#inktober52, #inktober, "Eyes"

I've always been a fan of N. C. Wyeth.  I love his lusty, heroic illustrations and the books that went with them.  I wasn't a fan of his son, Andrew.  He seemed spoiled and sulky to me, self-important.  That's the problem with being alive at the same time as another artist.  I can judge them, not just their work.  When he died and his Helga paintings were discovered, I assumed he had an affair with her and was even more judgmental.  I didn't want to like evidence of something I consider wrong -- though as far as I know Helga never admitted to anything other than posing for him.  I watched a youtube video on Andrew and realized I do like his work, and probably would've liked him personally a lot better than his father.  Maybe I need to gain some maturity to get there?

Andrew Wyeth's Helga

What our eyes see is bent by the way our brains think.  We all make judgments despite the biblical admonition, "Judge not lest you be judged".*  Our critical minds make observations which help us get through life, but it's like eating apples.  One apple is good for us.  Too many apples give us a stomach ache.  One judgmental, critical observation may be true.  That doesn't mean all our other judgments and criticisms are true too.

The important thing is to be able to change our minds.  Changing my mind about Andrew Wyeth lets me look at his work in a new way which will change what or how I paint.  On a national level, I'm hoping people will change their minds about social distancing, wearing masks, and climate change (plus who they vote into office!).  Being able to change course is a sign of intelligence and humility.  None of us know everything.  I respect the people who learn and grow through their lives.

Something I didn't expect to discover during the Covid pandemic is that I like masks because they hide fake smiles.  A real smile crinkles a person's eyes.  An old person with a lot of smile crinkles is a good person.  I'd like to draw them.  I want to get to know them.  I want to know what they know, and how I might be still self-deluding myself or unfairly judging others.  Some day I want to be the old lady with the crinkled eyes whom a younger person wants to know because I'll have discovered the secrets to life and laughed through the journey.

The internet is full of false perfection.  We all want to look better, seem more successful, be happier than anyone else.  I see TV commercials about ointments that take away wrinkles and I don't think the people really look that much better.  Other ads promote airbrushing your skin issues away.  That isn't where true beauty is.  I think this makes people look plastic and unreal.  Nobody wants to paint someone that fake, and the best art can exaggerate the flaws we see in ourselves because that's the stuff that shows our character and makes us interesting.  People who love us will love us with our flaws anyway.

Observe, have an open mind, be willing to change course.  You'll do better at whatever you do and will be a much more beautiful person to be around too.

I did a post about drawing eyes.  You can see it here.  I also did a post about painting an eyeball.  I still think about painting a mess of these and putting them on the mantle.

*Matthew 7:1, and a sign that even the unwashed can quote scripture :)

"Imaginary Friend 2"

I was a painfully shy child.  I was okay with people I knew, but I didn't know how to talk to anyone else.  Dad noticed and took me to a Lake Erie breakwall.

"Ask that man what he's using for bait", he said as he nudged me towards an old man.  I'm sure my face showed panic, so Dad asked the old man himself.  They had a chatty, friendly little conversation before Dad took me to the next old guy.  "Go on", he said.  I nervously asked the man what he was using for bait.  The guy stuck his hand in his coffee can and showed squiggly things that he said were good for perch.  Next guy used minnows.  Next guy used a lure.  I learned what every old man on the lake used for bait.  I learned a lot about fish and fishing.  I wanted to talk to old guys every weekend after that.  I still like old guys.

Learning how to talk with other people is feeling like a lost art.  Everyone is glued to their phones and checking out how many likes they've gotten.  They watch TV shows where even the camera people seem afraid to make eye contact with someone they're filming, shooting them from the side or back while that person talks to an invisible subject off screen.

We need eye contact.  We need real conversations.  We need real human interaction.  We need to communicate that in our work, no matter what kind of work we do.  I think this is obvious for artists, but think about engineers designing products that regular people can't understand even with the engineers' incomprehensible manuals.  The better we understand others, the better we'll be at everything.  We learn to understand others by actually talking with them.

I've learned about Swedish death cleaning from a friend of mine.  That's right up there with Marie Kondo's get rid of everything that doesn't bring you joy.  I know I've mentioned I think this is all crazy, but to each their own.  If pitching your belongings makes you happy, then I'm happy for you.  I'm even happier when I get gifted stuff you don't want.  That's how I ended up with a big bag of wooden balls.

To show my appreciation for craft gifts, I painted one of the balls for my friend.  I made it a blue eyeball since she and her kids are blue-eyed.  She loves it.  She even loves the bloody underside of it (which I somehow neglected to photograph).  Glad to share some giggles over craft balls.  She thanked me and gave me a big bag of corks.  I'm still not sure what to do with those.  Any ideas?

I didn't get a new word last Friday so I decided to wait and see how long it would take for a new word to show up.  Still waiting 2 Saturdays later.  I hate that.  Do what you say you're going to do, or at the very least, tell us why you aren't doing it.  Communicate!  Didn't your father teach you how to talk to fishermen?!!

(If I need to comply with the ancient IF word at all, this is where I say you can practice talking with your imaginary friend.  Or maybe, talk to the hand?)

"Lesson"

I doodle face parts. It’s a compulsion. Lots of happy eyes, angry eyes, scared eyes, surprised eyes have filled my bills, napkins, and notebooks, and I’m feeling a compulsive need to spread my compulsion. Let’s all really look at each other and maintain eye contact. Who looks away first? It’s a fun experiment, but looking at each other results in eyes that are drawn only from the front, with a nice round pupil looking back at us. Irises aren’t as round when a person looks away.

Eyeballs are called “balls” for a reason. They’re as round as a soccer ball. We just don’t see the whole ball because they’re sunk into our heads and partially covered with eyelids. Rules of perspective apply to everything, even eyeballs. As you can see in the ¾ view, the part of the iris which is closest to the viewer is wider than the part further away.

Rules of lighting apply to everything too. If you draw a white ball, it’s lighter close to the light source, and gets darker as it curves away from the light. Since an eyeball is a white ball, the same rules apply, even after you put the pupil and iris on it. When you draw eyelids, remember that they follow the curve of the eyeball too. They also cast a shadow on the eyeball. Since light comes from the top in most situations, that means the eye is usually darkest under the upper eyelid, but since the eyeball is curving under and away from the light, there will also be a lighter shadow near the bottom eyelid too.

Everyone knows that eyelashes are attached to the eye lids, but people often have a disconnect between what we know and how we think about things. Look in the mirror. Notice how far away your lower lashes actually are from your eyes. Notice that eyelashes can cause shadows too.

Paint/draw highlights last. Eyes are wet and glossy, and we can get distracted by the shine and forget all the basic rules above. If you get the structure of the eye right in the first place, the highlight(s) are just the extra detail that makes the eye come alive.

Some people view absolute realism as the holy grail in art, but these observations can apply to whatever style you want to work in. A darker line on the top of a cartoon eye suggests the longer lashes and the shadow of the eye lid. It works for everybody, even animals, in every style… except for my photographic model for this post.

Did you like my "lesson"? I'm never quite sure if people want this kind of post. If you do, I can do more of them. If not, I can go back to my usual ramblings. Or some combination of both.

M. C. Escher Exhibit at Akron Art Museum

As I said in the previous post, I went to the Escher exhibit last weekend. It was long-planned, plans thwarted, and finally, finally, I got to see it. Gotta say it was a bit anticlimactic. Most of the pieces were prints from wood cuts and lithographs, so there wasn't much difference in seeing them in person vs. seeing them printed in a book. Yes, they were somewhat crisper, but it wasn't like the first time I saw Van Gogh's paintings in person. Studying his work in art history class and out of books, I never understood why people liked Van Gogh so much until I saw his work up close and personal. The texture and color of his paint is vibrant and exciting. Escher's work is logical and disciplined. It kind of felt like looking at blueprints for a really cool project. In other words, the ideas are what excite me about Escher more than his techniques.

There were some original drawings in the exhibit. I wish there were more of them. The drawings were something that could've been pulled out of his sketchbook, but they gave me more of a sense of his thinking than the finished prints. There was also a foamcore model of one of his drawings with a peephole a few feet away to look through. If you just looked at the model, you could easily see how it just doesn't make sense. Columns that hold up nothing suddenly snap into position when viewed through the peephole.

I'm glad I finally got to see this exhibit. If you live anywhere within driving distance, I'd recommend it. It will be in Akron through the end of May.