Cay Denise

I had a recent opportunity to see the sisters' selected works of Jean-Michel Basquiat in an exhibit at The Grand in L.A. The exhibit was well-presented with a range of Jean-Michel's works, a re-creation of his studio and early family home environment, informative videos with interviews of some of the people who knew him -- all contributing some context about the artist's short life.   It didn't, however, speak to Jean-Michel's first foray into mark-making with a school friend doing graffiti works signed as Samo, the club-drug scene and how it influenced his life/work choices, the importance of Andy Warhol and Keith Haring to his intention of making it big in the art world (there were 4 Warhols in the exhibit), or even how or when he died.  I knew little more about Basquiat when I left than when I entered the exhibit.  That seemed a missed opportunity.  However, www.basquiat.com has a very good timeline about the artist's life that I recommend perusing before goi...

A friend and I did some stone painting recently.  Using acrylic paint, acrylic paint pens and permanent markers, we completed our pieces.  After they dried, a coat of varnish was added to protect them.  I love their shapes, how smooth they feel, and how fun they look! If you have painted stone, what other materials have you used successfully in creating your unique version of them?  

More sketches and finished images   What I find amazing is how shadow is so important in capturing contour, volume and depth of a shape.  Added to light with consistency in the light source, the shape of a face, a garment and even a hairdo --comes into greater realism and believability whether painted, pen and ink or even pencil. 

This is the first year I've seen the AWS Associate Members' works, and there are some superb pieces and such a variety.  Some don't look like they've been done with watercolor.  So, it is a remarkable exhibition and well worth the time to watch.  I highly recommend it!

Recently, I found a lovely image that I've since learned was created by Kay Neilsen, a Danish illustrator who also worked for Disney.  His work reminds me of more finely detailed imagery like that on old Vogue magazine covers.  So, I decided to fool around and give drawing it a try...never having done a horse before.  I'm delightfully surprised and like how the pen on paper came out.  Do you think color is needed?  I like the simplicity of it without color...at least right now.  You can tell she is moving along with the horse and there is some kind of celebration going on (parade, riding competition, etc.).  What kind of story does this type of image lend itself to--from your point of view?     

The 5-minute sketch suggests gender and hair length mainly.  The finished work took 1.5 hours mainly due to the hair.  It has a lot of lines that form the curves, curls, waviness, and volume.  It was actually more of an effort doing the hair than the face.  The latter I didn't spend that much time on.     

A trip to a rural nursery yesterday was such a treat! It boasts wonderful outdoor sculptures installed amidst an array of lush trees, plants and florals.  With the occasional cottontail rabbits scurrying about, I was entranced by unusual shapes, the range of colors, color combinations, and textures walking along the winding pathways where surprise met me at every turn!                              

Today's 5-minute sketch to me suggests gender and potential upper class, but there is no hint of age. Before reading further, imagine the finished piece.  What do you anticipate it will look like? A photo of the finished effort is below.  Does she look like what you imagined she might?   If not, what would have helped you in the 5-minute sketch to imagine her more similarly to this completed image?  What could have been left out in the above sketch -- that would have allowed more time to focus on including the helpful elements? For me, the helpful elements might have been the lips and the lines from the nose to the lips, maybe the eyes, and the hand/arm.  What would I have sacrificed?  I would have left out the lines of the outfit (except for the outline), the darkened nostrils, and the ears.  

The 5-minute sketch below gives a solid hint as to the figure's outline, gender, hairstyle and pose.  As for the finished effort, it lends a much greater sense of realism to the face and its expression.  In addition, the detail of the clothing includes a corset and lace fabric and trims.  I really enjoy making the random marks that become the lace areas!  Plus, the pose is clarified to show she is leaning on one arm.   As you may be able to see, there are a couple of lines that appear off, and they are.  I've left them in to show myself I could do it and still appreciate the work done regardless of the alterations made around them.  

If you'd ever told me I'd be writing sililoquies, I would have chuckled asking you what a sililoquy is. According to the Merriam Webster Dictionary (online version), the word means: "a poem, discourse, or utterance of a character in a drama that has the form of a monologue or gives the illusion of being a series of unspoken reflections" Have you ever read the "Alexandria Quartet" by Lawrence Durrell?  It is a tetralogy of novels (4 books).  As Durrell describes it, the first three novels (Justine, Balthazar and Mount Olive) offer the same sequence of events through several points of view showing their individual perspectives.  The fourth novel (Clea) shows change over time.   I read the four books decades ago, and loved the idea of writing about events from different peoples's perspectives.  I don't remember the specifics of the books but found the idea behind their format inspiring. Whether and how that might take shape in my work (in some form) was...

Two more pieces for the day's practice work! In the first one, it is hard to tell what the 'essence' is in the 5-minute sketch.  It could have been a clown.  That said, I like how the squinting of the eyes with the marks along the bridge of the nose emphasize the taste experience in the final version.    In the second one, the 5-minute sketch captures the pose, but not the lighting that provides so much contour and depth to the face, should, arm and hand in the final version.  This one was actually fun to see evolve with the shading.          

After nearly two weeks of computer data back-up work, I've done some sketch work!   Interestingly, you can't tell in the 5-minute sketch what is going on with the head because of its shape.  But in the finished effort, you cal tell the head has been foreshortened and the pose is very different.  This is the part of the sketch I particularly like.  The neck is quite elongated, but it works -- as well as the facial features. 

"Many hands make light work" is a quote by John Heywood, a British writer who lived circa 1497-circa 1580 that I was reminded of looking at the sketch below.   But I wasn't thinking of the quote when doing this effort (with a Muji pen).  Rather, an idea inspired playing with hands (and sometimes forearms) that overlap and disappear within the image and beyond it.  The background lines were tedious in the doing while the exercise as a whole -- was one of curiosity and play.   Is there a specific thought or feeling that comes across to you from this image?

This is a really interesting video from Louise Fletcher an English Abstract Painter.  Her message is about letting go of the 'good bits', especially if you intend to treat it as precious (e.g. cutting it out from a larger piece and selling it).  Treating parts of pieces as precious is a back-handed way of sending yourself a message that you don't do that much good work.  So, she suggests artists consider letting those good bits go -- ultimately validating your ability to create more good from your unlimited supply.   An example she uses is a painting on canvas that you're working on.  You consider one small area in a corner of the canvas as a 'good bit', while the rest of the elements on the canvas are beginning to work well together and it's going somewhere.  But you really like that good bit in the corner.  So you start altering what's working to connect with the good bit.  Unfortunately, it doesn't really work.   Her point is that rather t...

This is a continuation of the concertina sketchbook - another two-page spread using Sharpies and Posca pens. This one with the prior day's two-page spread looks like this:

This is a two-page spread of fun colors, shapes and embellishments from my concertina sketchbook.  For the play of it!

This effort started as a sketch that was then colored in -- all with Sharpie pens.  The only other tools used were black and white Posca pens for the background dots plus the white also used for the reflective dots in the eyes. The substrate was 140 lb. watercolor paper (9" x 12"). I could have left the background light because the image did 'pop' with it.  But the contrast between the off-white paper and the colored image was so intense they seemed to compete with one another for the viewer's attention. The grey tamed the background down though the white dots may compete with the colored image too though they work. This was another project done over multiple days.  I again liked pacing myself and not pressing to complete the piece the same day. 

This is a fascinating biopic about Yayoi Kusama's life and work.  She is passionate, driven, assertive, rebellious, bohemian, and mental health-challenged in her constant pursuit of art-making.   From Georgia O'Keefe whom she asked to be her mentor, to Frank Stella who bought one of her pieces for $75 to later sell it for $750K, to Andy Warhol and other male artist contemporaries who used her ideas for their own exhibits/works, she has been an amazing force in contemporary/abstract art.  Now, she is even recognized in her home city of Matsumoto, Nagano Prefecture, Japan (not so at one time).   The film is an engaging look at the phases of her growth, productivity and fame as an artist.  The link below is to the show's trailer hosted by Rotten Tomatoes.  For any artist, I recommend this film. https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/kusama_infinity  

What fun to learn Mr. Brosnan is has a love of painting and wanted to be an illustrator but ended up becoming an actor.  I would consider him more of an emotive painter as he uses the canvas to 'process' his feelings or 'relay' his experiences -- at least when he initially returned to painting as an avocation.  The Vanity Fair article about his work and a current exhibition of it can be accessed at this link.  Vanity Fair Article - Pierce Brosnan Paints Interestingly, his son is also a painter with a completely different approach.  The son's works (see them at the Instagram link in the article) are quite Basquiat-like but with more graffitied/busy areas the fill the entire canvas.  

This is a first in that all the work on this piece was done while outdoors enjoying some marvelous days of sun and warm weather, AND I didn't press myself to complete the piece the same day I started it.  Nor did I press myself to get it done the second day.  It was finished on the third day of three spent working on it.  My efforts were nicely paced so that I didn't tire looking at the piece to decide on color placement that can be difficult with this kind of complexity. The materials used included a 140 lb. piece of watercolor paper from a Strathmore Visual Journal, a Bic Intensity pen for the initial sketch (black ink), Sharpie pens for color, and a bit of Golden acrylics (Titan Buff and Zinc White) + Faber Castell Albrecht Durer Watercolor pen in grey for the windows. In this piece, I generally worked from the left side of the image to the upper right part of the page.  The center and lower right areas were the final ones done. I liked the experience of working a...

This was not a normal effort in that a full sketchbook page has been used plus its orientation as well as that of my reference were horizontal.  The sketch and black areas were done with Muji pen and the shading was done with mechanical pencil.  The white dot reflections in the eyes were made with Posca pen.  I started with the sofa (drawing from the bottom right to left), then did the arm, the gloves, and on to the head. You can see that there wasn't enough room at the top for all the hair...an oops, but survivable.   What amazes are the number of lines completed in this 5-minute sketch and that you can tell the image is of someone lying on her stomach on a some kind of cushion.  So, it has essence! What I like most in the finished effort are the eyes, the believable gloved arms/hands, and the shading on the pillows in the background that adds a sense of depth to the couch. Note for future work:  When working from bottom up when sketching, I need to reduce...

In today's practice effort, the 5-minute sketch captures some essence.  The most helpful elements in giving this sense are the hair, eyes and arm shapes.  The hair was interesting to do because there are three different types of mark-making used in this drawing:  echo lines, oval shapes with layer over layer of them, and free-hand strokes to show more unkempt hairs.    I like the pose and the arm that hides a bit of face.  It is a very useful way of creating depth right off-the-bat in an image.      

In the photo below, you may be able to guess who the character is from the 5-minute sketch--because there is 'essence'.  That begs the questions of what is essence, how does one select minimal elements to convey essence, and how do you tell if you've captured it? What gives the sketch below the sense of essence I'm talking about?  First, you have to recognize  the person being captured.  This particular image is based on Lady Danforth, a character from the Bridgerton series.  If you don't know the series, you may not have perceived 'an essence' that you can relate to. If this true for you, make a mental note of the sketch you've seen here.  Down-the-road you may see one of the shows with her in it and recall you've seen her somewhere.  That is the kind of recognition between one form and another that clues you in that the work has that essence. What do you look for in selecting the elements to help convey essence?  First, essence can come fro...

'The Creative Act', published just this year (2023), is filled with pearls of wisdom!  I've done one read-through without marking up the book.  But I will be re-reading it to digest it much more fully.   With so much in the book, I sometimes felt like I was hearing familiar voices communicating similar thoughts. That includes art course instructors, Ardith Goodwin and Louise Fletcher; words spoken by Goenka-Ji when leading Vipassana meditation retreats; and books by others.  Some of those authors include Brene Brown, John Cleese, Lynda Barry, David Bayles & Ted Orland, Cat Bennett, Austin Kleon, etc.  Without a bibliography or reading recommendations list, I'm really curious about the breadth of reading done by the author.  What/who were his favorite books/authors?  How did he develop his insights into the creative process?     The book is well-suited for marginalia.  If you're wondering what that is, it is writing in the margins to ...