the cassandra pages

A studio still life, and some talk about buying paints and pastels

I was in the local art store the other day, buying pastel paper, and ended up also buying three oil pastel sticks - a dark blue-green, gold, and purple. It isn't a medium I've used much since I wore out my childhood set of Cray-Pas a very long time ago, but I've been seeing oil pastel work I liked and thought it would be a good experiment. This is the first attempt -- a fast, ten-minute drawing -- and I quite like the refusal of the thick stick to become pointed and fussy; the intense, rich color; the possibilities for thick dark application and for blending.

The same basic set of objects, drawn in pen-and-ink sometimes last year.

In art supplies as in most things we buy, there's a big difference in price and in quality between different brands. Usually the more expensive brands are worth the price, and that seems to be true in this case. The main stick I've used for the drawing here is Sennelier ($4-$5.50/stick, depending on vendor), while the gold is Van Gogh ($1.75-$2.50). The Sennelier is creamy, non granular, and luscious to draw with. The Van Gogh, much drier and more granular, is about the same as the Cray-Pas of my youth: I'd call them student grade. Other types -- and other colors -- may be stickier, or crumblier. A full set of Sennelier oil pastels lists at $539; I've seen discounted prices of $243 - but I'm not interested in a full set at this point, but in acquiring particular colors. I'll be buying more, slowly. They also come in very large sticks, at a commensurately larger price, but those are too big in diameter for what I want to do.

Beginning artists sometimes ask me whether to buy a set of colors of paint or pastels or other media - or to buy open stock. I usually suggest that they buy a set, but of the best quality they can afford. I think we all love sets of colors - there's something about opening a metal lid, or a lovely box, and seeing a whole range of colors nestled inside - maybe it reminds us of those big boxes of Crayola crayons. As a kid, I used to spend hours rearranging my crayons in different ways, which probably foretold more about my future than any Tarot deck. Six colors often isn't enough for someone without experience in color mixing, but a set of twelve colors is usually plenty for someone to get the feel of a medium and decide if they like it, without spending a fortune - because good art supplies are really quite expensive.

Inferior colors, while they may look brilliant and beautiful in the tube or box, are harder to handle and give unpredictable or low-quality results that can easily discourage even the most enthusiastic artist, who may blame herself but shouldn't. The choice isn't all black and white, though. In nearly all media, there's a middle range that is affordable, but not prohibitive. Art stores that cater to university classes are a good place to look, and there are many reviews of art supplies online. In this field, you really do tend to get what you pay for: the top-of-the-line brands are the best, using the finest-ground, best-quality, long-lasting pigments and the best binders and mediums, and sold by companies with long histories of research in the field. The beginner doesn't need to go right to this rarefied top level, but he does need to stay away from the bottom. (Drop me a line if you have a question, I'm always glad to try to help.)

This is my 90-color "landscape" set of Rembrandt dry pastels: I have two drawers full of different pastels, some inherited some bought in sets, some bought individually.

There are several problems with sets for the more advanced or professional artist. One is the need for a  greater range of colors, or a different range, from what is provided by the manufacturer in their sets, which may be general assortments, or color ranges specifically selected for landscape, portraits, or still life. Or we may find that we use up certain colors much more quickly than others, and need larger tubes or more sticks. Sometimes I start with a set that matches most closely what I think I'll use, and then augment it. In the case of pastels, that means buying new boxes for storing the ones I buy individually.

And storage of art supplies, in general, is a whole other issue, which I'll talk about sometime soon in another post.

I'm curious to hear from non-professional artists who've bought art supplies -- has it been a good experience? Confusing? Frustrating? Do you feel like you got your money's worth?

Creativity, Christmas, and Politics

In December, I didn't have much time for holiday-related creative projects. I was busy with a commissioned pastel painting of an Icelandic seascape, and the linocut illustrations (still not completed) for Dave Bonta's Ice Mountain: An Elegy. J. and I made a trip to central New York to celebrate my father's 92nd birthday, in mid-December. There was a lot of rehearsing and singing with my choir for two Lessons&Carols services, one at the beginning of Advent and one just before Christmas, and of course the music for advent Sundays and the midnight mass on Christmas Eve, but we didn't do a Messiah this year, and that was, frankly, a relief. I managed to bake a couple of batches of cookies, but for the first year in ages didn't make any fruitcakes, better known here as Christmas cakes, at all. I had hoped to make some other gifts, but alas, it didn't happen.

However, during the week before Christmas I made some linocut cards that I wanted to share with you virtually, since I only made twenty or so. This is the third holiday medallion-like image I've made; I guess it's turning into a series. So...Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays to you, dear Readers and Friends!

But through it all, there have been a few drawings. I did this drawing of some quinces at my niece's house in New Hampshire, over Thanksgiving, then the dried-up pomegranate in pencil after I got home:

Yesterday I finally found a box of colored pencils I had misplaced since our move up here, and did a couple more drawings last night:

I like the illustrative quality of this Santa with the subdued background - he was originally a candy box, made of flocked paper, with a tree tucked in his arm and a head that bobs on a spring. He belonged to my maternal grandmother and always came out at Christmas in her home, and now in mine. But I think the persimmons, below, deserve a much bolder treatment than they've received here. However, it was a good opportunity to find out more about working with the pencils.

Often I do better without little pointy things in my hands, although speed of drawing helps a great deal to avoid fussiness. I like the vigor of the pomegranate above, and the spontaneity of this dashed-off, fountain pen sketch of a desktop in my studio, on a sheet of paper that already had a big scribble across it:

As the year draws to a close (uh, no pun intended) I do feel the urge to draw, both for its absorbing and meditative quality that I always find restorative, and because I see commitment to creativity as a radical and hopeful act. Not only does it affirm some of the best qualities of human beings, it speaks to a future with hope. I need to shore up my own defenses against the difficulties to come, but I also want to be doing positive creative things that say, "yes, this is who I am, always have been, and always will be, and nothing can take that away." I will be doing political activism too, sometimes combined with art or writing I'm sure (the first thing is to knit a pink pussy hat for a friend who's going to the Women's March on Washington the day after the inauguration) but I think it is vitally important that we don't allow our deepest selves to become de-railed by anger or fear.

Expressing emotion through art is one way forward, but I think it is more true to myself to continually point toward the tender beauty of the world and its people and the love I feel for them, hoping to encourage deeper thoughtfulness and embody positive emotions, rather than making dark and angry paintings or prints. I'm not talking about putting my head in the sand, or fiddling while Rome burns - not at all. What I'm trying to say is there is harmony, balance, and simplicity around us and within us, even at the worst time and in the worst places: the fact that these qualities exist is a continual encouragement, and we can always cultivate greater ability to find, nurture, and protect them. But I don't know exactly what direction my work, including publication projects, will take as events unfold, and it is part of what I know I'll be facing and exploring in 2017.

Stitching my way toward spring

I like to think that my great-grandmother's thimble made her finger as sweaty as it does mine. I like to think about the quilts she and my grandmother made together, and sometimes I sleep beneath them. We were all named Elizabeth... Not long before she died, in 1992 at age 92, my grandmother asked me, "You have Libby's thimble, don't you?"

"Yes," I said, "would you like it back now?"

"No," she said, sitting back in her chair, satisfied. "I just wanted to make sure where it was."

Each stitch is a tiny step closer to clarity, to restoration, to the spring that is inching its way north. Across the city, a friend writes that she's just bought a balloon for a friend in hospital. The morning's snow flurries have given way to bright skies, and the afternoon sun butters the walls of the carpentry school, where students brush off sawdust and look forward to the weekend, a few beers, some music with friends. I'll see an old dear friend tomorrow, and sing a mass by Delibes on Sunday. Another line of stitches, another pocket to hold our warmth next winter. Such inconsistency in these stitches, these steps! I've been doing this my whole life and I'm still a beginner.

Taking Stock

The activity that's defined my life this fall has started to slow down. For the past few days, I've felt like one of the seals we saw in Iceland, poking my head above water and looking around to see where I am. Over the weekend I had time to clean my area of our studio and file leftover material from these projects. It feels good. But it's also never been easy for me to deal with a sudden lull in activity (hence the cleaning, no doubt) and I see it as a challenge this time. I deliberately haven't made clear plans for what comes next, in order to leave some time and space.

One of the things I want to do is to get back to some serious writing, but where that might go is still quite unclear, and I have a huge volume of artistic inspiration in the Icelandic landscape that is waiting to be explored. I know I need some time now to just be, to refill the energy coffers. I also know that it's very easy for time to become filled up again, especially during the holidays, especially when the person in question is me, and especially when I feel guilty for neglecting other people or tasks. But guilt is an emotion I've worked on understanding better in recent years, and it holds less power over me than it used to.

It's often good for me at these times to turn to meditative handwork (and much more fun than cleaning!) Last week I knitted a warm hat from two strands of wool: a thick natural grey alpaca and a thin creamy white merino - the whole purpose being a hat to go with a fur pompom that a friend bought for me at a Native powwow in the fall. The quilt I started last winter is ready to be backed and quilted, and there's a scarf to hem. Today I cut up some squares of origami paper to fold into Christmas ornaments. The appeal of these projects is that there's no deadline, and while my hands are busy with repetitive motions, the work proceeds little by little, creating a meditative space where clarity about larger questions sometimes occurs, unannounced and unexpected.

The written word, though, always functions for me both as a comfort, and a more conscious means for understanding myself. Reading is one side of the coin, the other is my own writing -- it's how I take stock, how I figure things out, and also, often, how I let go and move on. From the pages of private journals, letters to close friends, or writing for this blog, ideas form, and the swirl of inchoate emotions transform into understanding, and finally into plans. When I'm knocking myself out to meet deadlines, I miss writing that way, and I miss the side of myself that becomes too busy or too distracted to enter that space. It's OK for a while, but eventually the lack of self-care takes a toll.

In the past weeks I've seen a number of articles questioning the superficiality of social media, the emptiness of homes without books or art, the falsely-predicted death of the printed book, and the growing appeal among younger people of more tactile, less digital forms of art: vinyl records, shooting with film, learning how to knit and sew. I get it. For those of us who grew up in a world where all of that was commonplace, some of the advantages of new media feel obvious and compelling: for example, I'd never want to go back to designing on a light table with a parallel rule, waxers and phototype, x-acto knives, rubylith and stat cameras. I'm glad we gave away our collection of vinyl, and even though our house included not one but two darkrooms for many many years, we both love our digital cameras. But I agree that there's a lot that seems to have been lost, as we've hurtled headlong down the digital road: too far and way too fast, I sometimes feel.

We don't know yet if we're in the middle of a pendulum swing, with a "correction" underway, or if the road to "progress" -- in large part a skillful manipulation of human desires and anxieties spurred by corporate interests -- will simply continue as it has. I'm often grateful that I've lived in both worlds and have the ability to choose whether to pick a printed book off my shelf or click on a digital title; I'm glad I learned to play instruments and draw and make my own clothes and be curious enough about the natural world to go poking around in it, because there was nothing much else to do when I was growing up. My mother used to tell me to get my nose out of my book and go outdoors, but somehow the books, as fascinating as they were, never felt like they had an organic attachment to my brain and body the way today's phones seem to. I might have continued to think about the world in those books, but I was also able to set them down and concentrate on something else, for hours, without being interrupted or distracted. Working that way feels good to me; it also feels good to use my hands and brain together. Being pulled in twenty directions at the same time does not, and neither does spending hours and hours, day after day, in front of this screen.

I loved the tactile, physical, intellectual, and emotional process of creating a series of relief prints over the past six months. Last night, singing in a performance of the Messiah for a rapt audience in the packed cathedral, I was aware of how physical the act of singing is, and how fully it involves the whole organism: body, brain, and spirit. As a species, we have not evolved at the same pace as our technologies, but we've almost stopped thinking about form follows function when it comes to our own bodies and minds: what is this human-shaped thing actually designed to do? When it's all working together, as it so miraculously does most of the time, what does that look and feel like? When we feel incomplete, empty, hungry, exhausted --  how can we regain or achieve some balance? Personally, what I know is that I want to go slower and deeper, into this mid-winter time that may look bleak, but feels full of possibilities.

A Bowl of Dry Things

Why do we draw what we do? I'm always curious about this and never feel like I know the answer completely. Obviously, something attracts our eye with a feeling of curiosity, beauty, complexity, color...usually I can identify that initial impulse. Some people want to make a record of where they were at a particular time -- and all sketches do this to some extent. But I suspect that for me there's often a deeper psychological reason: an identification with the subject or even a repulsion in some way, some sense that the subject reflects something that is going on inside.

As you're probably all too aware, I often draw my desk and the stuff that I've accumulated there, either by chance or by design. In recent years I've become interested in the way the same objects take on new or different meanings when juxtaposed with others; a number of artists have done this with still life arrangements in their work, where the same objects appear repeatedly but "feel" different depending on other choices the artist has made.

These seed pods and other little objects live in a brass bowl on the top of the desk; sometimes I take them out to look at them separately, but more often they just stay there, getting dusty. The other night when I began drawing this bowl of small objects I was feeling unsettled and tired, and like I wasn't getting anything done. I knew that drawing something would make me feel better, but I was sort of surprised to find myself choosing this subject. In retrospect, I think it was perfect, because the objects contained within the bowl, without anything else around them, seemed to represent a microcosm of life, a small world of objects in relationship to one another only because something larger has placed them in a bowl together. A sort of chaos, but a contained chaos. It was up to me to search out some way for each form to have its equal place and meaning.

Is it a good drawing? That question doesn't matter to me as much as the fact that the doing of it showed me something, and helped me over a small rough patch.

 

Another one

Desk with wallet, bike light, and dollars

In yesterday's post I was talking about Flickr and online communities for sharing art and photography. If any of you are on Instagram, I'm also experimenting with it and would be happy to connect with you -- you can find me here.

 

Recent drawings

Tabletop with peonies and a postcard. Pen and ink.

It feels good to be drawing again, after running around for several weeks and barely setting pen to paper. There's no need to look for, or set up, a beautiful arrangement of objects - interesting forms and juxtapositions are everywhere. I find it a good challenge to just draw what's on the tabletop at a particular moment and not fuss over it too much. What can be made of whatever simply is?

Wine bottle with plastic bag and computer mouse. Pen and ink.

I think it's more important to get one's fingers busy drawing (or writing, or playing music) and one's head concentrating and absorbed than to worry about making a beautiful, finished, accomplished piece of art. Working fast and often, filling up sketchbooks, studying and learning from one's efforts: this is what seems to pay the best rewards and keeps me, anyway, from getting paralyzed by self-doubt or freighting infrequent drawings with too many expectations. (I liked what Laura Murphy Frankstone wrote about this recently on her artblog, in a post called "The 48 crayons and me") And it's amazing how, over time, we actually do improve: we see better, we draw better, our fingers gain facility, we get a better idea of what we want to do, we can make sense out of where we've been, we don't get as rattled by our failures, we're freer and more able to experiment. The point is to plunge in, trust the process, and not worry too much about where or how, or especially about end results or comments from others.

It helps to have ways of seeing one's path, and to have some sense of community. Having gallery shows is one way, keeping a blog is another, and the internet affords us a lot of other opportunities as well. Over the past year or two I've regularly posted a lot of my work on Flickr, and followed a number of other artists and photographers who do the same. Unlike some other, busier social media platforms, our little corner of Flickr seems to be populated by people who use it as a way to collect and view their own body of work over time, and that of others. It's respectful, serious, and pretty quiet. I enjoy seeing the evolution of the work of other artists: drawings that turn into paintings, ideas in different media that grow and change, bodies of photographic work, people who work in several media at once, directions explored and directions abandoned. I learn a lot about my own path by observing what others are doing, and their perseverance encourages me.

Process

It's not like I don't have plenty of work to do. So why was it that yesterday I gave into the increasingly insistent urges and began a new quilt?

It's Lent. It's still mid-winter, and freezing cold, and monochromatic up here. Those are reasons for craving color, for sure, but there are lots of ways to get more color in your life - like wearing hot pink, which I'm doing today too; yesterday was orange. But no, it's more than that. It occurred to me last night that this is a kind of longing-for-spring quilt: green for leaves, roses and reds for flowers, brown for earth. When I was pulling out the fabrics, all that was subliminal.

I feel better when I have something like this to work on, a little bit at a time. It's amazing to me how much I look forward to it each day. Sewing, or bookbinding, or the actual process of cutting relief blocks or making prints all do this for me, while knitting, on the other hand, tends to be too repetitive for me; I like the planning but not the doing, so much -- but that's just me. Painting can be quite difficult, demanding, and often fraught, like serious writing. Maybe I just like the process of making practical things - real objects - without a client or deadline or the prospect of submission looming in the background. Maybe it's an escape from, or antidote to, other kinds of work which generally involve commitments to others or to something more demanding within myself. Whatever it is, work that involves a lot of "process" seems to be therapeutic, calming, spiritually and emotionally helpful. I realize that I've turned away from this too often in recent years, as a way to rest and recharge.

This has also been the first week of an experiment: I've gone off Facebook for at least the rest of Lent, not so much as  "fast" or giving up of something pleasurable -- I wanted to see if I felt more focused without it. After one week, I can say that the answer is definitively yes. I check FB once a day, in the late evening, and don't spend more than five minutes doing a quick look at any messages and notifications. Unless something really needs a response -- a friend's father died a few days ago, for instance, and I didn't see that until today -- I'm trying not to comment or "like" very much at all, and I'm not posting anything but links to new posts here. We'll see how it feels after several weeks, but so far, I don't miss it. I like the way my mind feels without the chattering input, and there are some other aspects of self-perception that are beginning to be more apparent. More on that as I, ahem, piece it together.

This week's drawings: pomegranate, pepper grinder, pecans

Dried pomegranate, two oranges, and a Spanish dish

 

 Bags of hazelnuts, pecans, and walnuts.

(left side).

The spontaneity and lively lines of the pepper grinder and salt shaker are what I always aim for in drawing, and seldom achieve. It's nice when it happens.

(right side)

 

Desktop.

My sketchbook for this year began with a pen-and-wash drawing of this same basic arrangement.

I've got a couple more pages to go, but thought I'd make another drawing of my desktop (hmm, that's a real desktop!) as a bookend. Many of these objects have appeared over and over in my drawings this year. I learn a lot from repetition, but maybe it's boring for viewers - nevertheless, it's extremely useful (both artistically and as a psychological exercise) to continue to explore a subject in different media, different arrangements -- and also when I'm in different moods. I would have added color to this one, but it's drawn in a very runny fountain pen ink, so it was impossible!

A new relief print

I've wanted to attempt an "Annunciation" for some time, and have been working on a version for a relief print for quite a while. Several years ago I looked at a number of artists' interpretations as I was thinking about it, and my eventual version is loosely based on the Cortona Annunciation by Fra Angelico, painted in 1433-34.

I thought you might be interested in seeing some of the stages in the process.

Here's my original drawing from the painting, done back in 2012.

I got this far before getting discouraged and unsure how to take it further, and put the drawings away in a drawer.

In December of this year, I found the drawings and started working on them again. The figures had already been considerably simplified and moved. I eliminated Gabriel's halo, gave Mary a big one, and put her on a bench, below him. Mary's submissive acceptance has always been presented as a model of faith and behavior for women. However I very much doubt if a young unmarried girl of the time would have reacted to a message like this, delivered by a male angel appearing without warning, except with fear and great ambivalence: qualities that have rarely been depicted in artistic interpretations. I wanted to try to emphasize that in the gestures, the relationship of the figures, and in their expressions. On the other hand, because of the crudity of the relief-print process, it's difficult to show subtlety in faces, so whatever I did would have to be stylized.

I also worked a lot on adding some detail to the feathers, the angel's gown, and especially to Mary's dress, which is inspired here by traditional Palestinian cross-stitch embroidery.

The image had to be flipped, right-to-left, and I worked on ways to include a graphic background behind the figures that would help unify the composition. Somewhere around here I decided to allow the figures to appear in front of the final frame in two places on the right and left. At this point I also had to decide on a final size: the block is about 8" (22 cm) square.

Finally it was time to transfer the drawing to the linoleum and cut the block. The transfer was difficult because of the details, and the cutting took several days. I worked only an hour or two at a time, because my hand, neck and shoulder get tired, increasing the danger of a mistake, a slip that could ruin the block, or of cutting myself. I had wanted to leave myself plenty of latitude for the more serendipitous aspects of block-carving too: the particular quality of a carved line can't be duplicated in drawing, only anticipated. Also, I'm never sure how many "extra" lines I'm going to leave in the mostly-blank areas, following the forms and adding to the sculptural aspect of the final image. The final appearance of the angel's skirt was created almost entirely during the carving process itself; so were the feathers and the angel's coiffure.

And here's the final print. I'm contemplating a two-color version, but for now, I'm happy to see this one come into being. A lot was learned, and I'm glad I stuck with it even though there were struggles along the way.

(There's an edition of 20, available in my shop.)