Rendering

Pencil and brush both ask me the same questions: of all the representable things in the world, which do I want to render, and next, of the things I put on paper--lines, shadings, colors--what do I take most pleasure in?

It may be that natural artists don't ask these questions. They just sketch or paint obsessively. Notebook in hand, pencil at ready, sheet after sheet of paper fills with images. There's David Hockney with his daily ipad pictures.

Here's what I know about my drawing: it's easier to sketch statues or photographs. You, eye and hand, love to do this: clearly discern the lines and copy them, keeping the proportions right, the angles true and everything fit into the space.

It's much harder is to deal live people or locales. Things that seem worth putting pencil to paper for are faces (especially likenesses), poses, gestures, hands or feet (I saw one girl's foot today on the train half in, half out of her shoe, and bent downward like a ballerina's toe so the foot bones showed clear. I wish I had had time to make more than the rough sketch I did).

Places that have angles and shadows and over-lappings are great places to draw.  Buildings are great as well as fences, towers, rooflines. Lines, modeled masses, tinted surfaces: these elements work in such pictures. The rose garden in the Fenway on Sunday was not great to draw. No lines, only masses.

What I find hardest is perspective, convincingly representing objects at different distances. Then there's the picture plane: very hard to see; I keep looking through it and getting fuddled. And my position--head on, from above or below--I can't seem to be consistent. Wide open spaces: I don't know where I am.  But, landscapes, cityscapes, interiors, I want to capture the livingness of these too.

Color, as in watercolors, is a whole learning project. I love the feel of the brush, however, and the shape of what a brush-in-hand gesture produces. And then there's cool elegance of Singer Sargent watercolors with white paper showing through. At the MFA recently, his Carrara quarries with intricate shading, delicate colors: a lavage for the eyes. Enough. My own watercolor attempts are a mess, perfectly horrible.

So I have bought a book, to add to the other books I have on subject and technique. All very good. If I do the exercises, I learn a lot, but instead I spend time watching couples play volleyball and trying to capture some of their bends, dives, reaches. Of course I can't do more than grab a few lines representing pose or movement, but some them are lithe and expressive.

I think what I'm after are not so much dramas, or designs, or symbols, as objects or scenes making a kind of visual music with line, colors, shapes expressing the harmonic relationships within. Hmmm. The musical analogy is intriguing. Perhaps, at this stage, I'm trying to find things upon which I'd like to meditate on with my hands and eye, things which are uniquely themselves but resonant.

Why? It's unclear, perhaps related to this writing project which has surprised me about myself and the world. Perhaps hand and eye are also agents of reflecting, and risking. Well, of the risks, I already know how to laugh at myself.