Practice sketch going “straight to color,” the last segment of the recent urban sketching course. In this version of urban sketching, the sketching comes after the watercolor washes.
This is a first attempt to depict the yellow pots on the terrace on the grounds of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, VA, 18 April 2015.
Illustration: Watercolor and ink by Black Elephant Blog author
Today was the first day of a class in “Faces in Watercolor.” Again the focus is on the shadows, the darks, and not, at first, the light. (This was in contrast to a session earlier this year which focused on “Drawing the Light.”) It is about finding those shades of difference. Much easier said than done, this process is a powerful demonstration of how much we really do not see.
The class is so full that people and easels are crammed together. Frankly, in this congestion, it’s amazing we can see anything, but it works somehow. Everyone is extremely motivated (as ever, in courses with no “credit”)–and talent shines out in all corners of the room, even though we are focused on shadows.
Demand is quite high apparently, in these digital times, for something that art, and maybe only art, can provide. In addition, the teacher has an excellent reputation, which probably is the main reason the class is so full!
Illustration: Pencil and watercolor by Black Elephant Blog author
Of what possible use is this? It probably doesn’t matter. Is art ever really “useful” in a modern sense of valuing what we can measure? What is useful is a can opener when you need it. Art is valuable for expanding our ability to think by first perceiving more sensitively. It is hard to quantify the value of this, but it probably would make a difference on a larger stage.
But here with an individual sitting in front of us on a small platform, it is surprisingly hard to get it right–even with all the eyes in the room. The tests of thinking and seeing are formidable. Again, we were told: keep your eyes on the model, not the paper! Do not let your hand leave the paper. There is something about seeing and then drawing that requires keeping too much thinking out of it. And, there were as many vastly different images of the model as there were people in the class. No two drawings were alike! Looking forward to the next session!
Illustration: Watercolor and ink by Black Elephant Blog author
With the rise of global studies and institutes, a new book has come along that features the research of diverse experts into differences between “global” and “international” studies. Framing the Global: Entry Points for Research (2014, Indiana University Press), edited by Hilary Kahn, Director of the Center for the Study of Global Change at Indiana University, includes a foreword by Saskia Sassen, a specialist on globalization and human migration issues and Robert S. Lynd Professor of Sociology at Columbia University and Centennial visiting Professor at the London School of Economics.
Each of its 14 chapters presents research that represents a different “entry point” into global studies. These entry points are different slices of the reality of global interactions, much as traditional slices, such as economics, political science, and military affairs, have characterized distinct disciplinary approaches to “international studies” (or the studies of relations between nations).
The main point of this work seems to be that traditional disciplines and analytic methodologies do not produce global studies, though specialized regional and functional knowledge are necessary ingredients. Major inherited categories of analysis can “veil or distort…our epoch…,” according to Sassen. “The challenge is to make new categories that help us theorize the current conditions,” she writes. “This book can then be read as an experiment in expanding the analytic terrain for understanding and representing what we have come to name globalization.”
Indeed, writes editor Kahn, global studies “does not have a master concept around which theory and method can take shape, like sociology has in society, or political science has in politics.” The emerging discipline of global studies “is a commitment to empirical research and search for previously unrecognized arrangements, patterns, and productive connections and disconnections,” writes Kahn. Such patterns and connections form the “entry points” for global research. Each heads up a different chapter, including “affect,” “displacement,” “forms,” “frames”, “genealogies,” “land,” “location,” “materiality,” “the particular,” “rights,” “rules, “scale,” etc.
Interestingly and perhaps overdue, this text challenges the methodological sufficiency of state-centric approaches to social sciences and analysis generally. The concept of “global” as something which lies outside the “framing” of national issues is not accurate, according to Sassen:
“Many of our major current categories [of research and analysis] have inherited their status from a time and place when they emerged out of analytic work…My concern here with particularly with some of the major categories we use in the social sciences–economy, polity, society, justice, inequality, state, globalization, immigration. They are all powerful in that they are widely used to explain the realities they represent. Yet those realities are mutants…,” according to Sassen.
The “entry points” in subsequent chapters “have emerged in the course of each contributor’s engagement with existing approaches to global studies…,” according to Kahn. These offer a “conceptual toolkit for global research in the twenty-first century” while investigating a wide range of themes, including global financial gold markets, transnational labor migration, public art in China, and the global significance of 1968. Kahn emphasizes that the contributors to the book move beyond comparative approaches to “probe the complex interplay among locales, practices, policies, and people.” “Relational comparisons” emphasize how entities are formed in relation to one another as well as vis-a-vis broader contexts. “This shifts the focus from isolated units of inquiry to the transactions and relations in which they are constituted,” according to Kahn.
In a sense, these different entry points constitute alternative ontological frames, or ways of looking at the world. The chapter on “Reframing Oceania” is particularly interesting for its reframing of the study of the Pacific, including the 28 nation-states considered to make up that region. All of the chapters reveal sensitivity to issues of scale, flow, and subnational interconnectivity. All in all, there are at least 14 different ways to re-imagine the globe in this unique book. It is not hard to imagine a whole new field of global scholarship emerging, one that references but does not depend upon traditional international relations concepts for its categories and “units” of analysis. The entry points approach of this book, as Kahn notes, “slice reality differently, opening up new modes of understanding.” Much to explore here!
Adorned with blossoms of all kinds, Washington, D.C.’s beauty is especially noticeable inside and around its many parks at this time of year. Fortunately, it’s possible to find reminders of the pioneers who had the foresight to make such beautiful parks possible. One of them is a monument to Andrew Jackson Downing. Who? It turns out he was pretty much a celebrity in the emergent landscaping and horticultural profession in the U.S. in the first half of the 19th century. He was attuned to developing an American style that borrowed from, but was not simply a copy of, European tastes at the time.
Illustration: Watercolor and ink by Black Elephant Blog author
While still a young man, Andrew Jackson Downing–a landscape architect and botanist–had a huge influence (though his design proposals for Washington were not adopted in the end–one learns upon reading more about about him) on the parks of Washington, D.C. as well as on the plans for Central Park in New York, his home state. A memorial urn in his name can be found in the gardens behind the red-brick Smithsonian Castle across the street from the U.S. Department of Energy. It was moved to this location from New York State in 1856, a few years after his accidental death before the age of 40. An inscription (from Downing’s Rural Essays) on the urn reads:
“The taste of an individual, as well as that of a nation, will be in direct proportion to the profound sensibility with which he perceives the beautiful in natural scenery. Open wide, therefore, the doors of your libraries and picture galleries all ye true republicans! Build halls where knowledge shall be freely diffused among men, and not shut up within the narrow walls of narrower institutions. Plant spacious parks in your cities, and unclose their gates as wide as the gates of morning to the whole people.”
Just as relevant today as it was in the mid-19th century!
So soon after winter has finally (we hope!) loosened its grip, it’s easy to appreciate a sunny spot, especially when there’s no need to rush off anywhere. Just the other day, I had such a chance, and stopped to examine a fountain of unknown origins, or so it said right on the plaque fixed to its side.
Illustration: Watercolor, ink and gouache by Black Elephant Blog author
This fountain may date from the time of the Civil War in the U.S., but little else apparently is known about it. Nonetheless, it clearly has a tremendous place in the present moment. During the moments I was there, it sparkled and attracted the attention of all passersby, humans and birds. All in cast iron, the sculpture is topped by a serpent-like fish held tightly by a toddler. Water spews upwards from the fish and then cascades downwards into the pool below. As the water trickles and bounces on the way down, the whole black structure glistens with diamonds of reflected light. Some of the spray glances off the backs of sharp-beaked cranes at the base of the sculpture.
Not far from some of the busiest avenues in Washington, D.C.,this fountain is tucked into an alcove with a backdrop of the high curved walls of the Hirshhorn Museum of Art and Sculpture. Nearby, the Supreme Court hears difficult cases, various agencies deal with the mounting complexities of governing, and streams of people hurry through the park to get back to their offices or the Metro.
Off to the side, here in this tranquil spot, I took some time to “capture information” about the fountain in the way some art teachers have recommended–looking for shadows, tone, and context. Although the fountain’s history and name are unknown, I found that there is so much to record that I am going to have to go back and try again. In addition, in the course of doing this, I learned about “urban sketchers” and look forward to participating in one of their workshops soon! Perhaps with practice, time, and more sunny days it will get easier to describe information visually.
This approach might be useful on a larger scale too. A recent piece in the New York Times, “Learning to See Data,” emphasized how businesses dealing with big data are turning to “conceptual artists” for help. One artist quoted in the article recommended dealing with data through “frameworks of recognition” which he described as involving “how you choose to look, rather than what you are trying to see.” He noted that: “Scientists often think of visual images like graphs as the end result of their analysis. I try to get them to think visually from the beginning.” Very interesting! So, future posts will come back to these concepts.
Illustration: Sharpie pen with black ink by Black Elephant Blog author
To continue on the theme of basic concepts in art–as I am learning about in my basic drawing class–we come now to the concept of “negative space.” This doesn’t sound too good until you learn that the “negative” in the phrase simply refers to the space around and between the subjects of an image, as also explained here in Wikipedia. For those who have made it through graduate school and perhaps even an entire career without coming across this concept, this idea is quite exciting…and positive. (However, “positive space” is something different. The world of art has its own language, like every other endeavor, with words like “tooth,” “value,” and “wash” meaning quite different things to artists.)
Negative space sometimes means drawing with space to produce a silhouette of the subject. To produce this effect, we students used a homemade viewfinder (two L-shaped strips of cardboard taped together to form a small rectangle) and chose the composition we’d like to create with negative space. Note that objects overlapping each other in real life viewing simply become part of the same silhouette, as in the image above.
What is remarkable about this exercise in seeing and thinking is that it focuses on the context in order to define the subject. Just as in Drawing the Light, sharpening our attention to what is around and affecting the subject is important. Just one slip of the pen and we’ve completely changed the look of the subject, and possibly even ruined it altogether. Context really matters! 🙂
Illustration: Watercolor, gouache, ink, pencil, and white charcoal by Black Elephant Blog author, after the 1916 watercolor “Green Dancer” by Charles Demuth at the Philadelphia Museum of Art
Seasoned artists often give their images a multidimensional appearance and sometimes even an impression of movement by using light, shadows, and contours. Every teacher I’ve had so far in this new venture has said it is important to draw what surrounds the subject at the same time as we focus on drawing the subject. In other words it is a rookie mistake to focus single-mindedly on drawing a subject without considering the context. This simple advice is stunningly important with so many applications in life, and not just to art.
How can we understand the seemingly sudden emergence of new threats, challenges, or risks without widening the “viewfinder” to see what might be the context around them? Could one “slip” or failure in the “negative space” to anticipate a requirement have consequences for subjects, or “positive space,” in real life? Alternatively, is there more positive “negative space” shaping that can be done to influence the subject? The list of relevant applications for the negative space idea seems simply endless… What would happen if we played with the concept of “negative space,” and reframed the key issues of the day through our “viewfinders?” Without context, mistaken analysis, lost opportunities, and unforeseen surprises are inevitable. Particularly for those instances in real life where the consequences of failing to see repercussions could be worse than a ruined piece of paper, learning to think and see differently about “negative space” seems valuable.
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