Stuck on Klee

I made a bit of progress with the leaf study originally suggested by Paul Klee in an assignment to his Bauhaus students. The exercise was to develop a fictitious leaf based on rules he outlined in his text. I started another one on my drawing board, with the idea of applying different rules. For example: 1) instead […]

Leaf Studies ala Paul Klee

I must have read the first 23 pages of ‘Constructive approaches to composition’ in Paul Klee’s Notebooks Volume 2, The Nature of Nature, at least 20 times. The very last line of the section, on page 23 simply states, “Exercise: Imaginary leaves on the basis of the foregoing basic rules.” [All quotes are from: Klee, P., Heinz-Norden, […]

Aging Dragonfruit

I haven’t picked up any new fruit at the fruit stand recently, but that’s ok. My powers of observation are trained on the fruit I currently have, in all its (former) glory. Have you ever wondered about the stages a grape goes through to become a raisin? What does it look like in its intermediate […]

Preparing for Paul Klee’s Leaf Study

Drawing skills In the past couple of weeks I have been concentrating on still lifes, mainly fruit (Mango Orange Guava, Grocery Store Surprise, Single Dragonfruit, Anemic Blood Orange and Korean Melon, Two Fruits and a Veggie, Symmetry). I doing so, I was practicing my powers of observation, trying to improve my brain-hand linkage to faithfully […]

Moving On

The fruits that I sequestered into my little painting area are about to go. I’ve had a great time looking at them. Starting with the apples and oranges, I moved on to more exotic-looking ones: mangos, guavas, misshapen kiwis, Korean melons, horned melons also called kiwanos, and even the elusive dragonfruit. I even included a […]

Under the Wire

Today was another busy day. I was busy for hours longer than I thought I would be, although there was no emergency like the other day, when we had to go to the hospital.  It is enough to say that the 8 hour job for which I was hired, turned into a 14 hour day. Not that […]

Dragonfruitus Resumptus

Ok, where was I? Oh yes. My previous post was delayed by an unanticipated need to go the the hospital where one of Joy’s relatives is ill.  I had been talking about dragonfruit and the fact that I may have been mistaken about the random, untethered distribution of the tiny abandoned kiwi-like seeds. I may […]

Dragonfruitus Interruptus

It’s easy to plan when you have a lot of time, but the unexpected can foil them even when you have time in abundance. I actually had a lot of things to do today and was on schedule to complete the final item of the day: my painting and my blog post when, wham… we […]

Dragonfruit Unchained

Today I took the next logical step with my dragonfruit. I split it open. To tell you the truth, I knew what to expect. Before I ever saw a dragonfruit in person, I searched for a picture of it on the Internet. I was only expecting to see an outside view, but there it was, split […]

Not Done with Symmetry Yet

I enjoyed painting the bottom view of the dragon fruit (DF) yesterday. My watercolor sketch didn’t quite portray the type of spiral symmetry one sees quite clearly in the flower of a sunflower or a pineapple. In all honesty, the symmetry in the DF isn’t that clear. Perhaps I got a defective one. Today’s study […]

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