The pencil drawings in this Handbook sketchbook are a mix of copies drawn in museums, from online images, and from life in airports and a Vivaldi rehearsal in a London church. This book took a while to fill. Some pages have been erased and redrawn on later dates. It began as a travel book on a brief trip to Amsterdam in September 2017 and ended at home in February 2024. One of the dates says 2022 … [Read more...]
Shape, Color & Pattern
Workshop Art: Ken Kewley's Looking and Inventing “Separation of the observer from the phenomenon to be observed is no longer possible.” — Werner Heisenberg, 1927 . . . . . . . . . . Participating in a Ken Kewley collage workshop has become a nearly annual event for me since 2015. The quantity and scope of work produced is hard to equal elsewhere. The pace is fast. Each set of instructions … [Read more...]
Wild Turkeys
Meleagris gallopavo — North American Wild Turkeys The hardest thing to see is what is in front of your eyes. — Friedrich von Schiller (1759 – 1805) . . . . . . . . . . Wild turkeys arrive in our suburban backyard daily. Groups of three or five amble—or race single file—between maples and pines into the half-acre lot at the top of a New England hill. Their girth and scale shock in comparison … [Read more...]
Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio
Death & Marketing There is nothing so fatal to character as half-finished tasks.—David Lloyd George, British prime minister (1916–22). . . . . . . . . . A lot has changed in 32 months since my last post. For one thing, I thought the number was 18, then did the math. Grasp of time, as others have noted, has been a casualty during the Covid-19 pandemic, to put it mildly. It has taken … [Read more...]
Summer Drawings
Drawing means different things to different people. As a practitioner I want to make the approximate specific and say more with less. The most important thing is to draw often, in whatever way possible, to realize its potential. I went to ten extraordinary museums on art trips in New England this summer. Museums usually forbid the use of ink when drawing in sketchbooks from their art in … [Read more...]
Spring Teaching 2018
Registration is now open for my spring teaching schedule beginning April 2 at ccae.org and April 10 at www.danforth.org. This post contains examples of student art from three classes I teach in painting and drawing. Below are descriptions of each class and the schools where the classes are offered. From Copies to Life at the Cambridge Center Studio School. This class alternates between copying … [Read more...]
Looking at Watteau
Five years ago, I spent time in Madrid indulging in the feast of the city and in some of Europe's greatest museums. I carried a sketchbook with me to draw in the galleries. A few pages shown here are of Jean-Antoinne Watteau's paintings at the Thyssen-Bornemisza. Watteau was the progenitor of the 'fêtes galantes' genre, theatrical scenes of idylls and pastorals. Other visitors were kind to me, … [Read more...]
Tv Portraits
Journalists, politicians, reporters, and policy experts are the portrait subjects of the five minute animated gif in this post. Drawings were made while watching tv news shows during the three month period between the presidential election and first six weeks of the new administration. News of the day opportunistically provided subjects for drawings that are presented in roughly the order they … [Read more...]
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