Our First Cave Hill Day

Our first Cave Hill day was fairly productive and I think there were some pretty interesting starts on many of the drawings I saw. I missed many folks today during the session although I found many cars. Sorry I couldn't find the bodies that went with the cars.

There were some challenging issues that came up during the session that need to be considered, and some of them will be further individually addressed on Monday during our next session in Cave Hill. A few folks exclaimed, "I can't draw (fill in the blank)." For example (I know that Connie won't mind me using her as that example), she said, "I can't draw water." There are two misconceptions to that statement. One, the word "can't." That one word holds more people back from their creative potential than any other word. PLEASE, erase that word from your vocabulary, it is a tremendous detriment to your growth. The other, in the case of this example, is "water." Drawing water is no more difficult than drawing a sphere. It is about looking and seeing. We all interpret what we see through the art elements: line, value, shape, texture, and color. When I look at water, I see the same visual ingredients that I see on the sphere, all the art elements. No subject is more challenging than any other subject, it's imply how well we see it and how we arrange the elements.

I was talking to Cynthia (my wife) about it this evening (she did the cigarette drawing that hangs in the drawing studio), and she told me that she could actually remember when she changed from the left-brain way of looking at "water" to the right-brain point of view that was about line, value, shape, texture, and color. It was an epiphany that changed the way she saw the world. And I suppose on some level, it is an epiphany, to switch from seeing "water" to one that is about the art elements that we manipulate on a daily basis, and getting those elements to say 'water.' It goes beyond epiphany, it becomes the basis for an aesthetic philosophy that permeates our work.

So think about changing your way of thinking about your subject, let your process 'describe' what you see instead of letting a definition hold you back. Think about "how can I achieve that" rather than "I can't."

On a final note, the Cave Hill experience should yield two finished drawings. How you focus that work is up to you, so be open to visiting your favorite places at Cave Hill during the weekend and even next Wednesday. Here are some images from today:

Once Will got settled, he began his drawing looking down through a slight valley and across the lake to where Shawn was working. He objected somewhat, as only Will can do, to the difficulty of getting his oil pastels to "cover the paper." Of course, working on colored pastel paper is so the color of the paper can be incorporated into the drawing. The blue of his paper and the fact that its texture made it difficult to cover only enhanced the overall quality of the drawing. The blue sparkles through in many of the areas thus providing a unifying feel.

Shawn was on the opposite side of the lake taking in a great deal of space which will bring him all the way to his immediate foreground. He's also using oil pastels, and after I stopped back by around 4:00, I was pretty impressed with the 'painterly' quality of the image. He had blocked in some colored shapes and was blending in lights, darks, cools and warms.

Randilynn was positioned with a point of view that intersected Shawn's and Will's, so we'll have some nice lake drawings after they spend another day on the ones they started today. Randilynn was having a little bit of struggle getting the leaves to look "right," so I told her not to think of them as leaves but as clusters of texture, working light colors over the darker colors to get the sense of form and space.

Rachel put her focus on the plant life on the hillside next to the lake, and although I didn't see it in the later stages of the day, she had a pretty good start, although she may move on in her next effort.

Louise and Rachel found a shady spot to work from. Louise was focused on the circular fountain out it the lake. Both were working fairly small scaled so I'm meeting with them for a chunk of time on Monday to work through some stuff that they'd like to address.

Connie was out in the sun (impressive) working on one of the mausoleums because she had decided not to work by the lake. She said of the drawing on Monday that had I been around I would have heard her cussing me for my requirement that water be included in the 8" x 10" drawing. She said, "I don't know how to draw water!" That'll change soon.

Allison was close by to Connie's drawing site but worked on a different mausoleum, she was very focused on her drawing in spite of the impromtu visit by Jerrye from last summer's drawing class (it was good to see you, Jerrye).

Have a productive weekend and I'll see you Monday. Be sure the check the blog or ONCOURSE for any last minute changes.