Tag Archives: drawing
Rain day
The Sketchbook Wars
Trial and error
I don’t like working from photos, but there are certain situations when it’s necessary. A posthumous portrait is one of these. Even when working from photos, I seldom grid, since it’s limiting and rigid. The only exception is very large works where I can’t see the whole space at arm’s length from the canvas. Even […]
A feel-good story
A recent pair of studies suggests that attending life-drawing classes makes people feel better about their own body. The first study, done earlier this year, surveyed 138 men and women who regularly attended life drawing classes. The subjects completed various assessments to measure positive and negative body image, analyzed against how many classes they’d taken. “For […]
Blast from the past
I asked each of my daughters to go through their stuff and set aside anything they wanted to keep. They did so, and I’ve been assiduously shoveling the rest either into bins for Volunteers of America or the trash. Included in those things were a number of fine drawings, but since they didn’t want them, I […]
Boys will be boys
Last Friday I took my family to Mt. Battie. Aaron loves climbing on rocks and has the scars to prove it. Laura was content to sit quietly and draw with me. The middle-aged people could fend for themselves. Dwight, the youngest, tends to be cautious, so I seldom worry about him. I was rather surprised, therefore, to […]
Painting with pals (part 2)
After Olana, I’ll be at Ocean Park, ME, for their second annual paint out, July 15-17. The 19th century camp meeting movement gave birth to more than 350 permanent Chautauqua assemblies. These were named after the most famous assembly, located in Chautauqua, New York. Part religious revival, part adult summer camp, they proved enormously popular. […]
Crazy for art
It’s disconcerting to realize your hometown has a penchant for producing psychopaths. Timothy McVeigh grew up just a few miles from my family’s farm. Ditto Joyce Carol Oates—who has created numerous fictional psychopaths—and recent Clinton Correctional Facility escapee Richard Matt. The last time New York had a prisoner on the lam—the hapless Ralph “Bucky” Phillips—ended disastrously, […]