Art as Commentary

I don’t usually do artwork that is commentary on political events. It is just not my usual thing. However, recently, the way things have been going in the American political system, early this year I felt the impulse to do something that was indeed commentary on the person who was seeking to regain the most important office in America.

Donald Trump is not a portrait subject that would usually appeal to me. Aesthetically, his is not a face that I find an interesting challenge for its planes and shadows (unlike, for instance, Patrick Stewart). However, as various photos of him in different circumstances flashed by me, I would occasionally see shots that were obviously snapped at unguarded moments, where he was not posing for the photographers. The images exposed the inner contempt the subject has for the people and things around him. It’s a cold, remote expression, as if he is removed and above the rest of the world. I wondered if, as an artist, I could catch that aura in a drawing.

So, one day, I just got out my art paper and pencils — because I like doing portraits in pencil. I had searched for an image that held all the attitude, and so began with that. The final image I had in my head, was the image of Trump looking out to one side, over an image of the attack on the Capitol Building on January 6, 2021.

The first thing I found was, as I noted above, the fact that his face doesn’t have many strong, dramatic planes or shadows, that make working from the “negative space” easy.

In fact, just before I took this progress photo, I almost gave up on it because I didn’t think the details were working out. But I focused in on what negative spaces there were and worked from there.

For those who are not familiar with the concept of “negative space,” they are the dark spaces. As the artist, I try not to focus on what that dark space might be, but rather just the shape of it and where it is in relation to other shapes.

By pushing forward that way, I reached this point, and realized I was on the right track. It was coming together. I also discovered a key to the expression I was working to capture. It lies in the positioning of the eyes. Once I got this much done, I looked at it more closely, and noticed that the pupils do not focus on the exact same point. The one on the right side of the paper focuses on the viewer, while the one on the left looks slightly to the side and beyond the viewer. This discovery did make me wonder if that is really what he does: not exactly look directly at whoever he is dealing with, just creating the illusion of it.

Once I got more of the face laid in, I turned my attention to rendering the dome of the Capitol Building as well as I could. However, I realized that the scale of the dome once it was finished was such that it would make any human figures in front of the building quite miniscule. My intention was to convey the rioting on the steps with the clouds of tear gas billowing up. I ended up having to render the people in a very sketchy manner, implying their presence at the site. I wish I could have gotten more detail of the rioting into the work but given the size of the piece I was working on, it had to be as it ended up.

I titled the piece “Contempt.” This is how it turned out —

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Christmas 2022 — Designing the Card

This last Christmas, I was finally able to return to a personal tradition of mine, that of designing my Christmas card and having them printed up to send out to my longish list of friends and family. It had been approximately a decade since I had last done it, and of course in that time, certain aspects of the printing industry had changed. Mainly, it meant that having full color cards printed now cost the same as monochrome.

The prospect of doing a full color design excited me, until I sat down and suddenly confronted the differences in thinking of a design that would be in one color against white and any colors I wanted working with any other colors.

And then there was the subject matter of the card: Angel(s), Madonna and Child, Three Kings? What would it be? I decided to go with an angel — for some reason, the concept of an angel announcing the birth of Christ has great appeal to me.

The first step, of course, is to do a rough sketch of what I want. So, this fellow burst in on me.

It’s a very rough sketch, to be sure, but it was the general idea of what I wanted. The wings and hair all fiery, with a gradated black background radiating out from a white center.

I decided that since I had colors to play with, the angel’s garb would be hints of blue-green. For no particular reason, other than I liked it.

In his hands, he would hold a globe of light, with white rays shooting out from it. This would be the “tidings of great joy” that he brings to all people.

The sketch was made in about October, when I was still feeling a bit iffy about whether my budget would allow for doing the cards.

By late November, the budget consideration allowed me to plan to do the cards (although the actual cash flow ended up falling into place only in mid-December, which made for adventures in card stock that I don’t need to relate here). In any case, it allowed me to turn to my lovely 16″ Cintiq and begin working on the actual design.

The first step was rather simple — the basic background of the circular gradation from white out to black. But what I really wanted was an oval shape, so after the first step came the image distortion to get that nice, elongated oval. Easy-peasy, compared to what came next, the wings.

My first attempt at the wings was doing them in long strokes in three layers: yellow on the bottom, extending the farthest out, then orange, then red. Unfortunately, they looked awful, very sketchy and rough. Yuck. It didn’t have quite the dazzle I wanted. I disliked it so much I deleted those layers (instead of keeping them as samples of my own “bad work”). Then it occurred to me to go back to my old stand-by: stippling. I hadn’t really done much dot-work in multi-colors, but this seemed to be the time to really pull that out.

Placing the wings and then the angel figure over the black background really popped visually. I was satisfied.

The globe of light allowed me to play with some fire effects brushes I’d gotten for Photoshop. The initial layer of it was a somewhat transparent yellow, and then a second, slightly smaller white layer using the same brush over that. And then of course the rays.

All in all, it looked pretty good. I sat and stared at it for a bit, happy with what I’d done, and almost — almost — feeling that I had finished it. But there was something nagging at me. Something that made me feel this was just a shade flatter than I wanted.

It needed something more.

Then I realized what it was. The flat background gave me no sense of place. It needed some stars in the corners. Just a little bit. Thus, I reached the final image.

The sprinkling of stars gave the whole a sense of depth, of the angel coming into a place. And that was what I wanted.

I described the image to a friend this way: I wanted to create a sense of a creature of light manifesting into our worldly dimension — and the message of good will and peace being like light made into a physical object that he was holding out to people.

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Experiencing New Art

Several years ago, I did a stint of writing material for Search Engine Optimizing (SEO) for an online marketing specialist. One of his clients was an abstract artist, and she wanted a blog about art, especially abstract and contemporary art. So, I began to learn more about that arena of modern art.

Although I grew up drawing a lot — put a piece of paper in front of me and give me a writing instrument, and I would scribble away — I had never made a serious study of the history of art. I liked looking at art and was fortunate enough to have parents that had a taste for visiting museums. We lived in Michigan and would occasionally visit Detroit. Such visits included a day at the Detroit Institute of Arts.

Detroit Institute of Arts
Detroit Institute of Arts: Photo by Andrew Jameson, used under Creative Commons

Thus, at an early age, I learned to look at art, at least in the sense of taking it in, and understanding that it was an expression of what the artist saw in the world. But learning how to experience art knowingly and think about it, that would come much later. It’s an odd thing to confess, coming from an artist, but there it is: I made art that “had” to come out of me, but I did not often think about what it said to anyone else. I had no artist’s “manifesto,” as it were.

Anyway, there I was, writing SEO content about art, and needed to find interesting things to include, particularly from the field of modern art, especially if it leaned toward the innovative or abstract. One of the first pieces I wrote was about an exhibition at the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Arts (or the MOCA, as it is colloquially known). I had actually visited the MOCA once, before I had gotten into SEO writing. And it was there that I’d gotten my first real lesson in experiencing art.

The MOCA has a Jackson Pollock, Number 1, 1949. I had never been particularly interested in Pollock before my visit to MOCA, because I’d only encountered his work in photo reproductions in books. I didn’t find the colors interesting, nor what (at my initial encounters) the “mess” looked like. But at the MOCA, the painting takes up a whole wall by itself.

Number 1, 1949 by Jackson Pollock
Number 1, 1949 by Jackson Pollock, Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art

Experiencing a Jackson Pollock painting in person is very different than seeing a reproduction, even a very good photograph of it. There are some things that a camera cannot capture.

The first impression I had was of the sheer size of the piece. The image that looked like a bunch of scribbles in photos in books was suddenly a vast piece stretched across a large wall. It changed how I perceived the “scribbles.” When I saw the real thing, I could almost feel the energy and force required to swing the instruments Pollock used to splatter the paint. Also, photographic reproduction even now does not manage to replicate the colors exactly. So, the yellows in Number 1, 1949 are brighter, stronger, than photographs convey. And then there is the physical layering of the paints. The layering really does add dimension to the work – it might be a depth measured in millimeters, but it is there, and the human eye registers the dimension. A flat photograph of such a work cannot capture that.

Which brings me back to the SEO blog writing I mentioned. In that first blog article, I cited Cosima von Bonin’s Untitled (Bikini Loop #1). I said it would “set you on an unusual train of thought,” but didn’t comment further, mainly because I couldn’t think of anything to say that wasn’t just my reaction. I was writing a blog for someone else’s website, after all. I couldn’t stick my own reaction into what was supposedly her viewpoint.

But here’s what von Bonin’s piece looks like —

Untitled (Bikini Loop 1) by Cosima von Bonin
Untitled (Bikini Loop 1) by Cosima von Bonin, exhibited at Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art

It’s not “just” a bikini. As you can see in the photo, it is rather large. Draped high in the gallery, over the doorways, and spread across the side of the room. With the top overlaying the bottom, it sort of removes the immediate implication of a sexual response. Instead, you have to look at the pieces, and inevitably consider the purpose they represent. “What of the size of the woman wearing that?” That would certainly be a powerful woman, just based on size. But why should size matter so much? As I said in the SEO piece, it “sets you on an unusual train of thought.”

Experiencing art is different than just looking at it. But we all need to learn how to experience art, to really see it, to breathe it in.

Interestingly enough, as I was preparing this blog post, an artist friend of mine posted a link to a Wall Street Journal article about how looking at art is good for mental health. And after the last two years of everyone dealing with the stresses in our world, I think we all need to learn how to experience art.

Notes: Number 1, 1949 by Jackson Pollock, Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, image used under Fair Use. Untitled (Bikini Loop #1) by Cosima von Bonin, image used under Fair Use (photo credit unknown, unfortunately). Copyrights belong to the copyright holders.

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Dragons – Raging Water and Fire

Getting back to posting about my collection of dragons, I thought I would start with a pair that I had gotten some time during the 1990s. They are a rather spectacular pair, to be sure.

Michael Whelan had established himself as a leading cover artist for many fantasy and science fiction book covers, starting in the 1970s. He quickly made an impact. When it came to dragons, he made his first splash with the cover of Anne McCaffery’s The White Dragon.

The White Dragon painting by Whelan
Michael Whelan’s cover painting for The White Dragon

Aesthetically, however, I wasn’t wowed by his Pern dragons. They seemed heavy and clunky to me.

Then, several years later, I started seeing ads from Franklin Mint, featuring lovely sculpted dragons. And they turned out to be designed by Michael Whelan!

I was caught by a couple of them.

They weren’t inexpensive. But I was making a reasonable income, so I got the first one I wanted: the green one called the Guardian of Raging Water.

Not long after purchasing that dragon, I also bought a second one, the intense fiery-looking one called the Guardian of Fire.

I felt the pair made a nice contrast: water and fire. I happily did not turn into an obsessive collector who needed to buy the rest of the dragons in the series. Instead, the pair found their homes on my sideboard. (At the moment, sideboard and Whelan dragons are in storage, but I hope to release them in the not distant future.)

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Inktober 2019 – Getting Started

I’ve skipped doing the Inktober drawing exercises the last couple of years. But I decided to get back into it this year. Part of it was that I’ve just been wanting to do artwork of any sort, but hadn’t applied myself to it.

Although there is usually an “official Prompt List” for Inktober, in the past I’ve ignored it. But this year, I thought it would be interesting to answer that challenge. I was planning to try some abstract type pieces in any case, so the possibility of seeing what I would do for some of the prompts intrigued me.

In addition to those plans, I also decided to do this year’s drawing on paper plates. Now, that choice was partly guided by budget: getting a fresh pad of drawing paper would cost a bit. But also, the appeal of a drawing surface that was something other than a rectangle snagged me. So I bought a package of paper plates. I quickly discovered that the front side of the plates was too slick to take the ink, so I’m doing the drawings on the back side.

Inktober #1 – “Ring”

Mostly I focused on roundness for this one, as if I were stuck halfway between sound and shape.

Inktober 2019 #1 "Ring"

It turned out very abstract, at least in my mind. But I like the composition.

Inktober #2 – “Mindless”

The prompt for Day 2, was “Mindless.” The question was whether I was going to take that as being “without brain,” or an inanimate object, or just being without focus. I decided to opt for the third concept there.

Inktober #2 - "Mindless"

The effect of using a round “work space” for this one was that the profile could possibly face any direction. She could be looking up, or down, or to the left… (or upside down looking to the right). But I wanted her to be looking up. The wandering thoughts drift downward from her brain (referenced by the small cap of brain-folds).

Inktober #3 – “Bait”

The “Bait” prompt nudged me toward a more representational drawing. But I still didn’t want to go the total distance down that path. Rather than draw a realistic fish zeroing in on the bait dropped into the space, I went for swarms of “fish-shapes” circling in on the worm. I was amused that the fish-shapes ended up looking like a bunch of Pepperidge Farms Goldfish set loose.

Inktober 2019 #3 - "Bait"

This turned out rather whimsical. I’m content with that.

Inktober #4 – “Freeze”

Too many winters in my youth (in Michigan) included hands feeling frozen, for various reasons (forgotten gloves, mittens that had gotten damp and then frozen again, going bare-handed). So the prompt “freeze” made me think of hands.

Inktober 2019 #4 - "Freeze"

So that’s the beginning of the 2019 Inktober. I mean to try to keep up with the daily exercise, but I’ll probably post the pieces here every few days instead of every day.

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Identifying an Inspiration

I keep a file of interesting pictures I run across online or in magazine or pamphlets, as references for drawings and paintings. Sometimes these pictures indicate where they were taken, and sometimes they don’t.

One of my favorite paintings of my own was done years ago. It’s of an interesting shoreline, with an early morning lighting. I think the reference photo was in some travel pamphlet. I didn’t keep the photo I worked from, and I didn’t take note of what the location was. But it had always intrigued me. And I wondered where it was.

I always thought that the shoreline was distinctive. But I didn’t have an idea of where to look for it. I had a vague idea that it was somewhere along the Pacific Northwest, but wasn’t sure where.

Recently the cycle of wallpaper pictures that my laptop brings up when I turn it on showed an image that looked rather familiar. In a way. It’s of Ecola State Park in Oregon. The interesting thing about it is that the view it shows is a reverse angle of the painting’s point of view.

Ecola State Park, Oregon

I admit, I’m intrigued that I was able to recognize the location from the reverse angle, especially as I’ve never been to the actual site. But it is fun to have to place identified now.

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New Digital Artwork

It’s been a while since I last did much artwork, and lately I’ve been feeling itchy about wanting to do some. Now I certainly want to do some physical painting, but that involves clearing out some work space, and unfortunately, I have some editing work right now. So, instead, I opted to do some digital artwork.

This is the (or a – I don’t know if there’s more than one yet) faenyx of Arveniem. Basically my version of a phoenix. I’ll post more about the bird itself on the Arveniem blog. But here I want to talk more about the artwork itself, as artwork.

Back in elementary school, I had always enjoyed the art sessions where we took our crayons and covered our paper with masses of color, with no specific pattern to the colors, but lots of them, until the paper was all colored. Then we got out the black tempra paint, and covered over all the crayon work. Once the paint had dried, we then got to etch out line drawings. The underlying colors would shine through the black. I always loved the effect of it. But of course, it’s a messy art method. And getting a water-based paint to fully cover a wax medium is a challenge, because if the paint is too thin, it just beads up. And if it is too thick, it flakes when you come to the etching stage.

Now, working in digital for this look is so much more satisfying. Creating the scattering of color that you want under the black is much easier to achieve with various brush and pencil effects in Photoshop. Plus there is the benefit of layers. Once the color-splash layers are completed, then you can do the all black cover very easily. It’s just another layer. And to do the etching, you simply use the eraser on the black level.

I modeled the faenyx on the peacock, for the variety of fancy plumage the real bird has. When I was caretaking the retreat ranch in Oregon, there was a resident young peafowl family, and His Flashiness would often come round my trailer with his mate, Lady Flash, and their three chicks (all female). I’d always liked peacocks, but having a family as neighbors made them special for me. Hence the inspiration.

I’m rather pleased with the way this turned out, and mean to use the style in more pieces (though I don’t know what to call the style yet).

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The Masks of the Masque of the Silmarils

Way back in the “Dark Ages” — okay, the mid-1980s — I had been thinking about J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Silmarillion, and the various fates of the gem stones in the story. Thinking about it to the degree of considering writing a paper on the matter for Mythcon and possible publication in the journal Mythlore. But the more I got into the matter, the more my ideas wanted to take on the shape of a short play and not an academic analysis. That happens sometimes for me.

I held off a little bit because I didn’t want to trespass on Tolkien’s personal territory. And then I remembered reading somewhere that he had said he hoped his subcreation would indeed inspire other creators to give added expression to his work. I always get wary of fanfiction. But I wasn’t adding anything new to his Middle-earth, but rather giving a new sub-form to one of his tales.

In any case, I happened to be chairing the 1986 Mythcon, and used “rank hath its privileges” to put a performance of the Masque on the program. There had been a table reading of the play the previous year at the Wheaton Mythcon. But this would be the first official performance. (There was supposedly a second performance in Utah a few years ago at a conference at which Paul Nolan Hyde – a member of the original cast – was guest of honor. Unfortunately, I know no more about it other than that conference’s committee asked permission to perform it.)

Anyway, for the original performance, I wanted to make sure that the Valar in the story were distinctive. It seemed appropriate that to create the impression of their majesty, they should have dazzling masks. So I made them.

Manwe and Varda are the principle characters, present in each of the four scenes.

scribblerworks-tolkien-masks-manwe

Manwe – the Sky Face

I called this Mask the Sky Face – it seemed appropriate for his character. (I later realized that the design of the mask was also affected by one of my own creations – Adonel and his myth.)

scribblerworks-tolkien-masks-varda

Varda Star Face

Varda Star Face reflects on her connection of the stars of the sky. It seemed more appropriate to call her by that name than Elbereth, at least in these circumstances.

scribblerworks-tolkien-masks-yavanna

Yavanna

Yavanna was actually my favorite of the masks. It was fun to think of her hair being made of “evergreen” leaves.

scribblerworks-tolkien-masks-vaire

Vaire Dream-Face

Vaire enters the story in connection with dream visions, so I wanted to convey something of that dreamy quality in this mask. Each of the masks was painted with acrylic paints, and then glitter flourishes were added. I happened to have an iridescent white paint that I mixed with the pinks and lavenders to give it a special luster.

scribblerworks-tolkien-masks-nienna

Nienna

For Nienna, I again used some of the iridescent paint, to add to the watery, weepy nature of her presentation.

scribblerworks-tolkien-masks-mandos

Mandos

Mandos was a challenge to make an image of. How do you portray the keeper of the Halls of the Dead, without making him creepy and scary. Yes, he must be stern, but he is not an enemy, not a “devil.” I was pleased with how this came out.

(In the play itself, the key scene he appears in concerns Luthien and Beren, and Luthien’s choice of a mortal life. The scene turned out to have a comedic tone to it, because although Mandos is very ominous about the whole matter, Luthien and Beren are so fixated on their love for each other they almost ignore the Valar. I promise you – I didn’t intend it to go that way, but the story just ran that way.)

scribblerworks-tolkien-masks-eonwe

Eonwe the Herald of the Valar

Eonwe was a similar artistic challenge as Mandos. What sort of look would create the impression of a herald right away. It had to be striking. So I went with a look that gives the impression of a burning face, something that would “light the way” whether it was night or day.

The masks were created on flat cardboard with a bit of papier mache to give definition to lips, nose, brows, and some of the side effects in place of hair. They were then painted, and further definition with glitter was added to make them more gem-like under lights. (The mortals and elves in the story were played by actors without masks.) They were then mounted on long rods painted black, because … well, it just felt right, stylistically.

Given their construction, they were very delicate.

THE FATES OF THE MASKS

At the time of the Mythcon when the Masque was performed, there was also an art show and auction at the conference. The Manwe mask was purchased by a friend of mine, and I’m not sure she still has it. The Yavanna mask I gave to Lynn Maudlin (who played the part in the performance), as thanks for several bits of assistance she gave me in preparing the conference. I’m not sure of the fate of that mask.

The other five have lived on my wall for most of the time since that conference. But I have gone through some shifting around in recent years, and the masks have not endured the experience well. Unfortunately, they have been destroyed.

I took the photos of the five that I had shortly before they were destroyed. I thought I would not have pictures of Manwe and Yavanna. Back in 1986, Bonnie GoodKnight Callahan had taken pictures of all seven of the masks, but I thought I’d lost those photos. But they turned up recently (which is why the backgrounds of those images do not match the other five). So now there is a complete record of these creations.

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Artwork Released From Storage

For the last several years, most of my artwork has been in storage. Although I had taken photos or scans of some pieces before putting them in storage, there are still several things to get images of. So it is satisfying to have access to the things themselves again.

Both these pieces are done in acrylic.

scribblerworks-twilight-shore-copy

This seascape was done from a photo I ran across in a magazine somewhere. The strange coloration and lighting was part of the original, and it made an intriguing challenge to me.

scribblerworks-singular-sensation-copyThe second painting is one of Mikhail Baryshnikov from a television special he’d done in 1980, Baryshnikov on BroadwayThe show has Baryshnikov doing dance numbers from several musicals. The painting is from the number from A Chorus Line. I call the painting “The Singular Sensation.” I’ve always been fond of this one. I’ve also wanted to do another painting from that special from the Guys and Dolls number, but I’ve never had a chance to do it. Maybe in the not-so-distant future.

As I continue sorting through things and settling into my new life in Las Vegas, I may be posting other pieces of older artwork.

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Illustrating a Memory

In updating my website, I’m trying to make sure all posts (or at least most of them) have images attached to them. That’s because Google likes to find images with posts.

So today, I created a piece of digital artwork for an old blog post. Because it involved converting a drawing done in saturated colors into a pastel version (on a larger scale), I needed to do a piece of saturated colors first, and then add a layer that would take the saturation tone down. 

I admit, I was not focusing on making a dazzling piece of art, just something to suit the post. But when I got done with the saturated version, I rather liked it. So I decided both versions were worth noting here on the graphics blog. 

The first version (saturated) I call “Spectrum Pinwheel”.

spectrum-pinwheel-net

I then had to add a transparent layer to illustrate the experience described in the blog post. That version is called “Pastel Blasphemy #2”.

pastel-blasphemy-#2

It’s interesting how things turn out. I didn’t expect to like the saturated version as much as I do.

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