major artistic concerns
-confident and tender line quality. it's hesitant, sketchy, unsure. I just started doing some sketches that lack that, and I think I'm gonna buy one of those big black sketchbooks to play around with it. mostly, my issue is that a lot of the time I haven't been really drawing, just making straight lines and blocks and placing things within them. once I start really feeling the forms, letting my hand do what it needs to, I'm in love again.
-more fleshed-out writing. I realized that one of the most consistent criticisms is that my narratives need more. I read that each writer has one of two impulses - to write like there's no tomorrow, and not know how to cut it down, or to use each word like it costs a hundred dollars and to leave the story wanting. I'm in the latter category. from now on, every time I think there's enough, I will realize that I'm wrong and I gotta put more meat on it.
-solidity of form and honest gesture. no bullshit in general. but getting solid figures with real anatomy (even if it's illustrative and expressive, like Ben Shahn) is a lot more satisfying to see and to draw.
-no fear about perspective and constructing environments (not backgrounds) for characters to live in.
-image-integrated words, and using them with the pictures to their fullest potential. push-pull. getting away from see-say, since a lot of what I'm doing is adapting my poems and placing the words inside the image. making sure they enhance each other. Nate Powell has done this excellently in Please Release, which Barb lent me.
-composition and black and grey placements. looking at Walt Kelly for this one.
drawing my friend Andi for my comic is proving really difficult.
a LOT of my sketches are, not hermaphroditic, but have both male and feminine characteristics (either male-seeming with breasts, or both a penis and breasts). what this means I don't know.
"Most important is to always have a play back and forh, back and forth. Between the big and the little, the light and the dark, the smiling and the sad, the serious and the comic." - Ben Shahn
Shahn, you beautiful man.
"Every heart, every heart
to love will come
but like a refugee."
- Leonard Cohen
also the Philadelphia Museum of Art is the BEST ART MUSEUM I've EVER seen. every room is excellently set up, things are very specifically grouped by artist and movement or period, and it is the only museum I've ever been to that provides context and information next to nearly every piece. there is NO RAISIN not to do that, and I've lamented that at every other museum I've been to. also they have Rodin up the ASS! I gawked at Three Shades for about ten minutes! and their Mexican prints exhibit rules! and -- I gargled, vomited, and died -- their photography exhibit is at the moment a tribute to Arnold Newman, so it was all portraits. and the Arnold Newman stuff was wonderful beyond words -- I love love love his placement of figures and I have to take advantage of it. he places his figures in a way that they take up a very small part of the frame, their environment kinda dominates them, but they're still the focus.
here's one by him of Piet Mondrian.
not the best example, but still, bam. more
-more fleshed-out writing. I realized that one of the most consistent criticisms is that my narratives need more. I read that each writer has one of two impulses - to write like there's no tomorrow, and not know how to cut it down, or to use each word like it costs a hundred dollars and to leave the story wanting. I'm in the latter category. from now on, every time I think there's enough, I will realize that I'm wrong and I gotta put more meat on it.
-solidity of form and honest gesture. no bullshit in general. but getting solid figures with real anatomy (even if it's illustrative and expressive, like Ben Shahn) is a lot more satisfying to see and to draw.
-no fear about perspective and constructing environments (not backgrounds) for characters to live in.
-image-integrated words, and using them with the pictures to their fullest potential. push-pull. getting away from see-say, since a lot of what I'm doing is adapting my poems and placing the words inside the image. making sure they enhance each other. Nate Powell has done this excellently in Please Release, which Barb lent me.
-composition and black and grey placements. looking at Walt Kelly for this one.
drawing my friend Andi for my comic is proving really difficult.
a LOT of my sketches are, not hermaphroditic, but have both male and feminine characteristics (either male-seeming with breasts, or both a penis and breasts). what this means I don't know.
"Most important is to always have a play back and forh, back and forth. Between the big and the little, the light and the dark, the smiling and the sad, the serious and the comic." - Ben Shahn
Shahn, you beautiful man.
"Every heart, every heart
to love will come
but like a refugee."
- Leonard Cohen
also the Philadelphia Museum of Art is the BEST ART MUSEUM I've EVER seen. every room is excellently set up, things are very specifically grouped by artist and movement or period, and it is the only museum I've ever been to that provides context and information next to nearly every piece. there is NO RAISIN not to do that, and I've lamented that at every other museum I've been to. also they have Rodin up the ASS! I gawked at Three Shades for about ten minutes! and their Mexican prints exhibit rules! and -- I gargled, vomited, and died -- their photography exhibit is at the moment a tribute to Arnold Newman, so it was all portraits. and the Arnold Newman stuff was wonderful beyond words -- I love love love his placement of figures and I have to take advantage of it. he places his figures in a way that they take up a very small part of the frame, their environment kinda dominates them, but they're still the focus.
here's one by him of Piet Mondrian.
not the best example, but still, bam. more