Some of my recent work
My recent work has been very abstract. Sometimes when you look at abstract art it is difficult to tell what you are looking at, or what the artist had in mind when they were creating the piece. Thus I thought it might be good to share what I have been thinking lately when I have been drawing. There are a few things which are going through my mind when I have been drawing lately. The first thing, namely, is that I am happy to be drawing and drawing on a close to daily basis. As has been discussed in several previous posts, I went through a long period where I had a major mental block against drawing. As much as I love to draw, for decades I actually had a major fear of drawing! When working on icons the base drawing for the icon was the part of the work that I disliked the most and hard the hardest time doing! It has taken a lot of work peeling back the layers of the onion to get to the point where I love to draw again and where I actually look forward to picking up a pencil and drawing. Thus it is good to be back to drawing. I have quoted “Power vs Force” by David Hakins, M.D., Ph.D. many times on this blog and in the book he points out that every time a piece of art is created it adds to the overall beauty of the world. This brings great joy to me.
The next thing that goes through my mind when drawing is an idea that was first proposed to me by my icon teacher 20 years ago: artistic harmony. When Peter was teaching me about artistic harmony he was mostly focusing on the balance of colors in a composition and the desire to spread the various colors evenly through the piece. He was teaching me this during the first very complex icon that I painted; one that had a total of 8 persons and a dog in it. He wanted me to sit down and plan out the colors prior to painting a single color so as to keep the icon balanced. Doing this avoids drawing the eye to the presence of a powerful red in one corner of the piece, but no where else, or a bright green in another part of the piece but no where else. Such a placement when done right can be very striking and powerful, but when done sloppily can be distracting and harmful to the overall flow of the piece. The same goes with the pencil tones. I try not to put similar pencil tones next to each other as they will just become visually muddy and indistinguishable to the viewer. I also like using various dirty erasers as my blending tools for the pencil and charcoals and seeing how they interact with the tones that I have applied.
The interaction of the pencil and charcoal tones with the blending tool leads me to the final thing which I consider while drawing: I think about the flow of the lines and how the shapes interact with each other. Rhoda often describes art as a dance, an interaction between the various parts of the piece of art with each other. But art is also a dance in the way of an interaction between the work of art and the person observing the piece. Thus I like to keep the varying bodies in the piece flowing and interacting with each other. In each of the three pieces that I have displayed in this post there are 3 bodies in each piece. Each of the bodies in the piece interact with each other. I like long, flowing lines and lines that vary in both color and shape. I like the pieces to have a sort of rhythm to them. There are times when I want to draw completely in pencil and charcoal, but other times I love to add a splash of color to the piece. Finally, because the artwork interacts with the viewer as well as interacting within itself, I like the pieces to be light and playful. Byzantine icons are sacred and solemn, and so when I am working current series of work I want to keep it light and playful.
Next time you look at one of my drawings or paintings from the recent series of work that I have been doing, these are a few of the things to consider when you do so.
