25 Landscapes, 1 through 5

Why you should clean out your file drawer every now and then.

I studied with artist Carl Unger at Die Angewandte in Wien 1975-76. He didn't want me to leave, but to finish my degree there instead of at UofI. I had completely forgotten about these.

100 Drawings- 81 through 85

100 Drawings- 76 through 80

Seeing

The thing about doing an average of a drawing a day (actually 75 drawings in 93 days so far) is that after a while you start filtering everything you see through the lens of "is that something to draw?"

A cracked sidewalk (maybe). The floor (no). The hallway (yes).

You start running out of objects; all plants begin to look the same; bicycles are too murderously hard to draw. I would rather stick to objects, because I also want to do a landscape series, and I don't want to run out of landscapes that I've already drawn, and I've decided for mostly arbitrary reasons not to include people or parts of people in this set.

Seeing the world through a filter of art makes you see things. It makes you see how they relate to other things in the visual plane. Perspective becomes less about lines converging at the horizon and more about where things really seem to be (or on the visual plane, where they are) in relation to each other. You have to keep repeating the mantra: draw what you see, not what you know. That trunk is next to that branch, even though that branch is on a different tree 30 feet away. The pot handle is the same width as the pot.  The edge of the roof is nearly vertical. So these things that you know aren't true make the object look accurate. If something is hard to draw, it's just that you aren't relating its parts properly to each other and their surroundings.

Rather a life lesson, that.

100 Drawings- 71 through 75

 

100 Drawings- 66 through 70