Friday, May 14, 2021

A to Z




When I used to ski, I liked to take a lesson in the morning to warm up and to get over my fear of heights and speed. Skiing behind the instructor, I would replicate the same maneuvers knowing that I wouldn't try them first on my own. If I focused on the instructor's moves instead of my own fears, I could slide down the sides of moguls, ski the gullies between the moguls, and manage to ski down every run at Squaw Valley except the West Face of KT22 without losing my balance, falling, and sitting terrified as I looked down at the height and the steep slope I was sitting on (I had plenty of those experiences too.)




Taking art classes gives me the same sense of confidence. At some point though, I know I need to step away from the instructor's style to establish my own way of working. I've found that true in watercolor as well as calligraphy.

I've been concentrating on those two media for the past couple of years. Though I see progress in both areas, I still get frustrated when something doesn't turn out the way I had hoped. My solution for that: try something else. This weekend I stepped away from watercolors and picked a class using colored pencils with Jane Shibata, a master calligrapher, artist, and teacher. She showed us how to use various colored pencil techniques to create hand lettering and calligraphy. Using colored pencils took me back a long way, such a long way that I began leafing through old sketchbooks looking for unfinished examples of work that I could use with colored pencils.

I found an alphabet I had designed but never took beyond the drafting stage. The alphabet was perfect for colored pencils, and I will have till next Valentine's Day to finish them.





During the class, I filled three pages with Shibata's exercises. I don't have regular colored pencils, whose binder is either wax or oil. Instead, I have a collection of watercolor pencils that I have for adding color to sketches and that have a water-based binder. I just need to add water with a waterbrush to activate the colors to make them look like watercolor paints. Shibata talked about wax bloom, which appears on colored pencil drawings because of the wax binder. She suggested using a fixative. When I was finished for the day, I decided to seal the exercises with fixative. I picked up my bottle of fixative and without testing, sprayed my papers and watched as the liquid fixative affected the watercolor pencil marks just as a waterbrush would do. Being an artist isn't for wimps.




One sheet of exercises before fixative spray,
 before the colored pencils ran.

I know it will be good practice to do the exercises all over again. I also now have a set of Blackwing colored pencils. Blackwing is a Japanese company known for its graphite pencils. The colored pencils have the same soft, creamy feel to them as their other pencils. They remind me of Kuretake Gansai Tambi's watercolor pans, which also have a rich creamy feel to them (unlike most watercolor pans).










Two letters are done, 24 to go



To find examples of Jane Shibata's work, click this Google search link:

https://www.google.com/search?rls=en&source=univ&tbm=isch&q=jane+shibata&safe=active&client=safari&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjjy_GBiMfwAhWYvJ4KHdqWDZ0Q7Al6BAgHEDU&biw=1768&bih=1286#imgrc=LlsA6oFwMAeexM 

4 comments:

  1. Such good advice to "try something else." I set aside a difficult revise of something large I'm writing, and have spent the month of May writing a new, small poem each day. Here's today's, which I thought you might appreciate:

    On the Berkeley Stair Paths

    Where will they lead us,
    these old stairs,
    furred with moss
    and overhung with ferns,
    now plunged in leafy shade,
    now washed in sun,
    buried, unearthed, by turns?
    To an hour of
    blissful wandering,
    neither bought
    nor earned.

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    Replies
    1. I can feel myself on those stairs, Teresa. Thank you for sharing your poem. Will you make a chapbook of your month of poems? I like "furred with moss" what a descriptive phrase.

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  2. Love your ski story and sketches. Brings back memories. Your alphabet will be very pretty.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. thank you! I do remember getting stuck between two moguls.
      I'm still working to finish the alphabet by next Valentine's Day!

      Delete

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