The Nub Of It

In my hand, I'm holding a colored pencil. You can see that the tip is worn down flat to the wooden sheath that surrounds it. I drew a picture and used up all the lead. I didn't have a penknife with me to sharpen it again.

It took one pencil tip to make the drawing below. It's a drawing of the dam and the bridge beyond it. I like the way the edge of the dam makes a clear horizontal break in the image. Ducks really did swim across the pool as I have drawn it. As the pencil gave out, I had to scrub hard to finish the water swirls in the foreground.

I'm not certain what the current income tax requirements are for calculating a deduction for donating art to charities. In the past, they've only allowed artists to deduct the cost of their materials. So in this case I've used one sheet of paper and about 3/8" of an inferior brand of colored pencil. I'm not complaining really but it ignores the intellectual poetry behind the entire effort.

There's something weirdly satisfying about using up art materials. I have to say (perhaps implying that it's not always true) that it is more satisfying than acquiring art supplies. My studio is full of materials and if all it takes is 3/8" of a pencil to make a drawing, I'd better get to work because I have a lot of pencils and paper floating around! And then there's the paint, magic markers, chalk, glue, crayons and the endless potential of the digital tools. It's daunting if you let it get to you. Better not then.

two lovely pairs of mallards

In this high contrast photo you can see the white incised lines of the wooden part of the pencil point

Novelty

I'm working in a smaller sketchbook right now. It's about 5 1/2 x 8 1/2 inches tall (rather than the larger black books). It's okay but it requires an adjustment; I tend to jot a bit more in it instead of making "compositions". For artists, scale is everything and sometimes it takes an effort to get the same creative flow at different sizes. Why is this?

It's because Art is made by fingers which are attached to hands which are attached to arms that are part of a human body. Each link in the chain and change in the kinesthetic causes different kinds of marks. The body becomes another medium and another tool. Did you know that?

It's good to try different approaches. I do this not just to keep loose but also because I like the surprises that a new method of working fosters. Some of my best brushes cannot be bought in store: they are old and decrepit and missing many bristles. My best paper is in an ever growing pile of castoffs and things saved from the garbage man. Paints come from yard sales and people too tired and uninspired to paint anymore. The downside of all this rag picking is that once I use some orphaned thing up, I can't replace it because its provenance is lost in the intertwined destinies of strangers, their attendant objects and my magpie self.

So there you have it: today's little quick sermon on what it's like for this artist trying to sort things out. And below are some mallards and things from the river that flows near my house. All done in that small sketchbook.

sketch of mallard and a heron

two mallards near a cascade

one lone mallard duck

Canada Goose standing on top of the dam, preening

an arch of the Pleasant Street Bridge

A hard-to-see example of my fanciful work.
See more on my posterus.com blog

That Blue Pencil

The South Natick Dam
01-02-2012
colored pencil

A few years ago, I took part in a focus group to evaluate colored pencils. I received a set of anonymous pencils and got down to work. They were all different colors varied greatly in quality. I got to keep the pencils but it did take a lot of time to answer the tedious online questionnaires. This drawing is done with a hard, chalky blue pencil. I wouldn't recommend it to any serious professional.

I like my art supplies to have personality …or, I like to assume that they have personality. Any type of personality is okay. This particular pencil is hard and alternately waxy & chalky, and a gritty light blue color. Draw just normally and it barely deposits material on the paper. Bear down and you might just burnish the paper or it might lay down a skid mark of this blue color. It makes my shading and line unpredictable --which I like.

When I buy paper, I try to buy a bunch, stash it away and forget that I have it. I gobble up paints and inks that are on sale and past their "sell date". I love picking up stuff at yard sales that have unknown provenience. The paint might need to be resuscitated. Will the paper fade and yellow? Is it unprofessional to make art out of materials that are so untrustworthy? Maybe, in this internet age where artwork is scanned and archived as soon as it is painted, using scurrilous materials is sort of excusable. This "fast living" helps me make a lot of pictures and keeps me fresh and, I think, vital. My materials give me ideas and energy as they express their own irascible quirks. If I could have anything, I'd probably have a lot of expensive pigments and paper AND a lot of junky stuff too.

If you've read this far, it doesn't get any better. This question is a quandary for me.