process

Drawing

Every artist develops his own creative process, incorporating tools and materials that help develop and complete an artistic work. For me, my work always begins with a drawing or a series of drawings which I transfer to canvas using a variety of methods and tools.

A concept or an idea for a painting is often vague and without any real substance, until it is been slowly transformed into a finished object by thinking and a lot of hard work. Thinking starts with mentally attaching meaning to visual memories. While they may only be faint recollections of past experience, really thinking about them, dwelling on them and becoming obsessed by them sharpens the images, builds relationships between various elements and solidifies intangible thoughts into something that can be physically manipulated into an object of communication. Gaps in memory or lack of sufficient knowledge may require remedy by referencing a live model, photograph or real location. However, regardless of the source of inspiration and use of visual or supporting material, the end image still resides only in the dreamlike state of the artist mind. Daydreamers, those that consciously occupy their minds with fantasies and dreams, are usually content to remain isolated within their self fabricated worlds but artists are driven to pull others into their dreams. This drive or obsession is what makes them artists and their work art.

Drawing is a means of communication much older than the spoken or written word. Humans were drawing on cave walls before they acquired the ability to speak and long before they created writing. Speech only echoes visual thinking and writing is an extended development of drawing used to visualize speech. Visual understanding and communication still occupies half of our brains. It’s built in and an important basis for all other rational thinking and being. Drawing, painting and sculpture are transformations and physical manifestations of the mind.

What we consider to be a finished painting, whether on a cave wall or fine linen canvas, is seemingly more refined but remains only a drawing taken to a higher level by a creative visual mind with a sharp eye driving a skilled hand. Acquiring good drawing skills requires lots of drawing and coordinating the mind with the body takes practice. Over and over again, the mind guides the hand and the hand in return trains the mind. Drawing the human figure is a process of observation and practice. In time anatomy becomes second nature. Best results in realistic painting are always achieved through the use of a model just as it is with a tree or landscape. Knowing this, I still generally do not use models and rely instead on memory with simple formulas and training I received in art school. Differentiating between an adult and a child is mostly a mater of proportions, however, there is often more to the equation. Children occupy space differently than adults. They seem to defy gravity always teetering on the edge of disaster; up and down are meaningless. They conform easily to the shape of their surroundings like a cat in a small cardboard box, they can become square. When left to sprawl on the ground, they become flat or when hiding in a broom closet, tall and thin. They are animated. Arms, legs and bodies often seem detached and operating independently.

Most small children, who have no shame and have nothing to hide, are best understood, at least in the classical art frame of mind, in their most natural state, naked. In reality most small children are actually naked barbarians and clothing is only a cultural imposition that convention forces on them. Even a small lock of hair twisted over the ear in a certain way or a garment draped over one shoulder is a betrayal that can lock them into a time and place where they may not yet belong. Shamefully, with the passage of time, they usually become civilized.

As children grow into adults they become ridged, more balanced and less animated. They are also molded to conform to society's expectations and assume a relevance to time.

Obsessed with clothing, which mostly relates to a status or state of mind, adults wear clothes less for the needed protection from the elements and more for cultural conventions which assigns a class and roll in society. Clothing keeps people in their place. Unlike being seen as a naked child, nudity in adulthood usually signals an outcast or iconoclast, someone who is not to be trusted. Although irrational, to be naked as an adult is not to belong. Burdened by guilt and shame, adults, who are actually just older and larger children who have learned to hide themselves in a false notion of conformity. By wearing an imposed cultural mask, submission to a convention of modesty becomes a virtue, even when it is, more often than not, a deception.

Loosely using simple rules of anatomy and a collection of visual landmarks, my drawings, especially those of children, rise up from the paper almost entirely on their own. Expressions and personality come unconsciously with often accidental tweaks in line and shadow. These small details are not that important early on in a drawing since I mostly work to emphasize larger action and body language. I also try to develop figures with counter balanced torsos, a tradition created by the Greeks. That is one shoulder up while the weight of the body rests on the opposite leg. It adds dynamic interest.

Everything I draw is exaggerated. Placing a childlike figure on a tricycle opens many opportunities to stretch and animate the body’s form. Highly influenced by renaissance mannerism, I try to make my figures push, pull and climb their way across the canvas. Nothing is allowed to remain static.

I seldom use materials such as photographs for direct reference unless it is absolutely essential for achieving some specific creative end. Mostly, I prefer using classical master drawings and sculpture. The masters knew what they were doing when they drew and painted the human form. They also understood an undeniable fact that nudity in art gets people's attention, and while I am not above using attention getting devices, using nude figures as part of my narrative involves much more. The images are usually not about real people nor are they meant to be. They are not even that anatomically correct, yet they add a timeless human dimension that invokes an emotional response that cannot be achieved any other way.

A fifteenth century Florentine painter, Fra Bartolommeo, drew highly detailed human figures on life sized cut outs, sometimes with movable arms. He would then arrange them on a stage, adding draperies and props to build dramatic compositions for his paintings. I use a similar technique or method, only I use a modern tool. After collecting a series of study drawings for the characters in my narratives I scan them into a computer. Then, using cut and paste, I compose the figures into a finished working drawing.

Once I have achieved a close-to-acceptable composition, I transfer the drawings to canvas using the traditional grid method or trace a full sized printout using either charcoal or graphite rubbed on the back. I also use carbon paper. This is much the same as an centuries-old process which uses a poncing wheel or pin holes and a cloth bag filled with powdered charcoal.

Painting

Generally, I paint thin on hardboard panels or canvas with very little texture. This allows me to place more emphasis on detailed lines, brush work and glazes, than on heavy applications of paint. I use a heavy build up of paint if it adds to the visual effect, especially for stone walls and foreground detail.

In preparing the painting surface, I use numerous coats of gray-tinted gesso, each well sanded before applying the next, which further refines smoothness. The gray-tinted ground also reduces the distractions caused by any small unpainted spaces in the finished painting. It also kills the overwhelming psychological effect of having to face a large blank white canvas.

The drawing process never stops. I continue to refine and build, adding detail and backgrounds with pencil or charcoal. Then using paint I continue to draw lines and define shapes with areas of light and dark, the same as using pencil on paper, only with color. I try to keep the pallet simple and seldom use paint directly out of the tube. Mixing a color with its compliment increases the range, makes it more natural and saves the use of pure color for important statements.

By under-painting and glazing with ether thinned opaque or naturally transparent pigments, I can enhance the effect of both when worked in combination. For an enhanced visual effect, opaque blue sky painted on a red orange ground takes on a vibrancy not present with just blue on white. More traditional under-painting using complimentary colors adds depth and warmth for flesh tones and coolness for metallic surfaces. Pure white highlights which are too stark can be softened slightly by adding a thin glaze of transparent color.

I am not confined to only painting thick over thin. Providing that the heavily applied areas are sufficiently dried, well controlled glazing with both light and dark colors is used to add visual depth and enhanced texture.

Over-glazing large areas with darker or even lighter transparent colors also unify. Areas which have a lot of small detail can be brought together into a single compositional element. I use this technique to build aerial perspective and find it especially helpful in creating overall mood. Warm earth tones mute cold blues and marry them with warmer yellows and reds

The object of my painting process is to create variety and contrast in paint application that goes beyond just using light and dark. My intent is the deliberate use of deep, rich and intense color which reflects the mood in the narrative while preserving the feel of a drawing.