Tree’s Company / The Leaning Tree

These days, all victories are hard-fought, but all the sweeter for the effort.

This week’s Illustration Friday topic is “Tree”.  In contrast to the creative block encountered while trying to select a suitable scene to illustrate last week’s “Shy”, the image sprang immediately to mind.  The two characters,  their positions relative to each other, the vantage point, the background – that was the easy part.

Then, I had to go and make it complicated.  After a quick sketch in Photoshop, I set out to find a compelling color scheme to emulate.  I found it on Ian Laser’s phenomenal website: Ian Laser (here).  He’s a professional illustrator whose site has been in my favorites for some time now.  I borrowed generously from the palette used on the dog-walking picture, so please repay him the favor by clicking around his place.

The main color blocks weren’t too tough, but then I set to task of tightening the drawing.  What followed were some ten hours of swinging back and forth between too tight and too loose.  The kid in the tree’s torso was an early stumbling block.  The slightest shifting of a line transformed him from steroidal to emaciated, then back again.

Eventually a balance was struck.

I can’t guarantee a deal with the devil wasn’t involved.  Totally worth it.  I had already tried to sell my soul on Craigslist, and the only taker wanted to haggle.  (My asking price was $3.  Reasonable, I thought.)

Once the main drawing issues were resolved, the colors needed to be re-painted so that would somewhat match the lines.  I slapped a few special effects here and there.  Just a bit of blending.  The goal was subtlety.  How did I do?

At some point, Tony walked into the office, on his way to bed.  He casually observed that the kid on the ground looked like Bobby Hill, from King of the Hill.  So I had to completely redraw his face again, too.

I spent the better part of the next two hours trying to draw a car.  Does anybody else remember middle school like I do: all the boys would draw cars in their notebooks while the teacher was talking, and the girls would draw horses.  I missed out on that early practice.  Although I’m getting better with horses.

Round about 1am, I finally eked out a collection of lines that I could convince myself was automobile.  I doubt that Henry Ford would agree with me, but who cares?  He’s dead, and dead people can’t drive, anyway.

And on that note …

I’ll finish with a couple of early snapshots, submitted for your approval:

Originally, the nearer boy’s head wasn’t facing his friend. Rude.

Notice how the background color shows through.  Not only does it lend a cool, stained-glass effect at this point, but it also asserts a certain moody influence on the whole piece.  I made sure to leave some of the little mauve ‘seams’ exposed in the finished version.

And for everyone who actually reads all the way to the end of these things, AND who expect a tenuous musical tie-in, here you go:  Sun Kil Moon’s “The Leaning Tree” from Admiral Fell Promises fits wonderfully with this drawing.  The acoustic tune starts sweetly, then pivots into darker territory at about the two-minute mark, only to lighten up a bit again with a long coda.

 

 

 

Vacation – pt.1

It’s kind of fun to think how the word “vacation” is really a form of the verb “vacate”.  Vacate means ‘to make empty’ or something roughly equivalent.  More than likely, this term originally referred to people vacating their houses while ‘on holiday’ somewhere else.

It’s much more interesting to consider the extended leisure time as an opportunity to ‘make empty’ your mind.  A vacation is a time to let (most of ) your cares ooze out your pores as you bathe in the sun, or evaporate off the top of your head while you read a breezy book, poolside.

That’s what I tried to do on a spate of vacations this year.

Chances are, by the time you read this post, I will have returned from the final trip of 2012 – a visit to my family and friends in New York.  I might have some art to show for it.  But not today.  Today we start with the second most recent journey: to Florida.

This is small one, painted in a 6″x10″ watercolor sketchbook.  The paper was a better quality than what I was used to using, which proved problematic.  More about *that* in the next post.

Nonetheless, this picture adequately captures the feeling of lazing away a sunny afternoon.  The color of the pool is just right, and the shadows are pretty accurate.  The lattice fence outside the enclosed patio is sketchy, but gets the point across.

Less endearing are the blue chairs.  The the paint kind of got away from me there.

One of the  best things about Marco Island, Florida was emptying the brain and just *being* there. We saw and did plenty of stuff, but the magic moments were the ones like this, where not much was going on.

On the outside chance that you find yourself in this vacation/retirement community, make sure to stop in to this hidden gem: Simply Cupcakes of Olde Marco.  I am not a huge cupcake fan, but the young couple who run this shop do everything right.  The flavors, the presentation, the moist and unique cake batters, and the exact right amount of topping/cake.  AND they make the best lattes in town.  Even if this last paragraph has somehow not convinced you to book a trip to Marco, click on over to their website and tease yourself with drool-inducing pictures.

Come on back for the next post, which will highlight a completely different kind of quiet place in Savannah, Georgia.

You Ain’t Me

When I show people one of my self-portraits, the reaction is usually one of the following:

• You look so serious.

• Do you really see yourself like that?  How low is your self-esteem?

• Is this an abstract piece?

• Hmmm…  So, did you see that YouTube video about the kitten with the Hitler moustache…?

Over the years, I’ve grown accustomed to people not seeing the faintest resemblance between me and my attempts at a likeness.  But I’ve never had this happen before:

After a recent portrait session at the studio, I brought home my work to show Tony.  Proudly, I thrust it under his nose, awaiting the words of praise and admiration that were just on the tip of his tongue.  They came out like this:

“Is this you?”

It was hard to be offended because the model had been rather handsome.  Not just any kind of handsome, but handsome in that generally-accepted, movie-star sort of way.  Still, it was disappointing that I was not able to clearly differentiate this fellow’s face from my own, especially when we share so little in common, besides our good looks.

See for yourself.

This picture came together fairly quickly.  It took only about half of the two-hour-session to complete.  The first half hour was spent sketching out a couple of options for the composition, eventually settling on this one.  Using a pencil, I quickly indicated the main shapes of the face, and made sure the spacial relationships between those shapes were accurate.

Next, I started to block in the areas of medium shadows with some diluted black watercolor, then quickly layered on some darker shades.  The focus for this painting was going to be a full, descriptive range of shading, rather than color.  Black watercolor was used instead of ink because they always put more of it in the little kits than a person can ever really use.  (Yes, I use the same Prang sets that supportive grandparents give their grandchildren for Christmas or Hannukah.)

Some areas of the portrait got special attention.  The eye came together almost by magic, and I just made sure not to get in the way or over-work it.  On the other hand, I was very careful about the shape of the mouth and the nose.

With all of these gray washes in place, the picture was starting to feel appropriately life-like.  Still, it just wasn’t that interesting.  With only 15 minutes left in the session, I stumbled across the solution by accident.

The model’s shirt needed more definition, on the collar.  I used a strong black line to jot that in, reflecting a slightly crumpled feel.

The quality of the line was magical.

I applied a similar line to the lower part of the model’s face, outlining some of the features for extra definition, but skipping others, so as not to make things too predictable.  The eyes and ear were left alone, but the hair got the treatment.

There was a real danger of this artificial line flattening the image or making it look like a cartoon, but I think that was mostly avoided.  Instead it gave some real character to what had been a so-so study in value.

But before I take my victory lap, there’s one final detail to point out.  If you think you’re seeing some color in this painting, you are right.  Early on, I had considered using a little bit of color mixed into the black.  Some warm violet made its way into the upper left quarter of the wall and hair, while some blue showed up by the model’s shoulder before I abandoned approach altogether.

You’re not going crazy.  At least not yet.

(Remember to click on the image for a closer look, and also: please share this blog with your friends…)

Tell me where have you been
Oh, black-eyed mannequin

– from “You Ain’t Me” by Frank Black

The Greatest // Heroes

I’d like to claim that the sparseness of the inside cover page (shown here on the left) was a deliberate attempt to a) give some appreciation to the lovely natural cardstock of the sketch book, and b) ease the view into the content, much as the title pages and colophons do in normal published books.  The truth is a little more mundane.

In part, it was a challenge to devise an image that would “play nice” with the Oprah image on the right hand page. I didn’t want an overload right away.  In the end, the simple “headline” was taken from a Rolling Stone cover.

It works nicely here for a couple of reasons.  Firstly, it provides a bridge from the headline cover (previous post) into the first proper image.  Secondly, it relates to the Oprah image and can flavor the viewer’s interpretation of it, but it can also be thought of as somewhat separate from its adjacent page.  This relationship between pages continues throughout the book.  The placement of the text “The Greatest” next to the text “Heroes” is deliberate: it can be read as a single phrase, or as two smaller fragments.

I also hoped to play off the pomposity of magazine cover headlines in general, and Rolling Stone’s in particular.  America’s marquis music mag loves to anoint the top 50 greatest self-effacing singer-songwriters or the 100 best stage dives of all time.  With the use of this headline, I hope to both question how heroes are made, while also declaring this Sketchbook “The Greatest” of all time.

As For Oprah. . .

She’s easy pickings.  She embodies the public’s need to not merely admire successful people, but to bestow upon them heroic qualities far beyond the means of normal humans.  This photo of her almost didn’t need any embellishment to make the point.

Comic book superheroes and references are woven throughout this book.  Here, the imitation of “blast lines” that surround the queen of all media underscore the superhuman image (self-image) of the woman, while doubling as a halo.   Don’t worry, folks; she will save us.  She possesses the mutant power to turn ordinary products into must-haves and crackpot ideas into mantras.

And for the record: I can’t stand O.  What are your thoughts?

Next Up: A Nearly Nude Double-Feature

The Curse Of The Killers Inside

Go right ahead and judge this book by its cover.

This is, after all, the cover of the sketchbook that I put together for the Art House Co-op Sketchbook Project.  The chosen theme (from the list they provided) was “Heroes and Villains”.

The 32 pages that follow delve into what it really means to embody those archetypes, but the cover plays it a little coy.

Since so many of my heroes are found in Rolling Stone, that magazine was a natural fit for this cover.  It wasn’t really all that thought out.  These words “The Curse Of The Killers Inside” just kind of worked.  I chose them from my pile of clipped words partially for their size: they filled up the space that needed filling.  But the ‘over-the-top-ness’ also set the stage for the sometimes campy, sometimes satiric, usually audacious pages inside the book.

One of the main goals of this booklet was to raise questions about heroism and villainy – not only in the people we idolize, but our own capacity to fill these roles.  Along that line, I hoped to stir up a little ambiguity right away with the cover phrase.  Is it a standard tabloid teaser; exhorting the reader to look inside the pages for more about the “Curse”?  Or, are the killers *inside* something else?

(Ba-bah-baaahhhh!)

Spoiler alert: the curse is inside YOU!!!

Any way, please leave your own thoughts about heroes, villains, curses, Rolling Stone, or The Rolling Stones – in the comments section below.  I will be updating the blog more frequently over the next few days.  We’ll keep these pages flying fast and furious.

Meanwhile, I will be holding court at the ACVR Building near Lowertown St. Paul for the St. Paul Art Crawl this Friday, Saturday and Sunday.  If you know anyone in the area, encourage them to cross the river and visit the Old Town Artists and all the other artists in our building.

Finally…! It’s Happened to Me

There may actually have been a point in time when I liked the song, “Finally” by Ce Ce Peniston.  It was all over the radio for a while, and it returned to my life when I started going to clubs in Las Cruces and El Paso.  The gays will not let a hooky dance song from the 90s disappear until every drop of danceability has been wrung out of it.

What has “finally” happened is the Art House Co-op Sketchbook Project has now put my submission up in their digital library for all see.  Check it out by clicking here.  It’s well worth the couple of minutes it will take to create an account with the co-op.  There are thousands of sketchbooks from around the world documented in fantastic quality in there.

I highly encourage you go and click through my sketchbook using the slick interface on the Art House website.  Leave comments.  In the coming days, I will be walking through the sketchbook page by page, here at Gabriel Garbow | Artworks.

This project is near and dear to me, not because the finished product is that great (though it *is* pretty great, you have to admit).  Rather, this project jump-started my foray BACK into the art world after a ten-year hiatus.  My friend, Susan Stack urged me to participate.  We are friends from our days at Pratt Institute.  She is now based in Singapore, where she creates great handmade objects available for sale on her website, www.tiramisuzi.com.  Check it out. 

She and some other friends pushed me in the right direction.  Next thing you know, there’s a blog site, and a studio, and new work being completed every week!  A big thanks to her and all of you who keep the inspiration level high!  Enjoy the Art House page, for now.  And share YOUR stories of inspiration in the comments section below!

The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill

Two weeks ago, a wonderful gentleman came to sit for us at the Old Town Artists studios.  I was in charge of the front door; letting folks into the secure building and ushering them to the freight elevator, which would take them to the fourth floor.  There was great turnout that night, and by the time I made it back up to the studio, there was quite the crowd surrounding our model.

That suited me fine.  For one thing, I like to let our paying guests choose the premium spots.  A studio-mate of mine is always encouraging me to show up early so I stake out the best place to set up.  I should show up early, but not for that reason.

Secondly, I wanted to do something other than another close-up portrait.  The last few had worn me out.  I deliberately set up at the back of the pack, and surreptitiously added a couple of my fellow OTAs into the frame flanking the model.

As we settled in to the pose, I quickly sketched Betty Livingston (link) into the lower left of the picture.  She was wearing a puffy black jacket and her signature baseball cap.  You can see her busily capturing the model on her own canvas.

To the right, Thomas Winterstein (link) was sketching away.  He offered a couple of unique challenges.  The first challenge was preventing him from becoming too prominent in the picture.  Because of the way I ended up positioning him, he takes up a lot of the frame.  Plus, he was wearing a plaid shirt, which can tend to be ‘busy’.  Patterns like that tend to attract the eye, so I had to tread carefully, or this would end up dominating the scene.

The second challenge was caused by his leaving after about 15 minutes and not coming back to draw!  I guess things were not going that well for Tom on this night.

I tackled the first issue by keeping his figure monochromatic, fairly simple, and the pattern light.  You can see that the plaid on the shirt is actually just the original pencil lines.  The second issue was solved by just trusting my original sketch.  Even though Tom was no longer there as I finished this area of the painting, the rapid sketch I had made of him in the first few minutes was enough information to go on.

There are so many parts of this picture that I really enjoy.  The wicker chair is one of them.  Then there is the curtain behind the model.  The yellowish color of it and the loosely suggested folds contrast in hue, but not intensity, compared to the rest of the wall.  On top of that, I added the finishing touch to the painting: the white swirls.

This pattern and the black outlines present elsewhere contribute to a somewhat flattened, decorative effect.  That can be a bad thing in some paintings, especially if it happens by accident.  Here, though, I wanted a sort of flat-looking ‘illustration’ style of image.  It reminds me somewhat of a Japanese woodblock print, and the oddly panoramic horizontal dimension of the piece reinforces that effect.

At the end of the session, the model joined some of the other artists for popcorn.  I took my leave, but that was not the last I was to see of ‘Bill.’

The story continues, next time . . . when our model RETURNS!

Where I Get My Little Debbies – pt.2

Two nights ago, the spirit of Little Debbie came to me in a dream.  She was radiant with light, and fairy dust shimmered around her – or it could have been colored sprinkles, now that I think about it.  Anyway, she said, “You will go to your studio tomorrow and take a magical photograph of your latest painting.  The one of the market….” I was transfixed by her iridescent freckles and jaunty sailor cap..

I managed to stammer, “Will Swiss Cake Rolls mystically appear in the shop window in the picture?”

She replied, “When I tell you to do something, don’t f****ng question me.”

And with that I woke up… really hungry.

The next day I did go to the studio, and I did take that photograph.  And it was in focus… as if by magic.  Thank you, Little Debbie: patron saint of empty calories.

Let’s leave this wonderful land of wishes and snack cakes for a moment and return to the painting that inspired this tangent.  After blocking in the light gray winter sky, and a few other areas of color, I wanted to establish the eventual *range* of colors/contrast.

Sometimes one will choose to work from light to dark, or – in opaque media like oils or acrylics – from dark to light.  In transparent watercolors, it’s very difficult to un-color an area, so painters usually approach the painting by either building it up gradually from light to dark or by trying to get each color/darkness correct right off the bat.

The main problem with the light-to-dark method, is it can be very tough to determine exactly how dark things are supposed to end up.   There is a tendency to build everything up about the same, ending up with a painting that lacks contrast and interest.  Without a very light light, and a very dark dark it’s hard to determine where everything else is supposed to fall.

So the next order of business was to lay in a few of the darkest areas, as well as the brightest – or most colorful – area:

The darkest spot is going to be the doorway.  Now the door can be used a point of reference for all the other darks in the picture.  The lightest area will remain the sky.  The most concentrated color is the yellow of the siding.  From here on out, I want to be sure that nothing darker, lighter, or more colorful than these spots, but I also want to be sure that the full range of values are used in between these extremes.

At this stage a few details are also finding their way in.  The outline of the car is becoming defined.  The bank of trees fade into the distance.  The open sign is delineated by the shadows around it and the colors are established.  The glass blocks around the entry start to form a geometric pattern.

In its final stage, this picture comes alive with areas of interesting details.

I added definition to the decorative frieze at the top of the building.  However, this isn’t meant to be the main focus of the piece, so the colors here are muted.  The same is true of the window.  Keeping it understated was a struggle, and getting the curtains to ‘read’ as curtains was tricky.

A few individual trees are sketched into the left-hand side.  It’s tempting to just plop some tree-like shapes into a piece but it makes a big difference if you really look at the specific shape of the individual tress, the way its branches relate to each other, and how the light hits it.  I actually practiced these trees on another piece of paper first, so I got the feel for how to drag my brush across the paper to achieve the right effect.

Probably the most time-consuming detail in this piece was actually the white car and the man getting into it.  I had a lot of difficulty getting the values right underneath the vehicle, and suggesting the shape and slope of the car.

The sign itself came together quickly, since the color was essentially a few simple areas of flat color.  A small brush and a little patience was all it took, since the underlying drawing was already in place.  At the very end, I pulled a little bit of very light gray over the whole thing to make it a little less gaudy.

One of the final, fun touches was the texture on the sidewalk.  This was accomplished by putting a little bit of light-colored gray pigment on a mostly dry brush.  The bristles were separated a little bit, and then dragged over the area.  This resulted in a subtle striping effect that kind of gives the feel of concrete.

All in all, the more I look at this piece, the more I like it.  Now it’s time to move on…

But before I go, here’s the photograph that had me so upset.  (It doesn’t look anything like the actual thing.)

Have a great day.  Enjoy a snack from your nearest corner store.

I Keep Mine Hidden

The title for this post comes from a b-side to the single “Sweet and Tender Hooligan” by my beloved band, the Smiths.  With melodramatic proclamations like, “Hate, love, and war / force emotions to the fore / but not for me, of course / i keep mine hidden” the song only obliquely relates to the gauzy collage below.

I completed this piece as part of a Printmaking class at New Mexico State University in lovely Las Cruces.  The details of the assignment are lost, but the image remains – and in remarkable condition considering the fragile materials used – and my shameful disregard for accepted archival practice.

It was conceived as an exercise in exploiting actual depth in what is normally considered a two-dimensional work.  The translucent ‘gauze’ is layered on top of the foundational image, that both reveals some of what is below it, but also obscuring it bit by bit and layer by layer.  It bears mentioning that the gauze is actually toilet paper.  We had been instructed to use the bathroom tissue for a previous lesson, and I had some left over.

Bits of found organic material are embedded between the layers in some spots.  You can find pine needles, a flower that looks like a starfish, and some other dried-up piece of flora.  This not only reinforces the 3-dimensional nature of the work, but also adds visual and thematic interest.

I think it’s a happy accident the strips of phone numbers is both the top-most layer *and* actually the most concealing/opaque layer of all.  I really just added it at the end because the composition still seemed a bit boring, but it seems to tie in thematically somehow.  I’ll let you draw your own conclusions.

The pine needles placed in the figure’s mouth-area remind me alternately of sharp teeth, but also the stitches you sometimes see over dead people’s mouths in movies.

What meanings and associations do you find in the images contained within this picture?

Mug Shots – pt 4

Many artists have their ‘signature’ subjects: visual preoccupations they return to again and again throughout their careers.

Pablo Picasso included guitars in some of his earliest “blue period” paintings.  The instrument continued to appear throughout his cubist developments, and again in his later ‘free’ style.

Andrew Wyeth had his secret model, Helga.  Edward Hopper had windows.  He didn’t so much paint them, as paint ‘through’ them.  And dear Edgar Degas had his ballerinas, capturing them solo or in groups, painted or in pastel.  He even completed a late-period mixed-media sculpture of this subject.

My ‘Helga’

When I become either famous or dead, like those other guys, I will probably be remembered for my coffee mugs.  The executor of my estate will uncover vast, dusty troves of the; ferreted away in wooden trunks and under floorboards.  They will sell at auction amidst a hubbub of awe mingled with pity.  “If only he had applied his prodigious talent toward a more monumental subject.”  And that’s fine.  There’s a certain steadfastness about the coffee mug; an inevitability to their forms that makes them at least as worthy of immortalization as musical instruments.

And so:

Balance Through Contrast

This one developed over the course of a couple hours two weekends ago.  The simple harmonious color scheme and solid composition lend this one a unique charm.  The real game-changer, though, has to be the spoon.  It adds interest through three kinds of visual contrast:

1)  Detail.  The suggestion of the intricate details in the handle contrast with the otherwise simple shapes of the napkin, mug and table top.

2)  Movement.  The spoon creates a strong diagonal line across the composition otherwise dominated by less dynamic vertical and horizontal lines.

3)  Surface.  The concave bowl of the spoon and the suggestion of reflective metal provides a balance to the matte planar surfaces of the other picture components.

Early Stages

This painting was less fraught with difficulties than some of its predecessors.  From an early stage, the picture showed promise:

At this point, even greater pictorial unity is present than in the finished product.  What it lacks is a full depth of tone.  Also missing is any differentiation between the material that make up the different parts.  There are no hard-and-fast rules dictating the inclusion of these qualities in every piece.  The image probably could have been considered a successful, finished work at this point..

However, I had set out to depict a more fully-fleshed-out still life.  I also wanted to see whether I had learned to avoid some of the issues that plagued earlier efforts, so I continued.

The end result justified the decision, in my opinion.  What about yours?