Brush play
A little value study with black paint and a big brush, done very quickly and loosely from memory. Exercises like these are fun to do and almost remind me a bit of sumi-e style painting. There’s no need to draw the subject carefully ahead of time, just let the brush have its own way. The palm on the left was painted with a one inch flat. The pine on the right was done with a #8 round.
I was talking with a fellow artist the other day and we agreed that the practice of drawing utterly transforms the way you look at the world. We no longer pass by a tree without giving it a second glance. We look at the bark; the shape, the way the light plays on it; the way the branches emerge from the trunk, the way the leaves sprout and how they move in the wind. It’s almost as though your senses are heightened and you see details that others never even notice. In a way, it’s like being a very small child again when everything is new and interesting. The scales fall from our eyes and we see again, as if for the first time.
These look like fun to do. You inspire me to try. The one on the left is quite beautiful.
Certainly like a Chinese ink painting. Yes - about noticing the world. Now that Peceli has taken up painting again after about eight years we talk a lot more about things we see.
W.
Great studies. I’ve really been into sumi-e lately.
I also agree with your friend. Your whole perspective changes. I think my wife is tired of hearing me say “wow…look at that light. What wonderful light” when we go for walks at sunset.
Nice thoughts - - so true - - and great, fun work to share!
thats good enough to hang on the wall.
At least if I had painted it with a coupla of brush strokes.. I would think so
I could compare it in poetry with the haikus.
I love the free line.
Gorgeous! Not only drawing, but the practice of any art form makes you see things differently. I was reading something by one of the french impressionists who mentioned that while he stood at his mother’s deathbed he could not keep his mind from assessing the way the light fell across the hollows of her face. He kept thinking how he’d put down the brushstrokes if he were painting the scene, then snapping himself out of this mode, only to have it creep back as the long minutes passed…
Nice images and a nice exercise. I do this once in a while just to go back to basics. I don’t worry about doing it to show anyone- I just do it for myself to remind me to really look at objects closer.
I so agree, I know it’s become true for me.
and it is wonderful to watch how the continued practice has and is changing your work
I could frame a series of this. About how drawing impacts our vision of the world — yes, and it does throw us in the “now”. We are more aware of the present, as opposed to always be thrown in future preoccupations or, worse yet, in the past.