Art Thoughts

What makes you unique as an artist? 

That is a great thing to know about yourself and your work. 

Sometimes when we see the great work of other artists we can begin to question our own ways of doing things. 

While self appraisal is always valuable, it's more important to maybe take a bit here and there from the artists you admire. Rather than slavishly emulate their styles.

Fisherman by M Francis McCarthy

If you read yesterdays post; I wrote about creating art from your heart. I said that being a unique artist is your birthright as you express your deepest inner vision.

Hey, here's some home work for you. Draw or paint something today completely out of you imagination. You might be surprised at whats in there.

A bit about today's drawing. Not sure if I posted this drawing already, but if I did it was way lower rez than this. I did this back in 88 or so. I'm still super happy with it as it's got great contrast, style and a neat creature.

Cheers,

Drawing - Work at it

Putting up a few drawings today. These date from 1987 and were done on nice cold press illustration board with graphite in a lead holder. This was basically inking with a pencil and I used the range from HB to 6B leads.

I never could stand H leads with HB being the exception. H and higher is just too hard for me. For these drawings I used to 6B to fill in the blacks.

Now, the sad part is that these reproductions here are actually scans of copies not scans showing the range of grays.

The Red Death by M Francis McCarthy

One day I will have my suitcase full of art from the states and I'll definitely put these up again at that time as there is a real warm feeling you get with lead that just isn't showing here.

On to our topic: I think these drawings really show what working at a drawing is for me. There are things I see now that I'd change but I know at the time I did them that they were high water marks. 

Especially The Red Death. Getting those folds right was a real challenge and required intense determination  concentration and constant rechecking with the reference.

I've stated before that drawing is mostly just measuring. But, after you have those measurements right there's a world of different interpretations and styles that you can pursue. 

The decisions you make in that area are a reflection of who you are, what you admire and your technical ability to realize your vision as an artist.

Fee Waybill by M Francis McCarthy

It's difficult to draw well, at least at first. My draftsmanship is just ok and for me drawing correctly involves a lot of checking and rechecking as I was self taught and went down a few wrong paths. I don't regret my lack of academic training. I worked really hard at drawing anyway.

Getting your drawing ability sorted is the number one key to painting well. Painting can be seen as no more than colored drawing if you think about it and most illustration also hinges on good drawing. The exception being of course, straight photo illustration. 

There is lots of nice illustration work being done these days with just photo manipulation in Photoshop. However I feel the best guys at large do know how to draw even if they manipulate photos to get the work done.

Get your sketch book out and make a regular habit of drawing everything, anything, all the time. I doesn't matter what you draw, what matters is doing it often enough that your eye and hand learn how to work things out on paper. 

There is no shortcut for drawing practice. You could read twenty blogs today even more informative than this one and it wouldn't equal even one solid drawing attempt.

Cheers,

Drawing - Landscape

The drawing I'm featuring today was done way back in 1984.I can see much of what attracts me to landscape today in this drawing. At the time I was really into detail. A habit that persisted for quite a few years.

Winter Oak by M Francis McCarthy

It was rare for me to do landscape art at the time. I was really more into drawing people. I think I had a snapshot I'd taken that I used as reference for this.

This scene was rendered in pencil. One of my favorite mediums. Many artists love pencil because of it's subtle  forgiving nature. Unlike a pen or brush pencils leave a faint trace yet can also produce strong black darks. 

It's good to use both and many pen drawings start out in pencil. I advise students to jump in to ink along with their pencil work. The definiteness of an ink line is difficult to erase and for that reason has it's own type of integrity. 

I feel it is good as an artist to be able to commit and move on. I've known a few that never really got past pencil because of their fear of "messing it up". Better to try and fail than never attempt your best inner vision.

Old Drawings

Recently I returned from a trip to my home town in California. While there I grabbed an old portfolio full of xeroxs of many of my old drawings. The portfolio was put together in the early 90's but these drawings are from circa 1988. In 1988 I was 23 years old and living in downtown San Jose, California.

This was drawn in pencil. The model put on a lot of weight in later years but then again so have I since 1988!

Pencil again here but a bit later in the year. I was fond of using lead holders at the time with leads from HB to 4B pretty soft range. I really never liked any of the super hard leads. This guy was illustrated on Illustration board about 7 inches wide.

Another pencil sketch. I always enjoyed drawing historical figures. I remember being quiet pleased with the expression as I captured it in the sketch.

Unfortunately these are all copies of photo copies. I have a very heavy suitcase full off original art still at my folks place. One day I hope to get it and scan the entire contents at high resolution. 

Meanwhile, it's fun to play with the images. These were all done in the days long before I was anywhere near a computer and the copiers I had access too, I really couldn't play with until around 1992 or so. 

I will be posting more old works up as we progress as it seems like a fun thing to do.