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 […]
I ended yesterdays post with a critique of my Apples and Oranges still life. I didn’t think there was sufficient change from brightest bright to darkest dark, that is, not enough change in tonal values. I didn’t want to attempt to fix that for fear that I would muck it up and have nothing worth […]
I had intended to explore the history of still lifes in yesterday’s post, but after thumbing through some of my old art catalogs, came upon some hands that I couldn’t resist sketching. I am interested in gestures and their power to convey emotion. My older brother is autistic, low functioning and nonverbal and holds his […]
I started preparing for today’s blog by looking up the history of still lifes (which is where I learned that the plural of still life is not still lives). I was going to take a break from hands for a while, but as I was looking through some of my old art bulletins. I came across […]
My watercolors for the past two days (Resting Position and Resting Hands Revisited) have been gestures from a photograph of Mike and one of his classmates, M___, at their Day Program. Mike, my older brother, is autistic, very low functioning and nonverbal. Today’s study In today’s study I portray the hands of my brother. His head is down […]
Yesterday’s watercolor study did not portray the emotion or feeling that I wanted. Although each hand position was fairly accurate, I think their relative positions contributed to my unhappiness. Today I was thinking about how to remedy the situation: Perhaps I could include more context. If the forearms or torso were presented, would that help? […]
Contact It is a real thrill to make contact. We visited our grandchildren in October of last year. William turned 7 months old while we were there. He was quite different than when we first saw him, after he was born. Then, all he did was sleep. As I understand things, infants can’t see that […]
Artistry of the Mentally Ill I checked out Artistry of the Mentally Ill, by Hans Prinzhorn from the library a couple of weeks ago. I just started reading it. It promises to be a storehouse of information relevant to understanding human creativity. Prinzhorn (1) was an art historian as well as a psychiatrist and expanded […]
I used the photograph below in a previous post. It pictures my older brother getting ready to slam his arm against his chest. Mike is autistic, low functioning and nonverbal. The doctors were not sure if this type of self harming activity was voluntary or not. If it was involuntary, like a sneeze, I suspect the […]
I overwhelmed myself yesterday, trying to catalog images of hands to incorporate into a “Hand Atlas“. My first mistake was trying to draw small images of hands with latex masking fluid. First of all, the scale was too small; secondly, I don’t know if it is possible to draw delicately with this medium. I almost […]
