Tag: drawing

Dear Diary

With everyone having phones now the ability to capture amazing scenes is always just a pocket away. When something is too easy though, it starts to loose power. Phone-cams went from being at the ready in case something fantastically dramatic should occur to being merely the facilitator of the mostly mundane minutia of people’s live being on a non-stop social media scroll.

One of the biggest and most far reaching negatives of this is how it effects people being in the stream of life. I travel, often. An overly familiar sight now is people rushing around a famous museum or well known area (Luxembourg Garden et al) stopping to raise their phone slightly above themselves while duck billing, snap a pic, then rushing off. Their justification is that they are capturing memories. So preoccupied are they in getting the perfect pics to post that they are not in the moment, not in the stream of life.

Once back home they can show you them standing by some landmark, some great work of art but there can be no description which makes you feel as if there. Even for them, this is the case and they had actually been there.

The adage that travel broadens the mind is not merely about ticking off things on a list of what to see, where to go. It is absorbing a place with all its ambient characteristics which hopefully in some way add to you long after the trip is over.

I am not anti-photo, I take some myself wherever I am. But see and capture with your eyes first. I always have a 3×5 pad in my pocket. I will do small sketches when on the road and take notes. Not always dramatic, sometimes it’s just a room service tray with the leftover bones of a hastily eaten meal or my book bag hanging off the back of a chair.

Not everyone can draw, but you should still keep a little pad on you. Use it to take notes. In doing this you will actually be more present in the moment if you slow your roll and take a beat to describe what you are seeing. As you are doing this just for yourself, even if you can’t draw, why not try anyways?

That is another negative of social media, everything seems to be motivated now towards getting views/likes. The recently departed Paul Auster said “Do a thing simply for the beauty of doing it.” To live this way, you may not garner as many likes etc but you will create true memories.

by Wayne Wolfson

Paper chamber pieces

I am finally temporarily done with being a road-dog and the weather has turned beautiful and spring like. Starting a new Cinefield®.

While busy with everything else going on, I have continued to draw every day. It is part of who I am. I also hope that it offers brief break from the mundane and the pressures for all those who take a minute to look.

My Cinefield® work is labor intensive, but I will still draw a little at the end of every day.

Quick Lyra Piece

by Wayne Wolfson

Quickies

Between weather, the release of my latest book and travel I have not been able to start my next large project. With everything going on, I do still draw every day. This woodshedding is akin to musicians practicing scales.

It serves another purpose too, a type of antidote for the current zeitgeist, a brief reprieve from doom and gloom of news and what feels like non-stop culture wars over even the tiniest things.

More and more, I feel it is every artist’s duty to do their thing. Not necessarily to put any sort of message in their work, but offer up some form of beauty as a reminder that there are things out there which link us all and there are things out there longer lasting and ultimately more important than any “I”.

If my work gives someone even five minutes of peace or distraction, then it has done its job.

These are some quick sketches. In about a week i start my next big project.

by Wayne Wolfson

Selfie

There’s a long existing tradition of painters doing self-portraits. Even those who do not often do portraits but work in realistic/figurative style, over the course of their career will do a few. One reason every painter finds themselves giving it a try is that it is almost a way of proclaiming yourself a painter to the world, swearing allegiance to the process and planting your flag.

The painters who do it more regularly often have a Whitemanesque I celebrate myself, and sing myself element to it. Or as is usually the case for myself, pragmatism. Sometimes it is just easier to do a selfie. I do not need to worry about waiting around for a model, I do not need concern myself with if the light changes.

The relationship between artist and model, it is as if they are describing a person but using their words. The words in this case being the artist’s voice/style. Everyone looks different moment to moment. One looks different depending upon health, mood, location. You will look different sitting across from me in restaurant than at my side in car going down highway et al.

Cell phones have grated everyone ability to capture minutia of their lives. People have forgotten how to look at paintings. A subject or model wants to look exactly as they do in a photo. They want you to use their words to describe them so to speak and they don’t understand about the transmutable effect of time, being a different “I” from second to second as influenced by so many factors. To look exactly as one does in a photo, that is photo realism and that is a style, a genre not “the right way” over all. Very few of the immortal list of painters did photo realism. When you view their works, whether Frans Hals or Matisse, you know you are seeing a woman in a dress, you might even know who the subject is, but one is not going to study anatomy from the work nor confuse it for a photo. This is not a bad thing. Forgotten is that it was the artist’s hand, their voice in a work we treasured not merely because it looks so much like the thing.

In general I always want my portraits whether in paint or drawing to look like the subject, but ultimately it’s a flat square upon which one is creating an image which hopefully exudes at east a little something, life, emotion. Even with this goal though, I am not trying to hide that it’s not a photo. Why would I?

11×17 Tan Paper & Watercolor

by Wayne Wolfson

Drella

Picasso’s name still carries much power, although not for the reasons it formally had. Now, he is an aspiration for people. The imagined life, doing very little but acting as one imagines a famous artists to act via cues from TV and movies. Paying for huge bar & restaurant bills via scribbling on a napkin, grabbing your dealer’s or someone else’s wife’s breast and other such bad behavior, all done to endless applause.

Think what you want about the man, he actually worked hard. Those who daydream of reaching his level would give up even earlier than their eventual quitting if they knew the amount of work required to attempt to scale up to his heights.

The best art and artists have an aspect to them in which each fan recreates it in the image they need, their own meanings, regardless of accuracy.

Andy Warhol is another whose name has become totemic for many. The interesting thing about him is that he seems to be made by admirers (and some detractors) into a myriad of bewigged pixies.

With Picasso, whether one is fan or not, the various ways in which he is portrayed always have a main component of him being the conqueror.

Andy though, is legion. Some admirers see him as what he offered up to the world, the public face. Others wanted to dig a little deeper and went by his published diaries, which most likely had been done for eventual public consumption. A further put on or enigma, depending upon which camp one is in.

There is the parable about the six blind men and the elephant. This perfectly sums up Andy. Assuredly, we are told he was:

Master manipulator, someone whose other-worldly boho mien was a sort of act which amused him to do, a long con performance piece.

A true artist whose cool emotional detachment was birthed out of the initial ideas behind pop-art and the booming post war years of consumerism.

An on the spectrum man-child, whose wonderment at some of life’s more mundane aspects truly enchanted him.

Each of these members of an army of Andys have a plausible explanation as to why they are the true Andy.

He achieved such fame and was in the game for so long. There was a sharp eyed cleverness behind everything he did. Part of his genius was in letting others talk for him.

Early on he found a way to to do a put on to the art world which amused him. This was facilitated by letting critics, fans and peers do the talking, coming up with the theories and meanings amongst themselves.

He was a sort of naif. Handlers and an inner circle took care of all practical matters, while he walked through life in a dream like enchantment.

It was all an act which allowed an artist who was mediocre in execution of work and its promotion in the traditional manner to accrue power and money while secretly laughing behind his wig and shades.

Interestingly, the further forward in time we move, the clearer picture of which was the true Andy is formed. All the various Andy’s which people hold dear were aspects of him.

I am actually not a fan. Recently, I had the pleasure of seeing a giant silkscreen by Rauschenberg which i greatly admired. This combined with fact that every time I watch a documentary on anything going on in the 1970’s from clothes, music, photography, night life et al, at the very least during montages, Andy can be seen watching the crowd.

It served to make me think of the nature of his fame.

Don’t hate the player, hate the game

Quick sketch on newsprint

by Wayne Wolfson

Dear Diary

I am in the middle of working on another Cinefield®. This means that painting temporarily takes a backseat. Like many of my musical heroes, I will still woodshed every night. My version of playing scales, sketching hands, eyes et al.

Drawing is not a second class citizen for me. It is very much a part of my “I”. While it does help with my compositional eye in photography and sense of rhythm with my painting and Cinefields®, I view drawing as a separate and equally important medium in itself.

Both Matisse and Renoir had said something along the lines of an artist should take time every day specifically to sketch things very quickly. In working fast, eventually one is able to capture the essence of a thing with a minimal of lines. Once you can do that, then when you slow down for a painting or longer worked on drawing, then it is easier to bring out the essence of the thing.

Here are some recent quick pieces:

Lyra Piece 5×7

Quick sketch & text by Me

Elliot Gould. If you haven’t seen it, highly recommend the movie “The Long Goodbye”

Quick sketch of Iggy

by Wayne Wolfson

Song About a girl

This is my first painting of ’24. I am very pleased with it. 11×17 Watercolor on tan paper.

As seems to now frequently be the case, the news is bleak. It is the duty for all artists to do their thing. Not put political messages into their works but rather offer up something outside of the here and now, which will some day be over. Facilitate inspiration and show that there are things bigger than ourselves, which are eternal. Things like art, culture, beauty and the general human condition.

The reason why artists such as Shakespeare & Homer are still so revered is because they reflect the human condition. Of course the social mores & politics have changed but things like joy, desire, grief, we can all relate. And that is one of the things art should do, relink us, especially now.

If one is not an artist, as important as the creating is the viewing. An artist with no audience becomes akin to the riddle about the tree in the forest. Take the occasional break from doom-scrolling. Try to If not every time, then every other time, when the urge arises to engage someone in what will ultimately be a futile bad vibe exchange over points of views, instead explore a new painter, author or piece of music.

In this way, with very little effort we can all improve the zeitgeist.

by Wayne Wolfson

Dear Diary II

I have started another painting. This one is on French cotton paper. Between rain and general dampness in the air, the weather has not been obliging me. I have had to takes days off.

In the interim, as usual I draw while working more on my next collection of stories & essays.

Here are a selection of quick sketches & musings done over past week.

“M” quick Lyra piece 5×7

Idea & quick sketch pencil & newsprint paper

Fish heads for the broth

3×5 pocket pad Miles

Christmas gift to myself in case I only get coal

by Wayne Wolfson

Dear Diary

If you look at some paintings & drawings by both Matisse and Picasso, they are child like. This is not a pejorative term though. When Matisse painted his wife reclining on couch, you knew you were seeing a woman in kimono on couch but one would never study anatomy via this type of piece, it was not (hyper) realism.

Emotion ruled out over technique.

Picasso would occasionally lay on the floor and paint with his children. There is a purity in when a child does art, they do not get hung up on rules and restrictions. He wanted to capture a spark from this.

Both men had said something along the lines of an artist should create with the seriousness of a child at play.

I had read some biographies where burgeoning painters at young ages were given blocks of cheap paper to let loose on. This was a sort of test by parents, the paper was inexpensive so if the child gave up, as children sometimes do with things which they show initial enthusiasm for, it would be no big deal.

Impulsively, while restocking needed art supplies, I bought myself a block of cheap newsprint paper.

I am currently working on my next short story/essay collection and a small painting.

A for fun project, I decided to do a page or two every day in this block, but each piece had to be loose. It’s just daily doodles 9×12 newsprint paper. I am earnest in this, like a child.

by Wayne Wolfson