nanke's stuff

Recently I went nuts and bought a bunch of new books.  True, most of them weren't expensive, but still, in the last week or so, I bought 9 new books, and they do add up.  Anyhow, one of the new ones is called Rubens Drawings, published by Dover.  It has 44 plates of drawings by Peter Paul Rubens.  So, in my on going desire to improve my drawing (starting with the most important aspect of drawing which I think is Seeing), I've begun another copy of a master's drawing.  This one is entitled "Portrait of a Child" done around 1619.  The original was done with red, white and black chalk and pen and ink.  I'm planning on doing the whole thing in pencil.  I have charcoals and conte crayons, but for the sake of tidiness, I'm going to stick with pencil.  So, here they are - my beginning and my reference photo.  As you can see, I'm having great difficulty with the eyes.  Also, the angle of the head is wrong.  I'll post my progress as I go along.






This is a picture of the second spread in my RR book.  This was done by my friend Teresa Stebbins, a wonderful artist and maker of books.  The photo doesn't do it justice.

In Sept. 2008 I was invited to participate in a round robin based on the book True Colors.  There were 9 of us, and we each chose a color, made a book, did the first spread (with an explanation as to why we chose the colors we did), and sent it off to the next person on the list.  Well, after all this time, it's winding down.  I spent the day today finishing the last spread in the last book I have to work in, and I have mine back!  I thought I'd  show you the cover of the book I made, the explanation of my color choice, and the spread I did in it.  If you'd like, over time I'll post pictures of the other spreads in my book.  They're all wonderful, and I just love my book.  The long wait was definitely worth it!

I'm done fooling with this drawing - I don't think I can get it to look any closer to the reference photo than it does. ...... also, I'm ready to move on to something else!

This weekend was a busy one - we spent a good bit of yesterday in Ann Arbor, which is always fun.  We ate breakfast out, then went to Michigan Book and Supply for some art supplies, then on to Borders Books where we picked up a few birthday presents.  We also went to a wonderful art gallery (16 Hands) and another shop (Falling Water) that sells books, cards, candles, gifts .... well, you get the idea - it's really a fun place with great things to see and buy.

Anyhow, today my sweetie baked a Chocolate Kahlua cake for a coworker who is turning 50.  He did a wonderful job on it with only minimal assistance from me (in the form of gentle suggestions ... at least I thought they were - lol).

Tomorrow I'm finishing a RR book spread and starting another Master's drawing, which I haven't selected yet.  So, here's my "finished" drawing, and my sweetie's cake:

Today the books I ordered with drawings of the masters arrived.  I got one book of DaVinci drawings, one of Raphael, and one of John Singer Sargent.  I quickly thumbed through the 3 of them, and I decided to switch to Sargent because the style was entirely different from the "DaVinci" I just finished.  I also decided to start a new sketch book devoted entirely to these sketches.

So, after deciding on Sargent, I picked out a drawing that I naively thought would be a relatively easy one to start with .... NOT!  It's a "simple" line drawing, so it seemed like a good one.  Ha!  The problem is that there is absolutely no room for fudging anything - it either works or it doesn't.  So, here is my feeble beginning, followed by the reference drawing. 

While I'll be tweaking the "DaVinci" drawing a bit, I'm not going to post it again.  Remember (or not) how the book that the reference photo I was using weighed a ton?  Well, I decided that rather than struggle with it again, I would order some other books (paperback this time) that will be a tad easier to work with.  They should be arriving tomorrow.  I ordered a book of DaVinci, one of Raphael, and one of Sargent drawings, and I'm really excited about getting them.  I'm going to pick out another drawing from one of them to copy.  I think that trying to copy different styles will be both interesting and educational for me.

So, in the meantime, I thought I'd share a drawing I did for my parents years ago when they moved to New Mexico.  It's a portrait of Chief Joseph - a man who sacrificed much to save his people.  He's one of the people I think is a true hero.

I didn't have much time to draw today as this is my day to work at the Health Dept.  I volunteer there one day a week (and I love it!).  Anyhow, I noticed that every time I look at the reference photo, I see something different, such as shaped formed by value differences that I hadn't noticed before.  Of course, those insights  throw my own drawing way off.  Even so, rather than just give up and toss the whole thing, or get out the eraser  (again), and remove large segments of it, I just chalk it up to the learning process and continue on.  I think I'm nearing the end of this one.  I know I'll do a bit of tweaking on it, which of course I'll post, but I think maybe one more drawing session with it and I'll be ready to move on to something else.  So, here it is, not quite finished.

Little by little I'm making progress on my drawing.  I'm finding the hair especially challenging, but also fun to do.  I think I might be in the home stretch, or at least nearing it.

I mentioned in an earlier post that the only book I could find here at home about DaVinci is is gigantic tome that's sort of hard to work with ... it has a mind of its own and doesn't want to stay open.  Anyhow, while looking for something to draw, I didn't read any of the text - just looked at the pictures.  Imagine my surprise (and chagrin), then, when I actually read the text regarding this picture and discovered that the drawing isn't by DaVinci at all!  It's called "Young Man in Profile Facing to the Right" attributed to Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio.  Even that designation is in question, and some scholars prefer the designation, "school of Leonardo".  So, for the sake of consistency, I'll continue to refer to it as DaVinci, but you and I know better now, don't we?