In the drawing class on Saturday we splashed around with ink and Chinese brushes. The week before we’d worked with dark and light because often our drawings are in the mid-range of tone without real highlights or darkness, like we’re playing it safe—which we all are to some extent, though we keep trying not to. Anyway, with India ink things are much more definite—deep black and all sorts of tone, none of which can be changed once it’s laid down. So, it’s a bit like stepping off a cliff but also knowing the cliff isn’t that high. We’re not going to break our leg, just twist our ankle if we land badly. In other words, it’s all fine—just another exploration.

I got inspired to try this because I walked into my optometrist’s office the other day to return a pair of specs that my daughter had bought. They’re all gay in there and what’s rather wondrous about the place is that not only do they sell specs but they sell art too. The art they had the other day were large black ink drawings, playful black line with the background done in a swirling dry brush mid-tone and then just one spot of red. The piece I’m thinking of was actually of a male pig, I’m assuming he’s male because there was a woman half-prostrate beside him looking like she could use a glass of water or something. All a bit outrageous and not at all aggressive. There was something benign about Mr Pig even if he did need a talking to.

So, much can be accomplished by keeping it very, very simple. The class did some wondrous stuff, especially when we added just one color. It’s always amazing to see the variety of approaches people come up with.

A new student arrived on Saturday—a wonderful woman who actually found the class through this blog and has just arrived from California. Welcome, Lyn! I love that she emailed me Friday and showed up to class on Saturday! Acting immediately on inspiration is one of the keys to art, I think!

Meanwhile I have finished Allan’s new site but see iWeb will limit some of what I can do on my blog here. Unless I’m not fully understanding it, which could be, but it looks like I can only post one picture at a time and that the blog will present as a snippet so that the reader must then click to a new page to read the whole thing. Not that big a deal when you consider all the benefits like being able to just drag pictures into the window and size them right on the page without having to go through another program or upload them and paste in code. Blah. That takes time and is a headache. Like I would like to size the image on this post and make it smaller but no can do at the mo. Also not sure how many blog entries can be archived. Not that it’s meant for the ages but there are still a few things related to the art class that I want to be able to check. Anyhoo, will head over to the Apple store for a consultation in a day or two—once I get over the sniffles. Decisions, decisions. Meanwhile, let’s count the blessings…so cool to be able to do this at all!

February 4th, 2008 | Category: Drawing Club | Subscribe to comments | Leave a comment | Trackback URL