"Scatole contemplative": fugitive, exquisite, and secret

“Screwing things up is a virtue,” said Robert Rauschenburg. “Being correct is never the point."

From Josef Albers, Rauschenberg "gained a respect for the grid as an essential compositional organizing tool."

Hmmmm.....

"Kicking around Europe and North Africa with the artist Cy Twombly ... Rauschenberg began to collect and assemble objects — bits of rope, stones, sticks, bones — which he showed to a dealer in Rome who exhibited them under the title 'scatole contemplative,' or thought boxes."

Around 1959, Rauschenberg developed a "transfer drawing technique, dissolving printed images from newspapers and magazines with a solvent and then rubbing them onto paper with a pencil. The process ... created the impression of something fugitive, exquisite and secret."

Fugitive, exquisite, and secret.....

Quimper Arts Life Drawing 5/20/09

Quimper Arts Life Drawing 5/20/09, originally uploaded by Skeinfest.

One more from last night.

Return to Life (Drawing)

Deborah was a beautiful model at Quimper Arts Life Drawing Session tonight. Drawn with "LithoCoal" which handles like charcoal then heat-sets (and although we know from Ray Bradbury that Fahrenheit 451 is where paper burns, it is still possible to scorch the drawing paper in a 250 oven if you put it too close to the element. Luckily the last drawings of the night came out fine.)

Where the dancers came from

Quimper Arts life drawing session in February 2009 (Dava).

Next layer (dancers)

Next layer: transparent red earth; Indian Yellow (I meant Naples Yellow, on the first layer -- it is more buttery and opaque; Indian Yellow is transparent and warm). Also some titanium white. Putting on and wiping off. (Looking, just a little at a time, at the Rothko catalog from the 2008 Tate show; it just arrived today.) Then some cobalt blue and quinacridone violet, plus a little of the rest.

Five Figures, or two, or one

Started a new larger oil painting today (18x24). Anthraquinone blue, some places grayed out with tiny bit of burnt umber, or lightened with titanium white, or warmed with a tiny bit of quinacridone red. Indian yellow [I meant, Naples Yellow], some places with titanium white. Used Galkyd medium mixed with a little Gamblin Cold Wax Medium (thinned with Gamsol).

They started as tulips

Oil paint; second layer.

Seven Million Dollars and over 39 miles

My friend Sally Light just walked a MARATHON AND A HALF. IN 2 DAYS! In the RAIN! Well, she's from Seattle so she takes the rain part in stride. The big deal is that she and her fellow walkers on the 2009 Washington DC Avon Breast Cancer Walk (successor to the 3-Day that inspired me to make my very first web page in 2001) raised $7 million for breast cancer research and treatment.

So this is inspiring me to upload a video to my blog, another first -- may require Internet Explorer rather than Firefox to view it though. An experiment! Video from the DC-area television news coverage. Sally wrote: "Just after the Arlington girl holding the cardboard sign on day 2 of the Walk, you can see Jyl to the left in the blue poncho and me next to her in the middle in a baseball cap and rain-soaked jacket, brown capris (also soaked). The best news -- we raised 7 million!"

Big cheers for Sally!

Drawing practice

"The mind wants to turn deliberate, newly learned skills into unconscious, automatically performed skills. But the mind is sloppy and will settle for good enough. By practicing slowly, by breaking skills down into tiny parts and repeating, the strenuous student forces the brain to internalize a better pattern of performance."

From a review in the New York Times of two new books about the nature of "genius."

Ginevra de Beth: Beauty Adorns Virtue

I have believed for years that my friend Beth resembles Ginevra de Benci. This is the earliest known painting of a woman by Leonardo da Vinci.

The motto on the back of the painting (which lives at the National Gallery in Washington DC) is "virtutem forma decorat" --- beauty adorns virtue. I take this to mean that Beth's manifest virtue is in the creation of beauty.

Here's my sketch of Beth from a few months ago.

The Table Where the Poems are Made

I met Beth at Third Place Commons to paint. Light from skylights made dramatic shapes on walls and floors. Models obligingly stayed at their tables, laptops, cellphones for a long time.

I painted chairs. Beth painted the guy.

Neither of us painted the dramatic light on the walls! By the time I took my picture it had moved off the wall. But we saw it!

Third Place to Paint (part 2)

Beth painted this scene next:

Then we moved over near the window and painted the outdoors.

This was our view over the parking lot, looking south (toward the north end of Lake Washington). Here is Beth at work.

... and her finished sketch:

... and mine:

What a good day! Painting makes the clocks stop!

Spring is coming (as Beth shows!)

post 4-11-09, originally uploaded by polusladkaia.

I missed the SketchCrawl last weekend but about a billion sketchers around the world got out and made pictures, including Beth. Isn't this a hope-filled image? Yes it is.

Back to the easel

Beth in her infinite faith and wisdom has nudged me back toward making pictures. Later this week we will meet at Third Place Commons (adjacent to Third Place Books) in Lake Forest Park to do oil sketches in public.

Their website explains the name: "Third Places are the many public places where people can gather, put aside the concerns of home and work (their first and second places) and hang out simply for the pleasures of good company and lively conversation." This is taken from a book by Ray Oldenburg, The Great Good Place: Cafes, Coffee Shops, Bookstores, Bars, Hair Salons, and Other Hangouts at the Heart of a Community. These are our favorite kinds of places!

Since I haven't been making pictures, you should go look at what Beth has been up to!

Variations on a stripe

Can you guess which one is mine?!

I did a different painting today; I'll post it later. Still working on it.

Tillering the painted fields

This weekend I am taking a painting class from Don Tiller, who makes colorful and exuberant paintings. Today he walked a dozen students through his process of designing and making a painting, starting with a surface of black gesso, drawing in chalk, and applying successive layers of mostly translucent Golden Fluid Acrylics. We ended with a dozen ersatz Don Tiller paintings -- his stripey style is quite distinctive! Quite fun to see how we all started the same way (same colors, same picture elements) and end up with variations. This is a great way to learn his specific approach, and I'm happy to play with luminous colors. Tomorrow we'll work from our own compositions. Stay tuned...

Is it Real Art if it is framed?

Just picked up two pictures from the wonderful Megan at Frameworks in Port Townsend. This is the first time I've ever had my own work properly framed. She is working on 4 more pieces (by Ronald Jesty, Robert Powell, and a New England artist whose name I cannot at this moment recall).

These are collages of (mostly) acrylic colors on torn paper, made in October 2002.

Mom's new scarf

I crocheted a silk/wool neckwrap for my mom to wear; here she is on Friday the 13th of February at home, still recovering, still wonderful. She dressed up specially for me to take a picture of the shawl.

This is Doris Chan's wonderful "All Shawl" pattern, which I've now made 3 times -- free pattern on Ravelry. It's great for reading in bed. Another way to play with colors.

Mary J

Here's my mom, at the Relay For Life in July 2006. She has had some significant medical challenges since then and last night was admitted to the hospital after fighting pneumonia at home for a week. Fingers crossed.

Color in winter

Even if it's NeoColorII crayons!

Matisse's armchair

Pitcher, watercolor

Pitcher, watercolor, originally uploaded by Skeinfest.

Drawing daily if I can, and painting a bit too. I had the watercolors set up on the kitchen counter, but then I found the little blue footprints.... Mac thinks natural-bristle brushes are HIS. He steals.

Here is the original ink drawing; I made it earlier this week, holding the pitcher in my left hand as I drew. I think this was my grandmother's; I am fond of it.

Self-portrait with warnings

From five years ago. (The handwriting is my mother's.)

This time last year

January 2008:
A watercolor sketch from a life drawing in charcoal made a year or so earlier.

Boy on Lombard Street, SF, February 1971

Photo I took in SF February 1971; trying to paint it. Love it, love it, lost the negative, only have one 8x10 print that I have scanned. Started to block in on top of some old paint; stopped and now am trying to draw it to get it all figured out.


This kid was playing with his friends and I love his laughing face and stance. That left foot! Those shadows! The proportions of the background are amazing me!

Yes we can!

I am overjoyed at welcoming our new president and his family and all those who surround him and will help him. For the first time in years I feel that my government works for us, not against us. Here is Lauralee celebrating at Jillian's pub an hour or so after President Obama took the oath of office. (Did I mention that a co-chair for national security on the transition team [update: now an Undersecretary of Defense] was once my Secret Santa?)

From the wonderful Urban Sketchers site, our SketchCrawl friend Gabi Campanario commemorates the inaugural with a sketch of a stack of Obama cakes from the bakery at Albertson's grocery store.

SketchCrawl Seattle: January 10, 2008

Cherry trees in the UW Quad, January , originally uploaded by Skeinfest.

SketchCrawl. It was chilly! Beth was making her drawing from the arched doorway in Raitt Hall across the quad; Edwin, Guy, and Bill were sitting on the steps at the top of the quad, making wonderful drawings. I joined them to make a quick one, looking toward the Barnett Newman sculpture "Broken Obelisk" (twins are at the Rothko Chapel in Houston and at MOMA in NY):

Glad Bill posted his wonderful pictures including the Art building; also glad to see the great drawings of the Music building that faces it by Edwin and, from another angle through those cherry trees, by Beth. These are all on the 21st SketchCrawl site for Seattle. (I want to see Guy's giant squirrel!)

Then the 5 of us retreated to the Hub (student/Husky Union Building) to share our drawings and thaw out. Beth recalled the idea of a Portrait Party, so we each drew the person on our right: Beth drew me, I made a couple of attempts at drawing Edwin.

After the first sketches, we each turned to the person on our left and began anew. Edwin had drawn Guy, now he drew me. I drew Beth twice.

During the first round, we had laughed and talked and shifted around, a bit self-conscious, I think, about making our portrayals. During the second set of portraits, very soon our concentration was wonderfully powerful and intense. Very exciting to do this; thank you to Beth, Edwin, Bill and Guy for sharing this experience with me! I think it is really cool that now Bill and Guy, father and son, have made portraits of one another.

At the top of my page is Beth, not as beautiful is she really is but it was fun to draw her clouds of hair!

We reconvened at the Solstice Cafe in early afternoon with 15 or more SketchCrawlers and shared our drawings with one another.

You say it's your birthday!? We're gonna have a GOOD time!

As if the SketchCrawl wasn't enough fun for one day, I spent Saturday evening (and on into the night) in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains at Fall City's Raging River Saloon to hear the wonderful keyboard player Lauralee Smith in a band called Free Rain. Despite their name they can NOT be blamed for the floodwaters just down the road. I did dance, I did drink some beer, I did stay up way past my bedtime. My hotel room was just up the street at the Fall City Inn, which apparently found fame in the tv show "Twin Peaks."

I kept trying to leave but the band kept breaking into great dance tunes and I had to stay: keyboard (piano, synth, accordian) player Lauralee, singer Tom, guitarist Dale, bass player Tim (hey Ballard!), singer P.A., guest singer Debbie from Chrome Molly, drummer Donn and a guest drummer whose name I could not hear above the ambient sounds. That was WITH the earplugs, gracefully provided by Lauralee; there is a reason she can still hear after playing in bands since forever.

The best reason for a party was to celebrate the 65th birthday of L's other half, the estimable Mr. Smith. Dick is now "officially the world's oldest 18-year-old." Ever so true. Note his shirt: Lauralee's turquoise accordian had its public debut in a classic version of "Twist and Shout." So we did -- although I was briefly expecting her to play "All Along the Watchtower" and I still hope she will.

Definitely a weekend for old friends. Beth (SketchCrawl) and I were locker partners in 8th grade. Lauralee and I go back nearly that far --


She remembers, if I don't, that I took this picture of her band Rock Kandy on the Seattle Art Museum camels in Volunteer Park in 1968. And somewhere I probably still have the negative for a picture of Lauralee and Dick on New Year's Eve 1970.