Wax Bloom

So there’s a reason I called my most recent drawing Ganz, the Sequel. This is the second time I have drawn my friend Steve Ganz, the first being in March of 2007. This was not terribly long after I had returned to drawing, and was just my 5th after returning from a considerably long hiatus from art. 

I’d like this post to serve as a reminder to myself, as well as those of you out there who may be faltering in your quest to refine your abilities, or not feeling like you are making enough progress fast enough – because Lord knows I feel that way a lot. I have been drawing for a few hours nearly every day for the past year and a half, and I want to share with you the progress I have made in that time in both ability, competence with the medium, color and composition. 

March 2007 vs October 2008

Seriously, looking at that feels really, really good.

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Here’s where the portrait stands this morning:

Ganz, The Sequel | Colored Pencil on Pastelbord | 12 x 9"

And as promised, here are a couple more close-up shots taken in better light. Images link to their full sized counterpart:

And lastly, compiled for a question from a Flickr user, this is the palette I am using with this drawing:

• Peach
• Nectar
• Beige
• Blush Pink
• Copenhagen Blue
• Dark Umber
• White
• Terra Cotta
• Salmon Pink
• Light Umber
• Sand
• Light Peach
• Blue Slate
• Moss Green
• Scarlet Lake
• Deco Pink (used sparingly, as just a tiny tiny nub is all thats left of this discontinued color)
• Cream
• Pink Rose
• Sky Blue Light
• Sienna Brown
• Burnt Ochre
• Crimson Lake
• Peacock Blue
• Warm Gray 90%
• Black
• Derwent Rose Pink (poor substitute for Deco Pink)
• Cool Gray 70%
• Sandbar Brown
• Dark Green
• Cool Gray 10%
• Warm Gray 30%
• Cool Gray 50%
• Yellow Ochre
• Parma Violet
• Lilac

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A couple of folks have asked if I would post close up, high resolution photos of this drawing to allow them to better examine the color layering and pencil strokes. Hopefully these are what you guys are after – the images link to their original 3888×2592 photos. I’ll take some additional photos tomorrow morning in daylight for better color accuracy – these are all a bit on the red side.

My stroke is always small, circular motions. I leave lots of gaps when laying down initial layers for other colors to fill in. For the most part its fairly erratic as you can tell from what’s been laid down on the fringes.

Here’s where the drawing stands at the moment, by the way:

And for no particular reason, here’s a photo of my pencils that I thought turned out interesting:

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The image on the left is the one I took with my old point-and-shoot. The one on the right is with my new camera, and is incredibly faithful to the original drawing.

I obvisously have a lot of re-shooting to do.

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Teresa Mallen was kind enough to mention my work in her October 2008 Newsletter - thanks Teresa, I’m honored! 

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My mom recently delivered to me a large stack of drawings that I had done as a child. They had all belonged to my Aunt Mary Lou, who had held onto every silly childish scribble I had put on paper for the past 34 years.  This one, by all accounts, is the first portrait I’d ever done, roughly 1978 or so:

To Ant Lou | Watercolor on Paper | 10 x 12″ 

My aunt was a very important person in my life. Many of my most cherished memories of my childhood involve her. From taking me to the Natural History museum in D.C. to see the dinosaurs for what seems like every weekend to me, to getting me interested in computers and technology, she was a huge influence on me.  She even tolerated me as a roommate for my first semester of art school until I moved into an apartment with some friends.

 This painting has hung on the same spot on her kitchen wall for the past 30 years. It comes into my possession now because my Aunt passed away in April. This and many of the other things that have been turned up in her home by my parents are a warm reminder of how much she thought of me as well.

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My son, born this evening at 5:24pm, weighing 9.33 lbs and measuring 20″.  Mother and baby are both doing wonderfully and will be home on Friday.

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I was reading through the portraiture forum on Wetcanvas this afternoon when I encountered this thread, featuring this painting:

Oil Study by David Simons

“Hmmm”, I said to myself, “why does this look familiar to me”?

It’s a really great oil painting by David Simons, but I knew I had seen it before. Not the painting – the subject.

And where did I see it, you ask? Why, at the 15th Annual CPSA International Exhibition just this past summer! Here, have a look the colored pencil version of the same subject, as seen in “To The Point”, the organization’s quarterly newsletter:

As seen in To the Point

I know, right? What an incredible coincidence that BOTH of these artists went to the Bahamas and sat practically on top of one another to draw this guy! But wait…five more minutes of digging through the Wetcanvas Image Reference Library and we find….

The Reference Photo

So, yeah – I now see how serious a matter it is that folks work from their own photographs if they intend to enter that work into a competition. I remember being really blown away by this drawing when I saw it at the Strathmore, but to be honest – I feel kinda cheated now. It’s a technically masterful drawing, but it has no soul because theres nothing original about it. And now, at least one incredibly similar work exists by another artist. And, judging from the thread on the reference photo’s page, probably more, all clones of one another. Thats just ridiculous.

Sort of makes me wonder how many other drawings in that show were staggeringly well executed yet meaningless reproductions.

And to be perfectly clear, it’s Sherry Eid’s piece that beat out one-hundred and twenty-four other portrait and figure drawings to be one of the elite twenty-seven that were actually accepted into the show that I take issue with, not Mr. Simon’s one-hour oil study..

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I was procrastinating this evening, so took some photos of my studio, uploaded them to flickr and added lots of little notes.

 Have a look if you’re interested in seeing light sabers, action figures, or my cat. 

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Nicole and Katherine have talked about this at length, and there is an interesting thread on the matter on scribbletalk, but essentially the UKCPS has added two new rules this year to be eligible for their annual show:

1. If you posted your work-in-progress on a forum and accepted and acted on critiques or advice on the piece, it is now considered a collaboration and is ineligable.
2. If you didn’t take the photograph you are working from, the piece is ineligible.

Most folks are understandably up in arms about the first one, as lots of us rely on feedback via the web for our growth as artists. I think the rule is a bit draconian, but I see the point. If I did a drawing without any direction, and lost to a drawing that had been massaged and directed by the denizens of the wetcanvas forums, I’d feel a bit cheated. It levels the playing field, so to speak.

The second rule introduces a bit of a grey area for me, as it considers every photograph a deliberate work of art. Consider these scenarios:

1. Joe Artist tears out a page of a magazine that bears a photograph of Queen Elizabeth II as taken by Annie Leibovitz and proceeds to do a wonderful colored pencil recreation of the photo. He crops the photo and leaves out some of the crown jewels, but the lighting and major compositional elements remain.
2. Frank Artist does a drawing of his daughter from a snapshot his mother took on a sunny fall afternoon. He too crops the image, makes some adjustments and changes the dimensions of the canvas to suit him, but the similarity between the photo and the drawing are obvious. Oh, did I say Frank Artist? I meant me.

So a snapshot of a little girl versus a carefully thought out, prepared photo session with a monarch. Is there a difference? Is “Jump!” ineligible simply because my mother pushed the button on her point-and-click rather than me?

What are your thoughts? Is there a difference between an Annie Liebovitz photograph and a Joyce Chipman snapshot in relation to it being used as a resource for your own art?

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