Cactus series

In the category of continuous tippy toeing towards painting these small sketches started with a pencil sketch and combined layers of ink wash to define the basic composition and shadows. They’re layered with white conte & black charcoal pencil to work out light areas and transitions. The series gradually gets more painterly as it progresses.

I was reminded of this classical approach in reading “Cezanne’s Composition” by Erle Lorgan where he describes how Cezanne organized a picture. It allowed him to work very rapidly from what he saw once having mapped out basic compositional and dark/light relationships in a loose and exploratory way. By approaching each phase of the work as a discovery based on what’s learned in the prior stage the picture comes “alive”.

Ink, conte & pencil | 3″ x 4″ | 2011

Ink wash, conte & charcoal | 3″ x 4″ | 2011

Ink, conte, charcoal | 3″ x 4″ | 2011

Ink, conte, charcoal | 3″ x 4″ | 2011

Ink, conte, charcoal | 3″ x 4″ | 2011

Black + white acrylics, conte, charcoal | 3″ x 4″ | 2011

Black + white acrylics, conte, charcoal | 3″ x 4″ | 2011

Acrylics, conte, charcoal | 3″ x 4″ | 2011

Acrylics, conte, charcoal | 3″ x 4″ | 2011

Vines

Charcoal | 18" x 24" | 2010

Flowers

Charcoal & white conte | 12"x12" | 2011

Charcoal | 18"x24" | 2011

Landscape

Experiments in using line and planes to define form…

Pencil on paper | 4"x5"| 2011

Drawing camp in the Swiss tradition

Last Spring Jean Craig Teerlink, with whom I attended Yale’s Summer in Brissago, Switzerland, organized a group of us who had roots in the Swiss design tradition to do a 3 day drawing camp north of SF. It was taught by Peter Olpe a long time instructor from the Basel School of Design.

The drawing camp tradition involves hiking out into a bucolic natural spot and drawing for 3 hours at a stretch with group critiques in between sessions. Cooking, cultural trecks and travel are wrapped around the work as the venue allows. It wouldn’t be Swiss without an assignment to focus the exploration. The works below represent 3 of them.

Charcoal

Charcoal | 18″x24″ | 2011

Ink on paper | 18″x24″ | 2010

Leaves

These drawings use black & white charcoal with white conte. Lots of smearing, erasing, layering and reworking. Results in dirty hands, face and clothes and the feeling of time spent in a worthwhile pursuit.

Spiney bush thing

Charcoal + white conte | 18"x24" | 2011

Charcoal & white conte | 18"x24"| 2011Charcoal & white conte | 10" x 14" | 2011