Tag: doodle

Return to France

Before heading to my home in Paris, I was down in the south of France doing research for an essay of French gastronomy of a bygone era.

It was not conducive for my painting but I did sketch non stop. I utilized my ever present midori passport pocket pad.

I enjoyed the challange of such small size, 3×5 to create fully realized pieces.

Some of my reading inspired me to shake things up as I had long been familiar with the size. I started using both sides of the page, holding the pad vertically (so that what were the books edges became the too and bottom).

It was interesting ng in that more space does not necessarily equate to easier .

One has to think of compositional balance differently.

Back in paris. First morning in studio started a painting 5×8. The weather going from overcast to rain has not facilitated progress so I am back to sketching.

I find myself now also combining my own texts to pieces.

Even with the rain, it is great fun adding to myself in a way which shall remain with me.

 

 

 

 

 

by Wayne Wolfson

On The Road

I travel a lot. One thing I have noticed is that for the last twenty years or so, go to any great city in Europe and inevitably you will see tourists walking down the main streets filming.

Excitedly, they want to capture what they are seeing and where they are as to show friends & family back home.

This is faulty logic on several levels:

Technology is constantly changing. One year i saw people walking down the Champ-Elysees using the camcorders that you just insert an actual VCR tape into. The next year cameras were far smaller. People are inherently lazy, no one is going to do transfers of all the footage shot over the years and even if you had the gumption to do so, it will look terrible.

When showing footage to friends  back home, although somewhat of a sitcom cliche, it quickly becomes  boring. A shakey cam view of streets, unless something amazing is caught on film, quickly becomes dull. And although most friends most likely will not say so, the mind starts to wander as they watch the footage.

 

Photos are a little better. A photo potentially offers a more obvious immediacy of what is “important” that the viewer should be noticing.

However photos offer their own drawbacks. People in search of the perfect instagram photos are so busy concentrating on that, that they are not in the moment. Go to any museum and watch as people run up to an immortal work snap a photo with it behind them, then run off. Yes, one may have “seen” a Van Gough et al but aside from location and year of trip little else is remembered despite getting massive numbers of likes & retweets on their sites.

I am by no means anti technology. I enjoy the instant gratification of emails, skype & texting when on the road. I also do take some photos. These things though are given very little of my times.  I have found that I absorb more and it becomes more memorable doing quick sketches and some notes of what i am doing and seeing.

To whomever I show these records of my journey to, they are seeing what was important to me and it is more engaging. (Even the best photo one takes or Paris, Rome etc etc thousands of other people have gotten the same exact shot!)

Not everyone can draw but anyone can jot down the interesting or odd little things they come across. Anyone who would claim to not come across anything to write is probably missing it because they are texting or posting to social media.

For any journey the thing is not to be ourselves as we are at home, making everything around us adapt. Rather, it is  to explore and be open to a life lived differently  as to draw new things into ourselves fostering evolution (intellectually, spiritually etc)

 

Charcoal Text & Image improvisation 9×12

 

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by Wayne Wolfson

Charcoal

I have just started experimenting with charcoal. I am sure as I use it more, I will become even better but right away I feel it a successful medium for me.

There is a looseness to charcoal which lends itself to an emotional expressionism. When I do a charcoal piece, i do not use pencil first. To utilize the safety net of being able to erase is to miss the point of what charcoal has to offer.

Here are my very first tries. With the portraits i have done, there is a sort of gauze like effect. For myself, i generally work fast. Charcoal seems to want the speed of hand as to offer up more organic depth.

“Miles” 9×12 “Left Bank,Paris” 9×12

 

 

by Wayne Wolfson

Gougiere & Consomme

Watercolor & paper 5.5 x 8.5

Progenitors of cubism Picasso & Braque used what was around them for subject matter. Anyone who spends time not as a tourist but living in  Paris (as I do) knows that in a studio, wine & alcohol bottles are ever present along with other signs of entertaining such as packs of cards, cigarettes and the odd article of clothing left behind. These things plus the mandolin which Braque played with proficiency were all grist for the mill of early cubist compositions.

They used what was before them as it was theirs, their lives.

Every artist should strive for a constant evolution. A part of this is creating a personal lexicon. Symbols & totems of one’s daily life. There should be no thought in regards to what makes for a veneer of hipness/coolness nor drama. It has to be things of you as you are, organically occurring.

An element of what made both Picasso and Braque abandon the genre they created was that it became too formalized. Towards the end of their involvement, for a piece to be cubist it had to contain specific objects within the pictorial landscape.  What had come about to create an artistic freedom started to become as rigid as any other preexisting genre.

Although it is not a steadfast method for myself with every piece, i draw & paint what is before me. I do not give any forethought to if it fits into any preconceived notion of how i want it to be perceived. It is something i do, i like, i see. My own visual language of my life.

This is an honesty and reality which is the best way to convey emotion regardless of subject matter.

I like good conversation and aside from drawing, that is my other constant no matter where I am in the world.

This is from the last short trip I took. I like to take a small detail of a larger scene of what I am doing and make that the focal point. The latch of a window, lipstick on a cup.This piece captures that although not in an obvious way.

A glass as we converse in lieu of portraying the sketchpad I was using, the language of me.

gougiereandconsomme

 

 

 

by Wayne Wolfson

Bee Curtain

She repeatedly stuck her tongue out for almost every piece that she posed for. It was not my thing and I believe that she was thinking of someone else.

With every person that I draw/paint/sketch I aim for a truth but only a truth of that moment. What they look like, their likeness there and then.

The same person appearing over the course of several (or many) pieces may look slightly different each time.

This is a phenomenon naturally occurring in real life. Me sitting next to you in a car going down the highway will look different than me sitting across from you in a cafe etc etc.

This has to do with the effects played upon the subject by mood, health and ambient environment.

I avoid photo realism which to me can be flat, in favor of it looking like the subject but as occurring in art.
Where once this was the de rigeur , in the digital age this is all too often forgotten. We want an exactness that is the camera’s job not the brush nor pen.

The dynamics between artist & model is as if the artist is talking about the model using their own words (words being their style) and hands.
W.Wolfson

Bee Curtain watercolor & cotton paper 10×14

 

beecurtain

by Wayne Wolfson

End of Night scrap paper work

Very end of night, quick sketch on the back of grocery list (5×4) using waitress pen. I mix my subject matter as i never want w/my work to become the “. . .” guy.

 

For any artist, the actual work is a souvenir of the inspiration & process. The true joy & battle lay within that, with the tangible result akin to the ripple  radiating outwards.

 

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by Wayne Wolfson