Monday, April 6, 2009

Drawing with Edna

Untitled Drawing, personage, 29″ x 23″ (74cm  x 58cm), pastel and charcoal pencil on Strathmore 2 ply Bristol

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (74cm  x 58cm), pastel and charcoal pencil on Strathmore 2 ply Bristol

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (74cm  x 58cm), pastel and charcoal pencil on Strathmore 2 ply Bristol

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (74cm  x 58cm), pastel and charcoal pencil on Strathmore 2 ply Bristol

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (74cm  x 58cm), pastel and charcoal pencil on Strathmore 2 ply Bristol

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (74cm  x 58cm), pastel and charcoal pencil on Strathmore 2 ply Bristol

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (74cm  x 58cm), pastel and charcoal pencil on Strathmore 2 ply Bristol

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (74cm  x 58cm), pastel and charcoal pencil on Strathmore 2 ply Bristol

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (74cm  x 58cm), pastel and charcoal pencil on Strathmore 2 ply Bristol

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (74cm  x 58cm), pastel and charcoal pencil on Strathmore 2 ply Bristol

Edna and I got together at her studio last Thursday, April 2.  We only got together to draw once in March.  From the March session and the one before in February, we had six drawings.  We did four last Thursday.  The ten drawings are above. The April 2 drawings are the last four.  For several months we have put off signing some works until the following session.  When we’re done with a drawing we’re not always sure about it.  The image is “strange” or “unfamiliar.”  The following session we look at the drawing again.  Occasionally we make a very minor adjustment or two like lengthening a line or erasing into an area.   We wonder what made us hesitate to sign the drawing.  The drawings, we think, are coming from a deeper (?) place, whatever that means.  For my part, after the first mark is on the paper, I don’t “think” anymore.  I just react to what’s already there.  I put a mark where I understand the other marks on the paper tell me to put a mark.

Monday, tomorrow, Cathy and I drive down to Las Cruces to pick up the flower drawings from the Las Cruces Museum.  We are taking plenty to read and the book on tape we didn’t finish listening to when we took the work down a couple of months ago.  Ugh.

Posted by Chuck at 04:55:31 | Permalink | No Comments »

Monday, February 2, 2009

Drawing with Edna

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (74cm x 58cm), charcoal pencil & pastel on Strathmore 2 ply rag Bristol

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (74cm x 58cm), charcoal pencil & pastel on Strathmore 2 ply rag Bristol

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (74cm x 58cm), charcoal pencil & pastel on Strathmore 2 ply rag Bristol

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (74cm x 58cm), charcoal pencil & pastel on Strathmore 2 ply rag Bristol

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (74cm x 58cm), charcoal pencil & pastel on Strathmore 2 ply rag Bristol

The first two drawings above are from the January 15th drawing session.  The next three drawings are from January 29th.  These three drawings are a variation on a theme from the morning.

On January 27th Edna and I spent the day putting the drawings and frames together for the exhibit at Las Cruces Museum.

Posted by Chuck at 17:18:23 | Permalink | No Comments »

Monday, October 13, 2008

Drawing with Edna

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (74cm x 58cm), charcoal pencil and pastel on Strathmore 2 ply rag Bristol

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (74cm x 58cm), charcoal pencil and pastel on Strathmore 2 ply rag Bristol

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (74cm x 58cm), charcoal pencil and pastel on Strathmore 2 ply rag Bristol

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (74cm x 58cm), charcoal pencil and pastel on Strathmore 2 ply rag Bristol

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (74cm x 58cm), charcoal pencil and pastel on Strathmore 2 ply rag Bristol

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (74cm x 58cm), charcoal pencil and pastel on Strathmore 2 ply rag Bristol

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (74cm x 58cm), charcoal pencil and pastel on Strathmore 2 ply rag Bristol

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (74cm x 58cm), charcoal pencil and pastel on Strathmore 2 ply rag Bristol

Edna and I got together twice over the past two weeks, October 2 and 9, and made the drawings above.  We’ve decided to have an exhibit of some of the colored drawing at my house November 9 from 1PM to 4PM.  We will also show eight to twelve silver drawings at Johnsons of Madrid November and December.  Dates and times to come.

Posted by Chuck at 05:11:19 | Permalink | Comments (1) »

Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Drawing with Edna

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (74cm x 58cm), charcoal pencil and pastel on Stathmore 2 ply rag Bristol

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (74cm x 58cm), charcoal pencil and pastel on Stathmore 2 ply rag Bristol

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (74cm x 58cm), charcoal pencil and pastel on Stathmore 2 ply rag Bristol

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (74cm x 58cm), charcoal pencil and pastel on Stathmore 2 ply rag Bristol

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (74cm x 58cm), charcoal pencil and pastel on Stathmore 2 ply rag Bristol

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (74cm x 58cm), charcoal pencil and pastel on Stathmore 2 ply rag Bristol

Last Tuesday, August 5th, was a very productive day of drawing for Edna and me.  We made five drawings in the afternoon and finished one left from the previous session.  The last drawing here is from the previous session.  The first two were the last ones we did in the August 5th session.
Posted by Chuck at 05:05:38 | Permalink | Comments (1) »

Monday, August 4, 2008

Drawing with Edna

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (74cm x 58cm), charcoal pencil and pastel on Strathmore 2 ply rag Bristol

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (74cm x 58cm), charcoal pencil and pastel on Strathmore 2 ply rag Bristol

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (74cm x 58cm), charcoal pencil and pastel on Strathmore 2 ply rag Bristol

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (74cm x 58cm), charcoal pencil and pastel on Strathmore 2 ply rag Bristol

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (74cm x 58cm), charcoal pencil and pastel on Strathmore 2 ply rag Bristol

Detail of Previous Untitled Drawing

These drawings are from our last two sessions, July 24 and 31.  We are continuing with the same materials, charcoal pencil and Rembrandt pastels.
Posted by Chuck at 05:22:50 | Permalink | Comments (1) »

Saturday, July 19, 2008

Drawing with Edna

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (74cm x 58cm), charcoal pencil & pastel on Strathmore 2 ply rag Bristol

Detail of the Preceeding Drawing

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (74cm x 58cm), charcoal pencil & pastel on Strathmore 2 ply rag Bristol

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (74cm x 58cm), charcoal pencil & pastel on Strathmore 2 ply rag Bristol

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (74cm x 58cm), charcoal pencil & pastel on Strathmore 2 ply rag Bristol

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (74cm x 58cm), charcoal pencil & pastel on Strathmore 2 ply rag Bristol

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (74cm x 58cm), charcoal pencil & pastel on Strathmore 2 ply rag Bristol

Sketch for the Preceeding Drawing, 24″ x 18″ (61cm x 46cm), charcoal pencil and pastel on paper

Edna and I have done six drawings over the last two sessions, July 10 and July 17.  I’ve started to include at least one detail of a drawing.  The digital images don’t justice to the quality of the lines and subtlety of the erasures.  When we work in the morning, we’re not just warming up, but seeing what kind of imagery surfaces.  Usually we carry some of those ideas into the afternoon.  Sometimes we enlarge on the ideas in a morning drawings.  Sometimes we a take a whole drawing and redo it.  The last drawing above is one such morning drawing, which we reworked in the afternoon.  We saw two problems with the morning drawing.  The first was the round shape in the center.  The second was the weak connection between the drawing’s left and right sides.  We eliminated the center round shape and added a few more round shapes to get a relationship between the left and right sides.  The line toward the center with acute angle creates an incomplete vertically oriented oblong shape to its left improving the relationship between the drawing’s left and right sides.
Posted by Chuck at 06:08:11 | Permalink | Comments (2)

Saturday, July 5, 2008

Drawing with Edna

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (74cm x 59cm), pastel on Strathmore 2 ply rag Bristol

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (74cm x 59cm), pastel on Strathmore 2 ply rag Bristol

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (74cm x 59cm), pastel on Strathmore 2 ply rag Bristol

Detail, Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (74cm x 59cm), pastel on Strathmore 2 ply rag Bristol

Edna and I got together yesterday, July 3, for another day of joint drawing. We continued with the addition of color.

Posted by Chuck at 05:00:23 | Permalink | No Comments »

Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Drawing with Edna

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (74cm x 58cm), black pastel and charcoal pencil on 2 ply rag Bristol

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (74cm x 58cm), black pastel and charcoal pencil on 2 ply rag Bristol

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (74cm x 58cm), black pastel and charcoal pencil on 2 ply rag Bristol

On May 8th, Edna and I took a break from painting and did three more drawings. Many laughs. The top drawing looks a bit like a bowler, the middle is another flower and the bottom drawing is either a deep sea microcosm or partying organelles in a cell.
Posted by Chuck at 17:38:33 | Permalink | Comments (1) »

Sunday, May 18, 2008

Painting with Edna

This is a continuation of the painting we worked on a couple of weeks ago. [entry on 5-1-2008]

Painting without Progress, 59″ x 54″ (150cm x 137cm), acrylic on polyester canvas

What we decided to do this session was bring into focus the seven areas that seemed to work independently. They were the areas we had taped off at the end of the last session, and had intended to cut out and stretch separately. Simply painting a frame around each area didn’t work. We spent the day working on the idea of framing the areas within the painting. We worked in each of the seven areas as well in the space around them. (Yes, those are push pins into the painting.) This is where things stand. Edna took the painting to her studio so it could baffle her for a week.

While we painted, we had to remind ourselves that we had arrived at this point by abandoning the initial large painting and simply working on several small paintings to be cut out later.  Now we felt like not cutting out the smaller images from the larger image.  Personally, I feel I’m in an unfamiliar land without a guide, map or compass.  Edna is more comfortable. 

I took a photo of the painting and put it through some photo editing processes to see what they may suggest.  Here they are.

2 Channel, Six Colors

3 Channels

4 Channels

5 Channels



Increasing the Chroma

Raising the Chroma Darkening the Lower Values

Some Computer Programer’s Idea of Pointillism (more like an areaism)

Another Kind of Manipulation (which is a kind of a festival of budding cells)

Negative of the Previous Image (the same festival at 1 AM)

A “Stained Glass” Manipulation

I think these manipulations reveal another decision we made, and that was to keep the colors low chroma and, for the most part, in a narrow value range.
Posted by Chuck at 05:02:33 | Permalink | No Comments »

Monday, March 31, 2008

New Drawings with Edna

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (74cm x 58cm), charcoal pencil & black pastel on Strathmore 2 ply rag Bristol

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (74cm x 58cm), charcoal pencil & black pastel on Strathmore 2 ply rag Bristol

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (74cm x 58cm), charcoal pencil & black pastel on Strathmore 2 ply rag Bristol

Edna and I got together last Thursday for another bout of drawing.  I think it’s been a month since we last spent a day drawing.  Life and death stuff keeps getting in the way.  We’re adding these to our Flower Portfolio for our exhibit at the Los Cruces Museum a eleven months from now.  Several attempts to find other venues (museums, galleries) have not been successful.

Posted by Chuck at 05:29:44 | Permalink | Comments (2)