Prior Incantato

Watercolor in moleskine, approx. 5" x 7"

I introduced my new possession with a slight trace of embarrassment and an abundance of barely suppressed pride.  "It's my only frivolous purchase," I said.

This is almost true. I rarely give in to buying whims. Even though I  had bought  it a week before, I  had no regrets, and I have no regrets now.  I am still thrilled with the purchase.

"What is it?" my friend asked.

I gestured with flourish to the spot on my shelf where the object has been displayed like a museum piece.

"A chopstick?" my friend asked.

I was horrified.

"Of course not," I said. "It's a wand!" A thin foot-long slightly tapered charcoal-colored wand, with intricate runes carved on the sides. Certainly not a chopstick; if anything, a fine baton.

I bought it at the Wizarding World of Harry Potter in Orlando. It is Sirius Black's wand which means it is a symbol of loyalty and sacrifice for all that is good.  But mostly, for me, it represents imagination, master storytelling, and unbridled creativity.  And magic, of course.

My friend doesn't have to understand.

I am lucky. I create a little magic every day. And each day it takes a new form.  I begin with a blank sheet of paper.

Sometimes I am amazed at what a sheet of paper or canvas can display.  Other times not so much.  To have the ability to wield a pen or a brush and create an image that wasn't there before:  that, I could tell my friend,  is magic.  I don't need a wand.  But it is nice to have the reminder on my shelf of so much that I admire, and of so much that inspires me.

The truth, of course, is that no wave of a wand will do. To imagine effectively we must exercise the mind. To create we must exercise the hand.

I have been nearly obsessed lately with the Helga watercolors by Andrew Wyeth.  Andrew Wyeth employed drybrush in many of his pictures, in which most of the moisture is squeezed out of the brush, to create his emotion-laden images.  I have read forums online in which watercolorists have been both baffled and amazed by his results.  [Wyeth's wand:  Stupefy! (You can see a list of Harry Potter spells here.)] 

At least a year ago I found an article about his technique which you can read here.  I revisited it recently.  According to the article, part of how Andrew Wyeth described his process was this: "You weave the layers of dry brush over and within the broad washes of watercolor."

I hadn't caught it the first few times I read the article, but it made sense - he employed both washes and drybrush.  So as a study in my moleskine above, I started the face of the woman above as a wash, almost as I always would.  Only then did I employ the drybrush technique.  For me it was a very slow process - a gradual build up of transparent layers, almost like sculpting, and I was amazed at how the areas in the face began to acquire depth.  This was very different than using the other watercolor methods.

I reached a point where I felt the entire face needed more color, and again thought of the above quote.  Andrew Wyeth did not simply lay a wash and then apply drybrush, but employed a weaving of the two.  So I laid a wash over what I had done, unsure whether that would unsettle everything.  And it worked!  And then resumed the drybrush.  So this was a successful experiment I think.

I don't know that I have done anything like what Andrew Wyeth has done in technique in that I have never been able to examine an original Wyeth piece (I am a mere fledgling artist, self-taught/self-teaching, and even were I to stumble somewhere close, I am nowhere approaching the quality of his work, of course.) One great thing about Andrew Wyeth was that he did not feel limited by any one watercolor technique and felt that he could use several in one piece.  So I tried to do the same.

Except for some initial trials, I used the watercolor medium, gum arabic, for the first time in this picture - and only in the hair.  The description on the bottle says gum arabic "increases brilliance, glosses and transparency of water colours.  Controls spread of wet on wet.  Reduces staining."  I bought the gum arabic because I have not always been satisfied with the vibrancy of the colors.  I do not see that the colors are especially more vibrant than elsewhere on the page.  The texture of the paint did seem to change, and I did note that if water was placed on the hair after it dried, then the hair would vanish [Evanesco!], so staining was definitely reduced. 

It is interesting that in drawing any person, problems can result, sometimes in the most surprising places.  In this one I had a problem with the shape of the shoulders of all things - I mean who ever thinks about the shoulders?  (Except perhaps Henry Raleigh whom you can see in this post of the excellent "Illustration Art" blog, and whose work so impressed me that I could not draw for two days).  It just shows that you can't ignore any part of the body, and must learn - eventually - to control each and every part.  [Imperio!]

There is no substitute for practice. Only then will I learn.

So join me, won't you? Pick up your brush, your pencil, your pen, or whatever it is that you use, and repeat after me:  Wingardium Leviosa! (Make sure your emphasis is on the "o".)  And may all of your creative efforts hereafter rise to new heights.

Left-brain/Right-brain (Or Much Ado About Nothing)

Ink and watercolor in moleskine

Warning:  Mind at work.  Use due care as you step into my mind as the left-brain and right-brain are hard at work in developing the above page.

Left-brain:   It's a crowded room, and there are lot's of people.  It's a good chance to sketch.
Right-brain:  Must draw!  Must draw!  Pen.  Pen. Where pen?!  Thank God.  Pen here.  Draw!
Left-brain:   Now who should I draw?  Maybe that elderly woman.  She doesn't seem to moving around too much, and she can't see me from this angle.
Right-brain:    Face. What a face!  Angst!  Such angst!  Circles. Circles.  Round and round.  Pen.  Pen!
Left-brain:  Let's see, the nose is at about a 10:00 angle, and it is about so long..
Right-brain:  Sliding Pen, curves..curves!  The face.  Here. I feel - the line here! Ooooh!

Then, after a similar left/right collaboration when drawing a man onto the page:

Left brain:  I want a whole statement.  Not just two unrelated faces on a page.  I think I'll draw a line to connect them - kind of like what Barbara Weeks does in her sketchbook here.  Now to color the faces:  I think I am beginning to get a glimmer of what Andrew Wyeth does with his skin tones.  It is not just drybrush, but an initial wash plus drybrush, or perhaps multiple washes alternated with drybrush.  I've got to try that.  It's like when I completed the figures in this page, I applied drybrush in various places over wash, and I like the effect:

Ink and watercolor in moleskine

Left brain:  I need to experiment with this drybrush over wash, to see if I can mold contours of a face.  Let's see - here's a drawing in my moleskine I don't like so much.
Right Brain:  Brush.  Here!  More here!  Ooh!!  Over here!
Left brain:  How each layer shows through!  I think I forgot as I did this where the light source was, but a successful experiment nonetheless!  Now let's try it on this other page!

Back to the page with the man and the woman, and the right and left brain collaborate on applying colors to the faces.  But something doesn't seem right about the background:

Right brain [viewing the painted faces on the white page background connected by a line]:  Boring.  Emotionless. Need Color.  Color!!   [Proceeds to put color all over the page recklessly, and with abandon.]

Left brain:  Hmmmm.  Don't like the way this one came out really.  I think I'll have to post this with the white page in the back.  I'm glad I scanned it.
[But left brain then shows the page to his Most Valuable Critic, an invaluable female whole brain, whose mouth says:  Nah, I don't like the colors - too pastelly.  I think grey would be better.]
Left brain:  Why not?  It'd be a neat experiment!  I can see if I can use different complimentary colors over all of the different colors for many different grey tones, and if that proves too unwieldy I can just spread Paynes Grey over everything - it's semi-transparent, colors should show through to some degree for interest.

Right brain [after Payne's grey is spread over everything]:  Whoa.  Somber.
Left brain:  It's amazing what a background will do.  White didn't do this.  Color didn't do this.  The grey has connected them.  They are family.  He has done something terrible.  He looks for foregiveness but she cannot forgive.  What he has done is irredeemable.
Right brain:  Yeah.. [Sigh].  What he said.

Where I stand today:

Left brain: Now to use a much larger pencil drawing of a woman's face to try this technique - wash first, then drybrush, then glazes perhaps, then more drybrush.  A larger drawing allows room for detail.  The absence of pen makes me rely entirely on painting.

[At first it looks horrible, but gradually, layer by layer it builds thanks to the intuition of the Right brain.  This method is slow!  But could it be working?]


The left brain is useful and the right brain is necessary, but the fingers are indispensable.  Because right now, the fingers are crossed.  We shall see..

"I am continuously seeking, trying out new ways.  It utterly absorbs me.  I am continually producing drawings, although most of them don't ever develop into anything because I get another idea of something that is better than that initial, sharp, idea." - Andrew Wyeth.

Both brains agree.  Or maybe you could say that both brains are of the same mind.  Hmmm.  Makes you think, doesn't it?

The Poor Stepchild

In my poor stepchild of a Moleskine - the one that doesn't take watercolor - I sketch, I experiment, and I play. The exploding mandala, of a couple posts back, was in there, and much crazier stuff too that won't see the light of day. On some pages I literally just scribble (with style). On one page, I create faces from imagination to find out what comes to me without actually looking at a person - to check what I know automatically. Raena was doing this on her blog the other day.

It is necessary for growth to do the rough and ready that no one will ever see, I think. But here's a peek inside. You can pretend that the rest of the stuff in there is just like these.

I'd like that.

I usually don't carry this other moleskine with me, but one day I found myself sitting in a waiting room for some time and drew the bamboo plant on the right.

One thing that I've been doing, and plan to do more of, is to copy sketches of other artists. This is in the hope that I might divine what they are doing, and learn something for myself. I was delighted to find out that Nancy has been doing the same thing, though much more methodically. Great minds think alike, eh, Nancy? Anyway, I didn't spend any real time doing these, I tried to sketch quickly but follow the lines of the artists themselves - to get a feel how they would do it. I wasn't worried about being exactly correct, and that is good because they are not.

My copy of a the sketch of a little girl by Jean-Antoine Watteau is on the right. He drew his version in the 1700's. Amazing how we must learn again what people already knew so well, so long ago, before we can progress.


I've been quite impressed with everything about Andrew Wyeth's Helga drawings and paintings. I copied some of his sketches too.

These are copies of his sketches that are in the book Andrew Wyeth, The Helga Pictures (1987), by John Wilmerding, which is a picture book, mostly. His sketches, his watercolors, and his drybrush are phenomenal.

On the left I drew the arm twice, because I hadn't captured the subtle turns in the line the first time. I can do anything in this book!


This other Moleskine is almost full, and there was a time that I wondered whether I would ever buy another, with its thick yellow pages, useless for watercolors. But I will, because in it I can be free! And there is no end to what you can do with such a book (just plug the words Moleskine Detour in the search at Youtube and you will see what I mean.)

So adopt a poor stepchild. The reward will be yours.

Our Tilted World

I've been away from this blog for eighteen whole days since my last post, and it's felt like forever. As Ellen so elequently described my family's last few months in her kind note: "Sometimes it seems like the world has just tipped over and none of those close to us can get their footing." And it has been just like that.

Thankfully, though, those I love are coping with their losses, as hard as they are, and overcoming their illnesses and dealing with their medical conditions. They are resilient and strong and admirable. At their age, octogenarians, they should be relaxing and enjoying, but that is not the way it is, apparently, and some of their greatest challenges occur in those years.

I should have realized this, of course. That this is not the way it is. The world is, after all, tilted. To be precise, our Earth has a tilt of 22.4 degrees. Not a single globe on this earth is upright. A reminder for the new year, I think. Each year we want the next year to be perfect. But it never is, of course.

Why not? Because our world is tilted.

And I can live with that. I have to. In fact, I want to.

All in all, 2009 has been a good year. I started my blog in March 2009 and returned to art after a quarter of a century. I have made new friends online - wonderful friends - you have been so encouraging, and I am more grateful than I can say. I have learned much, and have so opened the floodgates of creativity that it is sometimes hard to think about anything else. The blog has fed the art, and the art has fed the blog. I began painting in watercolors, and learn more about the medium each day. And I so appreciate the warm wishes all of you sent my way when things grew a bit harder.

Today I am excited about 2010. So many possibilities. There are so many, I don't know which way to go! The world wobbles as it turns, don't you think? The drawing above is a fun development for me. I've been drawing with waterproof ink. Above, I tried using water soluble ink intentionally, first drawing with the pen and then using a brush to spread the ink. How can I use this?! I can't wait to explore.

I have a new, artist quality set of watercolors that I am just beginning to use. I will continue to sketch in public. I sketched the gentleman on the left through a window, although I colored it later with the new paints. After I sketched this man - I call him Boris - I handed the drawing to my 9-year-old nephew Jake. Jake walked straight to the window directly in front of Boris, looked down at the drawing, up at Boris, down at the drawing, and up at Boris again. Tell me, do you think the man noticed? What a hoot! Somehow there is always a surprise when I sketch in public.

I have been totally taken lately with the Helga paintings of Andrew Wyeth. His watercolors have depth, atmosphere, feeling. He uses a dry brush technique, which I would like to explore. I have spent hours staring at his sketches, studies and finished paintings in the book, Andrew Wyeth: The Helga Pictures, by John Wilmerding. You can almost see how he does it. Almost, but not quite. He uses pencil, and then paints, so I decided to do the drawing on the right at the same restaurant as Boris in pencil, rather than in pen, as a first attempt. I expect to do more of this.

I am glad that the world is tilted. So many facets, so many angles, so many possibilities! There is nothing dull about it! So much to think about, and so much to do!

Happy New Year! May you perch yourself on your tilted world and laugh at the joy of it in 2010!