Art

Hello Sketchbook, My Old Friend*

March 03, 2014


*with apologies to Simon and Garfunkel

I’m signed up to take another one of Laure Ferlita’s classes and looking forward to breaking in a new sketchbook! I just completed filling the pages of a sketchbook for the first time—though, truthfully, a few of the pages aren’t done. I can’t decide whether to go back and finish them, or just leave them as is. Whatever I decide, I’m not waiting to start a new sketchbook. I’ve got this one, and I’m playing with a color chart to get to know the paper. I think I’ll use photos from our New England anniversary trip for the class.

Everyday adventure, here I come.

Have you had any adventures lately?

Art

Artful Living: Applying the Five Es

June 29, 2012


Caryatid Porch of the Erechtheion, Athens

I recently completed Laure Ferlita’s online art class, An Imaginary Trip to Greece, an experience that qualifies as both a simple pleasure and an everyday adventure. One of the main focuses of her classes is learning how to quickly capture a scene on location where conditions can change quickly, you can be interrupted, etc. One tool Laure stresses in class is the “five Es”—concepts that help us figure out what we want to sketch and how we can make each sketch uniquely our own. The Five Es are: Evaluate, Eliminate, Edit, Exaggerate, and Embellish. Always on the lookout for principles that could be useful in living a happier, more artful life, it occurs to me that the five Es could be quite usefull:

Evaluate. Just as an artist evaluates his or her subject to find its most pleasing aspect or determine what is sketchable in the time available, you can evaluate your life to see how it's running. What feels good and bad, how you’re measuring up to your standards, how you’re progressing toward your goals. Taking stock of the who, what, when, where and why of life. In stopping to evaluate, you bring awareness to your life instead of drifting (or charging) around mindlessly.

Eliminate. On location, once you’ve chosen your subject, you want to eliminate anything that doesn’t significantly add to the sketch. You simply won’t have time to get every detail down on paper, so choose your details wisely. In the same way, life is short! After you evaluate it, you might decide you have some things to get rid of. Maybe literally, like that closet of items you want to donate to charity or a stack of old magazines and catalogs you’ll never get around to reading. Maybe it’s a chore or other commitment that has outlived its usefulness. It might even be a person who drags you down every time you’re together. What can you get rid of to make your life better?

Edit. In sketching and life, once you’ve decided what you want to focus on and what you want to eliminate, what’s left? Maybe you don’t want to eliminate something all together, but you can pare it down or simplify it.

Exaggerate. In class, Laure advises students to “use your creative license to exaggerate the elements to make it a great piece of art.” In sketching, that might mean darkening the values, or adjusting the direction of the light hitting your subject to make a more interesting composition. To translate this into life, choose to focus on, encourage and support the positive.

Embelish. The fun part! In art, this is where you add your own style to your sketch. In life, this is where you find ways to make it more beautiful—buy the fresh flowers, eat the chocolate, go see that movie, play, concert or sporting event that interests you. Life should be more than a list of chores and responsibilities.

Just as Laure’s five Es make sketching on location easier and more fun by giving me a framework to help me choose a subject and execute a sketch, using the five Es as a framework for living helps me feel like an artist in my own life. (And thank you to Laure for introducing me to these principles in art and in life!)

Do you have any principles that help you lead a happier, more artful life?

Armchair travel

Armchair Travel: Take Off Without Taking Off

May 21, 2012


Palace of Fine Arts, San Francisco

I don’t know how many of you like to travel, but I love it. (You may have guessed that from some of my posts.) I don’t do as much of it as I’d like to, and until the day comes when I can take off on a whim for parts unknown, I’ll make do with armchair travel—which, come to think of it, would be good for those who do not want to travel, but would like to broaden their knowledge of the world in general.

Of course, reading books and watching movies set in different cities and countries is one of the best ways to get a taste of a location. My favorite getaway movies include Shirley Valentine, My Life in Ruins and Under the Tuscan Sun.  For books, I often return to old favorites The Enchanted April (also an excellent movie) or one of Mary Stewart’s older novels, set in Greece: This Rough Magic, The Moon-Spinners or My Brother Michael, for example.

Now, however, there are even more ways to get your travel fix without leaving your comfortable home. The internet has brought us closer together in a number of ways—there are websites devoted to cities, counties and nations with photos that can transport you there with the click of a mouse.

If you’re feeling really ambitious, you could learn a language. Rosetta Stone, Pimsleur and Tell Me More are three well-respected, fee-based options. You could also check out free podcasts on iTunes and elsewhere, or check out websites such as learnalanguage.com.

My current method of enjoying armchair travel is Laure Ferlita’s Imaginary Trip to Greece (see Imaginarytrips.com for a list of all Laure’s terrific classes). Not only am I improving my sketching skills, I’m also learning more about Greece with every lesson.

Erechtheion Porch of the Maidens
Whether I’m looking at someone else’s pictures or creating my own, armchair travel keeps me (somewhat) satisfied in between actual trips. How do you satisfy your yen for travel?

Everyday adventures

Art Therapy

March 12, 2010

This week I completed one of Laure Ferlita’s Imaginary Trips—this one to the beach. Imaginary Trips are online video watercolor sketch classes, with such destinations as Paris and England, as well as the beach class, and one called “Autumn.” You can read more about them here.

I took this class for fun, but also so I could learn skills I’d need to do something I’ve wanted to do for a long time: keep an illustrated journal. I’ve kept a written journal for years, and I take lots of pictures, too, especially when we travel. Now I want to learn how to draw what I see, either here in my neighborhood or while we’re on a trip. I think I really begin to see a thing when I attempt to draw or paint it. To sketch something, I have to slow down and pause in the hectic pace of my daily life. (Learning to draw using pencil, pen and ink and my waterbrushes is also on my Six-Year Calendar of Happiness.)

The class was great, and my classmates were even better. What I learned from it (and them) went beyond adding pigment to paper or learning to sketch quickly and confidently. I learned not to give up on an assignment even when I felt it was turning out poorly. I learned to make adjustments to a sketch to make it more personal, instead of just copying the instructor. I learned not to panic when I made a mistake—most mistakes are fixable, even in watercolor. I learned that art is therapeutic, even if you have an emotional meltdown in the middle of a picture. And I learned that there’s always something you can like in a sketch, even when it doesn’t turn out like you wanted it to. Here are three of my assignments:



Is there something new you’d like to try? What are you waiting for? Do you want to learn to knit? Play a new sport? Explore a new place? I urge you to do it—open up to something you haven’t tried before, and see where it takes you. And come back here and share your experiences with me!