. Oil for me is too mushy. But chalk can be annoying if it’s bad quality. I use Nupastels, which work well.
I LOVE LOVE LOVE Andy Goldsworthy!!! I have this book filled with picture of piks of his work (it’s called Time). GENIUS I TELL YOU!! I can’t even get over it. The freshness, and the sharpness. Sometimes it has almost a surreal, yet still organic quality. The feeling that it’s part pf nature… and weirdly unnatural! I love all the cairns that he builds. And the way he uses the light at different time of day and…aahhhhh I could go on for ages. I makes me quiver, that’s how much I love it! I tried making a color-line out of stones in my pool (which has a pebble paving) and it came out all right, but too jerky. Not smooth enough transitions between the colors.
He makes it look like a long, strip of changing color in the water.
I would highly suggest looking at the book Time, or at least googling some of his stuff.
In the book time, there’s a lot of picture of Goldsworthy’s “rainshadows” as he calls them.
(40) Yes! That’s why I wish they tought drawing in skools. There’s so more to learn from it that just how to make a realistic looking drawing.
I have decided to get back to drawing more, before summer ends and my life is consumed by band. I shall draw from life, and paint and I will work on drawing figures, my favorite.
I like chalk pastel’s too! They’re really fun to use.
Chalk Pastels + Charcoal = ♥
For the past couple of years, I have been taking acrylic painting lessons from a local artist and friend. He paints a lot of the murals downtown and elsewhere in the city, one of which was me when I was a baby.
I have always LOVED to draw, but lately I’ve been more focused around my music, *Luckily* I am getting back into my complusive doodling and drawing. My stuff is mostly swirly, psychedellic patterns and freakish, fantasy creatures. I also *try* protraits and full-view pictures of people, but they’re harder than you think. I’m actually pretty talented – at least my mum, friends, dad and relatives seem to think so. Both my mum (she took drawing classes from David Small) and grandma are artists (my grandma’s art constantly being gushed over by her neighbours) and they think I’ve got something.
I happen to live in a lovely little liberal city that is just brimming with the arts. There are quite a few murals downtown, on the sides of buildings and inside restaurants and stuff. Every month we have an “art hop”, which features the works of local artists, visual, fiber or anything else. Most of the shops downtown are owned by local artists, or else sell their wares. I almost got a summer job making shoulder bags for Fervor, one of the most popular artisan retail shops. The art musem is simply wonderful, featuring a permanent display of a Chihuly piece. We’ve also a grand theatre that puts on glorious productions.
48- I’ve *been* to Kalamazoo MANY TIMES BEFORE and I don’t know if I recall ever seeing the Frank Lloyd Wright replica you speak of. Am I that oblivious??
Two words for the surrealists out there: DALI ROCKS!!
I went to Kalamazoo for a hockey tournemet. There was this iron lion thing outside of a restruant or hotel or somthing that my team liked sit on and too pictures of. It was fun.
(hey, that lion was a peice of art. Beautifully well crafted. The other’s didn’t notice as much, tho. To busy sitting on it’s head.)
(52) Skipper Nancy, figures and faces are my favorite, too. I love to draw all kinds of things, but figures are my home base, where I can kick back and relax. Right now I’m doing stacks of speedy sketches from my DC trip. I took more than 1500 photos, several hundred of them just of people in the street.
People reveal so much of themselves in quirks of posture and movement that one can’t mimic in a studio pose: the slump of a shoulder under the weight of a handbag, the inward stare of a subway commuter, a skateboarder in midair, the rapture on a little girl’s face as she rides the ferris wheel with her dad, the attentiveness of a GAPA moderating Muse Blog on his Treo in an art gallery . . . .
When I do quick sketches like this I use pen or a drawing stick with ink, so I don’t get bogged down trying to erase. If I make a mistake, I simply draw the correction right over top of it. Sometimes that actually improves the sketch, adding life and movement. I try to limit each one to about 5 or 10 minutes, 15 max. It really helps me focus, and I learn as much or more doing 20 quick sketches than I would laboring over one in the same amount of time. Charcoal is another option. I start out with a hard charcoal pencil for the initial blocking, then I make additional passes, each time adding more detail with a softer, darker charcoal.
Oddly enough, though I sometimes look at stuff I wrote 25 years ago and not remember writing it, I see one of those quick sketches and always remember the time, the place, the person.
(55) That sounds nice. It’s a bit like my town, which has quite a good (if slightly hidden) artist’s community. There’s a loverly drawing studio down in the artsy center of town where I like to go. There’s also this aweome hippie-gypsy shop across the street. Twice a year there’s this big street fair. Some of it’s kinda junky, but you can always find really interesting things two. This one man makes fascinating sculpture out of old nuts, bolt, wire and nails- he does them of people in their proffessions, and he captures it perfectly.
(57) Interesting. I should try going to the zoo or something sometime and just sketching people. OR, I just had this idea, sketching people at camp would be perfect, because there’s such a variety of movement. Charcoal is my favorite medium, but then, I’ve never tried ink.
We did 30 second, one minute and 10 minute sketches in an art class I took. Those were fun. It’s fun to try and get the essence of the pose in just one or two strokes. Hehe. I didn’t do so well on those…
Mistakes are sort of essential for me, I’ve found. I can’t get anything right the first time, and I don’t want to. I like to think of it like layers, each layer getting more and more accurate. Sometimes I erase mistakes if there get to be so many that they clog up the page, but for the most part, I like to leave ’em. I like to use my charcoal like it’s paint.
I really ought to go out and draw more. OK. I’ve made my resolution. Skipper is going to draw more. Right guys? If I start chain posting, pie me and tell me unglue myself from the comp and go out and draw.
Oops. I just chain posted. *pies self*.
I love Kalamazoo.
What the *sputters in frusteration and confusion* is going on?? I typed a fat lot more than THAT!!
did you include angle brackets in your post? Was it apropriate?
My favourite artists:
Salvador Dali
Pablo Picasso
YAY!!
I also love graphic design. Might get into myself one of these days. My cousin and her husband are both professional graphic artists, they have at least five websites they’ve done all their own. She’s actually written a couple books on the subject. She does some satire stuff, with Apple (computers) and BART (bay area transit), but some legal people weren’t too happy about that when they found out (not to say she got arrested, just a warning). For instance, she created an “iPoop” onsie for her baby. I doubt anyone at Apple (aside from her husband) appriciated that.
As I was SAYING about K-Zoo – there’s a lot of hippeis and neo-hippies (one such myself) and a ton of community stuff, usually having to do with the arts. That was post # 61 in a nutshell, as about 99% of it was cut off. And Frank Lloyd Wright designed a lot of the houses in Kalamazoo. There’s a fountain in the park downtown that was either designed by him or one of his students. Either way, it’s been controversial lately.
I like using a sharpened chopstick and ink.
Does anyone do calligraphy?
There weren’t any curse words and it wasn’t obsene. No angle brackets. I’M CONFUSED!! I dunno, I probably did some obscure keyboard cheat that I did not know existed (I do that a LOT) that deleted most of it, unless anyone would like to approach it with a plausible explaination. Or peradventure it revealed too much information on the charming city of Kalamazoo. Hmm. Could be a possibility.
I tried calligraphy a while ago, it didn’t quite work. It’s a beautiful art form, though.
TC is a very “artsy” town.
#65: i do calligraphy a lot. but im a southpaw, so i have to use a poster marker instead of an actual calligraphy pen.
oh, i remembered the other place i was thinking of when typing post #48.
i think its called The Meyer Gardens, and its in Grand Rapids. Most of the Gardens are actually indoors, in these giant greenhouses. hmm…last time i was there, there was a rainforest room, a desert room, and a victorian garden room, but i think theyve added a few more. there are also a lot of statues, esp in the victorian garden.
(65) Do you sharpen the chopstick to a point or like a quill? Or use different shapes? That sounds cool, and I have a drawerfull of chopsticks.
(67) I’m lefthanded, too, and tried to use italic pens designed for lefties but eventually gave up and just decided my calligraphy would have a slightly warped personality in keeping with its creator. I taught myself as revenge on my third-grade teacher who consistently gave me failing grades in penmanship. Not that I deserved better. Though she might have helped matters by actually teaching me instead of tossing off the usual “do it like this, except the opposite.”
I usually sharpen it…but using it like a quill pen sounds interesting.
How do you sharpen a chopstick?
70- very carefully?
yay, lefties unite- I’m one too! I hate using those slate thingys (mini white-boards) in school because of that- my hand always drags over what I’ve written and erases it..
hello. i love the visual arts. we should send some pictures to the gapas.
My left-handed best friend has a permanent ink stain on the side of her hand because of stuff like that! But she’ very proud of her left-handedness.
Left-handers, despair not. Have a look at
http://www.flick.com/~liralen/quills/quills.html
where you will find exhaustive instructions for making your own quill pen, with whatever width and angle of slant you require. Scour the web for calligraphy supplies, and you should find plenty of people who will sell you goose quills perfectly suited to the purpose (assuming you don’t already know someone who keeps geese). This is the proper way to do calligraphy. Forget these new-fangled metal nibs.
Report on Chopstick Experiments
Wow, they’re great! I spent the morning whittling and sharpening a variety of chopsticks (both manual and electric pencil sharpeners will do the trick). Drawing was a bit awkward at first, as with anything new, but I love the marks they make. They also hold more ink than I would have thought. They’re perfectly suited to the quick sketches I’m doing right now (of DC’s Chinatown, by appropriate coincidence), even better than the pens I was using, as they’re forcing me to modify my drawing style in a direction I wanted to go anyway. The plain sharpened ones work best so far — and the side creates lovely shading — but the shaped ones make nice special effects. Bamboo skewers aren’t bad, either, though I clip the points slightly with scissors. Yay! I’m thrilled. *hugs Purple Panda* (by your leave)
Yay! I feel so special! I think it’s fun, too
What sort of ink do you use with them? India ink?
I can get goose feathers almost every day of the summer. We live on a lake, and geese just love our beach. They espesally love pooping on our beach, which can get really anoying. The swans chase them off every now and then tho, and sence we have swan babies(cygnets) the geese pretty much stay away.
#71: yeah. i find that writing on anything that isnt lying on a flat surface in front of you is difficult.
anyone here ambidextrous? if so, i envy you.
i think we need a thread for lefties!! seriously – put your ink-stained little hands in the air with me if you support this idea!
*after half an hour, sees that shes the only one w/ her hand in the air*
um, wow…your enthusiasm is astounding…
(79) I’m ambidextrous for most things, although it’s my left that would reflexively shield my face if something came flying at my head.
It’s kind of a curse, though, because I have a hard time telling what’s left and what’s right. To amuse myself in class, while taking notes, sometimes I’d switch hands or write forward or reverse depending on which side of the spiral I was on. Often, when I’m eating, I write with my left hand while using my right to eat. The other day, however, I didn’t think about the fact I was dining Japanese until I discovered I don’t do right-handed chopsticks very gracefully. At least now I have a new means of telling which hand is which.
(77) I tried sumi ink and an unspecified “calligraphy” ink. Both worked beautifully. I imagine most any fluid ink would do. Watercolor also yielded attractive results but required considerably more effort.
(59) Yes, camp should be an excellent source of subject matter. Or if you’re at a sporting event and finish reading your book before the game is over, athletes (and spectators, too) are great material. If there’s nowhere to go, freeze-framing video is a useful way to get otherwise impossible poses. Also you can watch how people move into and out of position.
For portrait practice, C-SPAN or any talking-heads show is a marvelous resource. Ditto for debates and speeches. The camerawork is usually static and the faces keep returning to the same expressions. As an additional benefit, this can help keep you sane during an election year.
I’m ambidextrous
I use “calligraphy” ink. The kind where you have a special stick and you grind it against a wet stone to make the ink. Sometimes it takes hours to do, so I sometimes use a store-bought-already-ground-calligraphy-ink.
kewl. wish i was ambidextrous…
Cool! I am going to try an become ambidextrous. I don’t know if that’s the sort of thing you can learn, but I’m going to try.
I’ve never done caligraphy. I did do an entry for May Muse contest, though. Oh, oops, I have to e-mail that to them. Anyway, It was really fun. I didn’t do traditional flourished handwriting, I just sort of made up my own. I tried to get my first name to fit well on top of my last name by just getting the curls to fit into one another.
. I found that long straight lines drawn through the center of letters work well to anchor the letters and not make it all look too loopy. I went over the final product in black, and then outlined the negative space in between the flourishes with bright colored ink, and then shaded with colored pencil. It ended up looking really retro. You can barely tell it’s a name.
Ebeth, and other nonartists, should you wander by this thread again, could you tell me what makes you think you can’t draw? (the straight-line answer does not count). What would make drawing enjoyable or interesting enough to try?
Here’s the thing. I’d like to teach drawing, but sadly, most of my art classes were useless or worse (7th grade. Brrr. Nightmares.). If I do teach, I don’t want to recreate the classes I hated. I’d like it to count for something, even for those who don’t consider themselves artists. So I’m looking for do’s and don’t’s. Advice, anyone?
79- Violetfire is a lefty, and I’m a lefty fo some sports such as ice hockey. I think i would golf lefty except we don’t have any clubs so i had to learn righty… so i’m not really ambidextrous as strange…
I can’t draw stright lines to save my life. Or circles. Hey, I ahve a question for you Rebecca! *waves hand* Do you favor the continuous line type of drawing where you draw lines slowly and make sure the’re in the right place, or the quick sketchey kind where you do a few short lines till you get one you like, and then move on?
And don’t you all think it’s time we give Rebecca her nickname? She’s posted a lot on this thread. I think we should.
My friend is trying to become ambidextrous. She’s right-handed but plays a left-handed guitar and is SLOOOOOWLY working up to writing and drawing. I’m beginning to wonder if her complete lack of patience will get in the way of her ambition…
I’ve actually never taken an art class in skool. Well, I did in elementary but those hardly count. It seems to me (from my friends who did take them) that they don’t do projects that excersize visual intelligence and creativity enough It’s all just here-just-glue-this-together-and-paint-it-some-random-colors kinda thing. But then, I don’t know. I’m not taking one next year either. I go to a studio instead.
I’m really excited though because when I get back from band camp I might get to volunteer with a program that brings ar to disabled kids! I’ll get to help out in the classroom and such.
yes, Rebecca needs a nickname. ideas? I’m braindead.
(86) Hey, Jadestone. *waves back* Quick and sketchy for me. But — do enough quick and sketchy and you get good enough to have the patience to do slow and precise when it’s called for.
Have you seen Mark Twain’s The War Prayer with illustrations by John Groth? Groth was guest artist in one of my college classes. When he was starting out, someone told him if he wanted to be an artist he should do 100 sketches a day. The poor guy took the advice literally! But . . . the day I met him, I watched entranced as his scribbles transformed into racehorses and jockeys, shaped entirely from the memories in his head. True Magic! I still think it’s magic every time something takes shape on the page.
Meanwhile, I can’t stop drawing with chopsticks . . . I’m totally possessed. Purple Panda, how did you discover this? and what have you done to me?
Skipper Nancy — i recently started teaching watercolor to adults with developmental disabilities. It’s the most amazing experience of my life, with both frustrations and rewards I never imagined. I do hope you get the volunteer job. I think you will enjoy it and also see a lot to think about. Probably stuff most other people would miss.
I learned to write with both hands. I’m very indecisive, and was at a very young age as well, so when I had to start writing (I was equally strong in both hands), I just learned with both! It really helps to be ambidextrous if you play the piano.
I think Rebecca should be the HPB Queen, since she did those amazing hpb thingies. Or if you want an infamous (ish) acronymical name i could do one of those…how about ABE? Artist, Brilliantly Exciting. Hmm…sounds kind of like an ad, doesn’t it? Oh well. Yea or Nay.
My grandfather was a natural lefty forced to write with his right hand. I think this happened a lot not too long ago. (He was born in China, by the way.)
Before I started playing cello, I was always a weak righty. But since your left hand does so much precise stuff when you play a string insturment, mine has gotten a lot better at doing exactly that. I still write and draw right-handed, since that’s the way I’ve been doing it for eleven years or so, since I learned how to write, but I eat food lefty, kick stuff lefty, and hunt-and-peck lefty. When I was about eight, I wrote with my left hand as much as possible becuase I wanted to become ambidextrous. This was around the time my grandfaterh died, and I was obsessed with being as much like him as possible.
I’m not very ambidextrous in my feet, though…I’m left footed.
I do a lot of things on both sides- I eat with either hand, depending on whether I’m reading or not, write with my left, use scissors with my right, I’m right-footed, brush my teeth/floss with my left…
84- the last time I took art was in elementary school, and I didn’t like it because the teacher was crabby, she made us draw specific things (“okay, class, now draw an animal with this technique and show it to me” *kid brings up a drawing of a turtle* “I SAID AN ANIMAL!!” [not the brightest teacher I’ve had]), she never chose my drawings to display and always chose this one girl’s, all the emphasis on doing it one way or another made it kind of boring, we always used the same materials/ did everything the same way, and creativity was kind of ignored..
(86, 88, 91),
I think she should be Lady Bunniful, or “LB” for short. It’s a pun on “Lady Bountiful,” whom you can find out about here: http://www.wordsmith.org/words/lady_bountiful.html
By the way, in comment 57, RL/LB’s comment about the “attentiveness of a GAPA moderating in an art gallery” referred to a real event. When she visited Washington a couple of weeks ago, we went to an art exhibition at the Kennedy Center, and I took a little time out to approve some MuseBlog messages via Treo. Rebecca took my picture while I was doing it:
Oh man…that’s dedication. What’s that white paper thing? It’s rather distracting. Even so, pretty amazing pic. I shall frame it and hang it on my wall. Or at least say i will, which isn’t quite the same thing. Especially since dad has the colour printer set up in some confuzzling way that only he understands. Oh well.
It’s a rolled-up catalog of the exhibition.
(94) Lizzie, that sounds dreadful. I don’t understand the minds who think that’s a sensible way to get kids interested in drawing. Shouldn’t a teacher’s first duty be to invite students to fall in love with the subject? If they can’t do that in an elementary school art class. . . . There’s always time to sneak in the tedious bits later. And oddly enough, finding motivation to get through the tedious bits is much easier once you love what you’re doing.
Another Moment in Lefty World: A couple of months ago I had occasion to spell out some information for someone using the manual alphabet. (Sadly, I don’t know ASL, only the alphabet, which I learned when I was 8 or 9 because it was in a book about Helen Keller.) The other day I saw a chart and realized something I’d never noticed in all these years. I spell with my left hand. Now I wonder, did the guy I spelled for feel like he was reading in a mirror?
(96) Good eye, Ebeth! (There’s more to art than drawing.) I found that whiteness distracting, too, and considered editing it out when I color-corrected the original photo but decided in favor of truth in photojournalism. I did turn the volume down a notch.
Cool pic. Love the black in the background.
98- I think I learned the manual alphabet the same way…
I love doing lineart by hand, scanning it into my computer, and then airbrushing. Unfortunately, this takes forever.
Thanks, SM. I like the black, too, and the nearly monochromatic effect. I also like the shadow on the far left that seems to curve just a bit and kind of mirrors Robert.
100th post? Yay! A little Charleston might be in order. A bit of cha-cha-cha. Maybe the watusi (just ’cause it’s fun to say)? Or. . . uh, um, . . . oh, hi . . . *resumes proper adult composure*
Ooo the shadow is really quite smashing! Yay for nearly-monochrome! The shadows of the people on the left side are loudly crisp, too.
Lady Bunniful, dear, no “proper adult composure” is requird on the museblog. Infact, it’s a bit frowned upon. Relese your iner child. Or haul them back to you so you can have fun instead of them parting all night. Does that make sence? Not a bit. But I don’t care. I invented a new code for typing last night. It’s a bit cunfuzzling. Extra hot-pink-bunny points to those who figure it out.
^ kx s v
Oh no! I forgot it includes brackets! Darn. I’ll retype it later.
Whew, thank you, Jadestone. What a relief. The adult outfit doesn’t fit me very well anyway and is especially steamy and uncomfortable in the summer.
Besides, I don’t think it’s possible to be addressed as Lady Bunniful and maintain any last shred of sobriety. Hmm, never really had a nickname before. Could be the start of a whole new life.
If there were any adults who didn’t quickly adapt to insanity on here, i’m sure they’re off gibbering in a hospital somewhere. Of course, we all probably would be too if we didn’t hide in here on our comps…
Gibbering in a hospital… Hm. I wonder whether it’s time to tell you MBers the truth about those “jobs” Rosanne and I claim to have…
i am right handed, footed, eyed, and eared, but i like playing the left-hand part of the piano better. maybe ’cause it’s easier…
i side with Gwendolyn on the pencil thing. PENCILS ROCK! GO PENCILS!
I remember in elementary school, I had a real flat tire of an art teacher. Her name was Ms. Florencio. When we were doing self portraits in fifth grade, she kept going off at everyone, saying that they were horrible at drawing. She actually erased the entire face on mine, and drew it over. I ended having a squashed tomato nose, a ridiculously low forehead, a weird-looking mouth, and eyes that made me look like I was on crack or something. And I wasn’t even smiling. I’m always smiling. She said her way was right and ours were all wrong. This coming from the same teacher that I saw walking out the liquor store with a big bag in her hands on the way home from school one day.
I love ASL! I spent almost all of last year trying to learn it out of a sign language dictionary, and it worked! I actually know a fair amount
I draw a TON. I have a bunch of characters I draw. I draw alot of anime and (Failed) realistic drawings. :):):)
33- Manga isnt mostly black and white!!!!!!!!! ???????????
I act alot too. I’m taking a class right now.
One of the few things I’m looking forward too next year is the school play. I wonder what it will be?
Sorry about 3 posts in a row but this one will get out some more thoughts tha the other small ones.
22- I draw mostly from imagination. I sometimes draw things I’m looking at or try to copy a photograph.
Lately I’ve had a really big urge to paint. I havent painted in forever and I really want to use so Acrylic paints. Does anyone know where to find them?
Some of my favorite painters are:
Monet
Van Goh
Escher
Cassat
Me!!!
My friends cousin
My friend (The one with the cousin)
My other friend
Griffin (Met her at an Art fair)
I could go on forever but I don’t have that much time.
I like to draw some manga. But as I said in post 110 I mosty draw anime and realistic. I’ve also been drawing alot of cartoons lately.
Does anyone on MB have a Fursona???!!!
Just wondering…
I’ve been doing alot of writing this year and I think its so fun! Next year I get to be booted up one level of language arts.
w00t!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I’m smart, whoohoo *Does happy dance*
Ahem, sorry about that.
For art last year we got to make masks that where made by putting plaster all over your face. Once you where done, you had to write a story to go with it (After you painted it and added stuff) My story was really long and my mom thought it was good but the ending was too easy. (It was a mystery and the dectective found out who it was without and trouble.) So the ending was pretty dull. My mom said it would be better if it where a book. So I’m deciding to make a short chapter book out of it. (About the size of a magic treehouse book or something…)
I would post it, but then I would be afraid that someone would steal it or something…
-Capricious the great and terrible
111 (Capricious)- Yes it is. It’s done mostly in ink and screen tone, with a few colour pages running occasionally. That’s the way most manga is, anyway.
113-Ooooooh!!!!!!!!!! *Slaps forehead* Your talking about mang COMIC BOOKS!!!!!!!!! I thought you meant it in general! Got it.
(112) Capricious, you can find acrylic paints in most any arts or crafts store. Make sure you get the artists’ variety which comes in tubes or jars. The little bottles in the crafts section are thinned down for craft use and will make you crazy if you try to do serious pictures with them. Better to thin them down yourself with a medium and mix your own colors.
Have you worked with acrylics before? One of the coolest thing about them is there are all kinds of mediums you can add to change the texture or to adapt them to other uses such as silkscreen, airbrush, or fabric painting.
Since I started out with oils, for me the most annoying tihng about acrylics is how quickly they dry, even with retarders added, so you really need to buy or make a palette that will keep the paint damp, or else be prepared to spray them with water every few minutes — which I tend to forget to do if I’m really into the painting, then I end up with a palette full of plastic globbies to peel off and throw against the wall. Which has its merits.
(115) Thanks! Yes, I have worked with them before. In art last year we worked with them alot and I agree about the coolest thing. The way to keep them from getting dry is to get those small plastic containers that are made out of the material that is flimsy and thin. The kind you can throw away. Pour a bit of Acrylic paint in one and put the lid on. Every time you want to use it, open it and dip the brush in. This also works for mixing colors.
Y’no? I have never used oil paints before! They dont sound much diffrent from watercolors!
I dont like watercolors very much becuase they spread alot. I should try a new medium of watercolors becuase the ones I’ved used where all the kind you buy at toy shops for kids between 2-9 or something like that. Well at least I used them when I was 2-9!
Overall, thanks for the tips!
Few things inspire me to wrath, but two have been mentioned on this thread.
(108) First, Gwendolyn, your so-called art teacher. I shudder to think how many potential artists withered beneath such tutelage. There should be a Hippocratic oath for art teachers — “do no harm” applies here, too. It should also include a pledge NEVER to draw on, erase, or alter a student’s work in any way. There are always workarounds to convey one’s point.
My own erratic communications skills often crumble against the severity of some of my students’ disabilities, and I sometimes struggle very hard not to reach over and guide their hands just a bit . . . but their work is theirs, not mine. My job is to search for more effective means of getting my point across, to create conditions that will engage the abilities they have, and to keep my ego out of the way. In the long run both teacher and student benefit. That’s my theory, anyway.
Yesterday, for example. One student has multiple disabilities, both developmental and physical. Her vocalizations don’t quite form into words, she can just barely grab hold of the paintbrush, and range of movement is limited. Previously, a staff member stayed with her during class; this time we were on our own. Imagine my terror; for a moment, I wanted to run away big time. Slowly, however, we made progress. Every time I guessed her meaning correctly, she clapped her hands. (She also laughed loud and long at my mistakes.) And she painted up a storm, page after page — the same woman who previously spent the entire class grinding away on one piece until the paper disintegrated.
(116) Oh, yes, the other thing that makes me angry. Those horrid little cakes of stuff foisted off on children to paint with. (Which is only the most egregious of many “student-grade” art supplies I would ban from the shelves. Hmm . . . may I humbly submit a request when Mostly Harmless comes to fruition?) Capricious, please don’t mistake those insipid confections for watercolors. You might as well try to play Chopin nocturnes on a toy piano.
Oils, acrylics, watercolors, pastels, &c: each medium has a distinct personality. Your preference will depend on your own personality and what you want to say with your work. Which may result in different choices at different times. I tried and failed at watercolors any number of times until two years ago we suddenly clicked.
OK, I got carried away there.
I’ve been using arcrylics for a LONG time, and I went with my grandma to her art class, and I used oils and it was SO much easier and more fun to use. So, I think I’m going to paint with oils from now on
Paul Baker, should you pass this way — I made my first quill pens! I’m so excited. Even though the first one was truly pitiful. OK, so was the second. Worse, really. Skipping past more dismal attempts . . . I now have four that won’t make me Queen of the Quill Cutters’ Ball but do write very prettily, especially on the French & Italian printmaking papers I happen to have on hand. (The feathers I collected from the Canada geese who run the park across the street.)
Thanks for the timely tip. The little museum where I work is about to hold its annual fair and now I can add quill writing to the activities. Maybe I’ll make all the pens left-handed just for fun.
Though now that I’m accustomed to drawing and wriitng with a stick, quill pens seem quite the new-fangled item.
quill pens are so cool! They’re a bit difficult to write with, though. I prefer chopsticks.
I use primarily pencils, though I’m considering switching to sketch pens. I also do drawings in PS with a Wacom tablet. Watercolor is nice, too, though I haven’t done that in years.
Most of my drawings are of anthropomorph animals, based on the figures of those in Get Fuzzy. =D
Oh, and I for some reason can’t stand to do oil paintings. I suppose I’m just more of a “comical” person. =P
I never take art classes anymore; they don’t offer anything except how to “pastel” on Smershy’s chocolate bars with ©®@p brightly colored artificial cake frosting. I mean, even with all the stupid budget cuts, the schools could stand to at least get someone who knows the basics of how to paint or draw. If they can’t do that, they shouldn’t have an art class. >_>
That’s at my current school district, anyway. My old school district was pretty good about that. They had people who actually knew something about art. In fact, I did fairly well there. =)
Gwendolyn:
“I remember in elementary school, I had a real flat tire of an art teacher. Her name was Ms. Florencio. When we were doing self portraits in fifth grade, she kept going off at everyone, saying that they were horrible at drawing. She actually erased the entire face on mine, and drew it over. I ended having a squashed tomato nose, a ridiculously low forehead, a weird-looking mouth, and eyes that made me look like I was on crack or something. And I wasn’t even smiling. I’m always smiling. She said her way was right and ours were all wrong. This coming from the same teacher that I saw walking out the liquor store with a big bag in her hands on the way home from school one day.”
I’ve heard about people like this before, though I’ve never yet met one. She probably drinks herself to sleep every night and takes a long drag on her weed cigar every morning before work. The whole day must be like one massive hangover for her.
We only take art class at school for part of the year, and even then all we do is make “birds” out of construction paper. I usually take painting classes at an art center near my house.
The State of the Art Class sounds dismal indeed. I get the impression most of you would prefer courses in which you learned actual drawing and painting. Revolutionary idea. We might have to sneak that one past the authorities. But I vow to do my best to smuggle art into every art class I teach.
Pencil fans — what’s the allure?
“Pencil fans — what’s the allure?”
Eh. It isn’t so much “allure” as “accuracy”. I am a perfectionist, and so when I do a drawing on paper, I like to use pencils and pens as they are most accurate (at least for me). =D
123- Art in art class?!?!? *gasp*
I don’t really like acrylics. They dry far too quickly. I looooooove my watercolours. And if you mess up, you can rub water on the splotch until it goes away. Oils are awesome, too. I paint reeeally thick because I love to see what textures I can create with them.
Oils are hard to dispose of….all that paint-thinner-type-stuff, too, for brush-cleaning…but I still love them. Especially Burnt Umber. Which is my favourite paint colour EVER.
I absolutely loathe the “student-grade” paints used in high school art rooms. Art doesn’t even fit in my schedule. But that’s what Theology and History classes are for.
Pencils…I like them….they’re easy, erasable, and found nearly everywhere. And you can smudge them…but not too much, like charcoal. My arms turn completely black whenever I use charcoal. Or nasty shades of brown when I’m using chalk pastels.
116- You should get the ones in the tubes. They’re more expensive, but work wonders. *hugs watercolour tubes* *gets covered in paing*
121- You have a Wacom tablet? Dude, you’re so lucky. I seriously need one. Now I just scan in lineart [done by hand] and airbrush on PS. Aplauso para vd.
Fabric paints are seriously fun. And they peel off you skin if you get too messy. Or if you smear it with your fingers. Which I do occasionally, but I usually prefer to use knives. Craft knives and pallete knives.
Or Sharpies when I get really bored. *is attacked by Sharpie haters*
Sorry for the tangent.
Quills and chopsticks made an interesting addition to today’s village fair at my museum. At first I was just pleased to see that other people could actually write with the quill pens I had cut. Then the activity acquired an unexpected flavor when Mr. Takase showed up and began writing in Japanese. Soon enough he was telling us stories about Kyoto and demonstrating how our alphabetic spelling of “zen” adds no meaning to the word, whereas the Japanese characters that spell it have meanings in themselves. While he talked, he filled the page with pagodas and flowering trees. What a delightful incongruity to see Japanese designs being drawn with a quill pen!
Even odder — watching him hold two quills as if they were chopsticks and using them to move stuff around on the table.
Later a couple of boys took to drawing with the quills so enthusiastically, I couldn’t resist introducing them to drawing with chopsticks. The boys liked them even better than the quills and finally the mom had to drag them away to other events.
So that’s how chopsticks became part of the story of early 19th-century Quakers. Thanks, Purple Panda!
I’m Quaker, too!
I like Burnt Umber too. If you mix it with Ultramarine Blue it makes a really good blackish-color.
Well since I’m currently coloring (using OpenCanvas, best program ever) a sketch I figured I ‘d post here.
(127) That’s awesome! It is true that each character has meaning. I would have liked to see that, it sounds wonderful. ^^
My mom got me this huge calligraphy thing for my graduation, and it is so cool. All the ink and stuff came from Japan, and everything is supposdely very authentic.
123- Pencils have erasers.
I don’t paint to much.Every now and then, yeah, but most of the time what irritates me is my inability to ffind a paintbrush small enough to fit my needs. And when I procure an old dusty one from behind the desk and trim it to size, the paint sticks to it in little globs. I do not enjoy school paint…
Ohh! Lady Bunniful! You could teach art classes at the Muse Acadamy! After Operation Mostly Harmles, that is.
Gurr! Messages about WP. I’ll try posting gain…sorry if this turns out as a double post…
(128) I’m not actually Quaker myself, but my job as director of an 1811 museum house has involved me in the Quaker community. Many of my friends are Friends.
My favorite way to mix black in watercolors is indanthrone blue, brown madder, and a touch of phthalo green. It makes a luscious black that is deeper than the commercial versions and can be tweaked in any direction. Similar colors work almost as well. Another option is quinacridone rose & phthalo green. It’s fun to think of new combinations.
(129) What a great present, Axa! May it bring you many happy hours. I love Japanese calligraphy and also sumi-e. Both have such eloquence in simplicity. And I like the ceremonial aspect of setting everything out and grinding the ink.
One of my ancestors was Secretary of the Navy when Perry went to Japan. When I was little, my great aunt had custody of a vase the admiral had brought back and presented to her grandfather. I knew nothing about the history or politics of the event, but while the grownups yammered on about who was in hospital, who recovered, who had died, who was likely to die next . . . I’d sit beside the vase and gaze lovingly at its every detail. I thought it the most beautiful thing in the world. So I guess I absorbed a certain amount of Japanese aesthetic very early on.
(130) Jadestone, you do me honor. Thank you. It just happens that I have always dreamed of teaching at Muse Academy, long before I’d ever heard of it.
Shortly after I received my new name, a rabbit showed up at work. It didn’t even run away when I almost stumbled over it. I’ve met up with it every day since.
By the way, tantalizing as erasers are, my own drawing improved dramatically when I gave them up.
Yes, but do you decide suddlenly that this-person-is-just-not right-she’ll have-to-go every little while? Plus I often have problems of being bumped and a huge line running across my paper… erasers are very good for when that happens.
There was this one time I was drawing durring science(don’t worry we were watching a movie), a really pretty bird with it’s wings spread. And Eric, the guy nxt to me wrote “bird” with an arrow on it in blue pen. I almost cried. Almost.
i hate it when people write on my artwork. *sends jadestone a chai pie (hey, that rhymes) to make up for it.* i like the way pencils write
I think the 2 best ways (that I’ve tried) to mix black in oils or arcrylics are: Pthalo Green and Alizarin Crimson, and Ultramarine Blue and Burnt Umber.
(132) Jadestone, I try to view my mistakes as puzzles to solve. In the long run, this attitude helps me to be less afraid of screwing up because now I can usually draw or paint my way out of the blunders. Since I’m at least a fifth-generation perfectionist, this has NOT been an easy skill for me to learn. But I got fed up with the fact I seemed to spend more time erasing than drawing, and where’s the joy in that?
More and more I look at painting/drawing as a performing art. Which means lots of rehearsal. A couple of weeks before opening night of a play, my director tells us we’re on our own, no prompts, no do overs, we have to improvise our way out of fluffed lines and keep going no matter what. The first time she did that absolutely terrified me. By performance night, however, I felt more relaxed than I ever had before. And this year, I felt completely at home on stage, even though I had to do some very goofy slapstick wearing bunny slippers. (I tell you, I’m haunted by bunnies.)
Here’s an example of how this applies to visual arts. A few months after I switched to watercolors, several intensely emotional events converged. When I took a walk to clear my head, a heron suddenly took off from the riverbed right in front of me. I knew I wanted to paint not just the heron but the rush of that moment, and I couldn’t achieve it by the conventional method of drawing out the composition first then filling in with paint.
I didn’t want to be sloppy either. So I studied pictures of herons, made preliminary sketches. I even practiced wing movements with my arms to get a better idea of flight. (Love inspires some silly behavior sometimes!) Finally, I sat down to paint and just poured myself into the brush strokes.
The heron was all I could hope for. One big problem, however. In the emotion of the moment, I had inadvertently broken one of the first rules of composition and had placed the bird way over on the left side of the page. To make matters worse, it faced outward, so it appeared to be flying right off the edge. I didn’t even notice until I took a break. No way to erase. No way to duplicate that precise heron, one of the best things I’d ever painted. So I changed the whole background, dripping paint, experimenting, searching for ways to add balance to the righthand side of the page.
Eventually, I made a series of five pictures, but many people like the first one best. I, too, have a special affection for it because a disaster turned into a success and because somewhere in the process I ceased to be merely someone who paints and began to feel like an artist.
Not all salvage attempts have happy endings, of course, though you’d be surprised how many do. It’s just another skill that can be improved like any other skill.
As a practical matter to reduce mistakes, you can start with a 2H pencil or lighter to rough in placement and general shapes then use darker pencils for subsequent layers. Or use tracing paper to save the parts of the drawing you like and take it from there. I should add that I do find erasers useful as a drawing tool, to add highlights or adjust shading.
In the end, you figure out what works for you, what you want to achieve. But I would encourage you to take a vacation from erasers every now and then. If nothing else, it’s a way to test your progress.
Does any of this make sense? It’s the kind of stuff I jot down for myself but seldom have the opportunity to attempt to put into complete sentences for someone else to decipher.
I had the same art teacher every year from 1st to 8th grade. We had art 2 times a week in elementary school, and in middle school we had art every day for one quarter. He was amazing. He did hilarious things like play catch in class, and he’s swing the cord under the table when he wanted you to plug his slide thing in. You had to catch it, and it made it really hard. He took pictures of art around town and gave you a week to tell him where it was from. EVeryone who got it right was in a drawing for a poster he’d drawn himself. And he also had a really funny fiesta. His wife finally sold it. He almost cried.
I miss him, could you tell?
135 – that makes perfect sense! It’s really interesting.
realy light pencils like 2H drive me crazy for no explicable reason. an well. is that ^ even a gramatically corrext scentence?
135- that does make sence. I guess that’s also part of why I like pencils, I can shade with them and make more shadows than I am able to do in pen. Some of you might be more pen-gifted, but not me.
That heron drawing sounds cool. We get great blue herons on the lake we live on, but there so skitish that every time you walk past a window they fly away.
I can never get them for long enough to draw them.
I personaly like the effect of having the main focal point of a picture(like the heron) off to one side. When you look at somthing in real life, things arn’t perfectly centered. Thats why somtimes when I’m drwing a feild or a tree or somthing. I like to have, say, the things spaced as they would be in real life (a cluster of flowers here, a brown spot of grass there) and try my best to resist impulses like “Ooh, a flower would look nice there and go with what’s in front of me. natures not perfect, and my pictures arn’t either(they wouldn’t be anyway, but yeah).