Watercolor Sketch of Free Library in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

When I was attending Moore College of Art and Design in Philadelphia, we would occasionally venture out of the classroom to work on location, en plein air (French for "in full air", this is a typical art term used to mean working outside). Because the school is located on Logan Circle in downtown Philadelphia, there was no shortage of cool subjects to draw or paint, from the stunning Swan Fountain on Logan Circle to the Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul and other such historical buildings as The Franklin Institute, The Academy of Natural Sciences, and the country's first library, The Free Library. The Free Library consists of two buildings, so I cheekily referred to them as Volume I and Volume II (and I am probably one of only a few hundred thousand people who thought that up).

One day our class went outside to do some watercolor sketches. Yes, watercolor is paint, but if you aren't doing what you consider a "finished" painting, you can refer to it as a sketch. Although it's true that sketches are frequently done in pencil or charcoal, a "sketch" is simply a quick rendering, sometimes as a preliminary to a more developed piece, and is not related to any specific medium. This can also be referred to as a "study", if plans are to use it as reference for a finished work. The choice of subject was ours, and the way the afternoon sunlight played across the westernmost building, or Volume I, if you will, of the Free Library caught my eye. A tree in full blossom in the foreground provided a nice framing device to enhance the composition (read about framing devices here).

I made a sketch in colored pencil on my small (9" x 12") Arches watercolor block (watercolor blocks are basically a pad of watercolor paper that is sealed almost all the way around, leaving only a small area into which you slide an X-acto knife to carefully cut around the edge to release the sheet once it is dry. This is to spare having to stretch the paper--it stays taut while you paint. Quite a blessing for us lazy folks!) and then went to work with my watercolors (half-pans by Schminke, a very good German brand) until it was sufficiently developed. I used white gouache to lay the white blossoms into the foreground.

Since this was freehand, the railings and columns aren't perfectly straight. I would definitely use a ruler to get that right if I were to develop this into a finished piece. There are some things I would re-think (the tree and blossoms in the foreground are well-placed, but rendered clumsily), and some others that came out just right (I was delighted with how well the quality of the light came out). Our professor always wanted us to make our preliminary sketches with red pencil, but I would definitely do that differently, as it does not disappear after paint is added and tends to look incongruous. These days, I always make an underdrawing with a related color--usually the primary color in the painting, so that would be green, brown, or blue, usually. I might use red for an Arizona desert landscape!

Anyway, just wanted to share some work with you in hopes to educate and inspire. Thanks for visiting!

Image is original art by the author.

Here's another story about working on location in Logan Circle:
http://allsortsartbyali.blogspot.com/2014/12/philadelphia-is-as-you-know-or-may-at.html

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The Raft of the Medusa by Théodore Géricault

The Raft of the Medusa, created in 1818-19 and exhibited in the Paris Salon in 1819, is a huge painting in the Romantic style by Géricault, whose work I have mentioned before, here http://allsortsartbyali.blogspot.com/2014/12/portrait-of-mad-woman-by-theodore.html


This painting, which is a self-promotional piece Géricault created to advertise his skills as a painter of large-scale commissions, is based on an actual event in French naval history. The frigate Medusa ran aground on the coast of Mauritania, in Africa, in July of 1816. A few days later, more than a hundred people set off on a large raft, but by the time they were rescued 13 days later, only 15 remained alive, weakened by starvation and dehydration. It was a tremendous scandal at the time, mainly due to the incompetence of the captain, but probably in no small measure owing also to the sad fact that those who survived had to practice cannibalism.

Géricault was fascinated by the story and felt that it would make a good subject for a large, dynamic work. The Romantic style of painting was beginning to take hold in France, depicting emotional, dramatic subjects in contrast to the classical themes that had been the prevailing style. The terrible human tragedy of the Medusa fit right in, especially as portrayed by Géricault.

The painting depicts the raft, sloshing in the waves, covered with a mass of bodies—some clearly dead; some bent over and grieving the dead or trying to comfort the dying; one crouches with his hands to his head, lost in stress and despair. But there is a glimmer of hope, here: A ship can just barely be seen on the horizon, and those who have the strength have climbed up onto the highest point of the raft and are waving cloth around to catch the eyes of possible rescuers. Maybe Géricault was depicting the point of the actual rescue, as there are 13 people on the raft who are clearly still alive, and certainly a couple more who could be (some are clearly dead, and one body to the lower right of the painting seems to have the head submerged.

Géricault reportedly visited hospitals and morgues to observe the appearance of dead and dying bodies for the sake of getting skin tone and other details correct, although the individuals depicted in the painting seem fairly well-muscled to be suffering from starvation. Perhaps 13 days doesn't make much difference, but of course Géricault was also working from non-starved models, including his young assistant, the model for several figures on the raft, including the dead youth stretched out over the lap of the older man. At any rate, the musculature adds to the dramatic, tense poses that depict desperation, elation, torture, and agony.


The colors in this painting add to the emotional impact. This is not a sunny day on a blue-green ocean; the colors are dark and murky, with a foreboding sky and deep, dark shadows that contrast with the pale flesh of the corpses strewn across the foreground. Géricault is masterful at conveying movement, as well: the wind lashes the sail and billows the cloths of the signaling survivors. Sun slants down from the left side of the painting and illuminates a diagonal swath through the middle of the scene, picking up the slumping shoulders of a man hunched dejectedly over the body of a dead youth, then along the backs and outstretched arms of the people who are desperately trying to signal the boat. The use of this illumination cleverly leads the viewer's eye to the tiny boat by creating a path through the painting that culminates in the waving white cloth above it.


This painting is full of diagonals, which create the most dynamic compositional framework. The lighted path of the sun shining along the bodies goes from the lower left to the upper right; the mast with the sail tilts to the upper left of the canvas, surrounded by various other diagonal ropes, and the dead body in the lower right is also on a diagonal. The composition as a whole is a kind of X, with the southwest-to northeast arm emphasized more in order to guide the viewer's gaze along that path. There are no true verticals in the picture, and the expected horizontal—the horizon—is broken up by the swells of the ocean. Overall, this is another example of Géricault's mastery of composition and of creating a dynamic and powerful narrative with painting. It is hard to imagine that he was only 27 years old when he finished it, and sad to know that he lived only a few years more, dying in 1824. One can only imagine all the further masterpieces he might have created!


For more analysis of paintings, please check out the following: 

http://allsortsartbyali.blogspot.com/2014/11/van-goghs-stillleben-mit-gelbem.html

http://allsortsartbyali.blogspot.com/2014/12/vincent-van-goghs-irises-shows-how-to.html 

http://allsortsartbyali.blogspot.com/2014/12/the-unusual-compositions-of-edgar-degas.html

Image: The Raft of the Medusa, 1819, Musée du Louvre- Click image to view larger


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I Don't Know Why It's a Challenge

Growing up, it was clear that I had some artistic talent. I came by it honestly, as my mom was an artist. Fortunately, she was also a teacher, and so she knew how to nurture creativity in me, and unlike some parents (including my dad, sad to say) who may have viewed art as a somewhat worthless pursuit, she encouraged me to pursue my drive and ability for drawing and sketching right up through sending me to art school for college. There was never any question of who I was and what I was going to be.

However, although I had had a full head of steam regarding the production of art as a kid, filling up the margins of my school paper and literally stacks of notebooks with my drawings, the older I got, and the better I got, I mysteriously stopped being nearly as productive. In college, I produced work as assigned, but I was a bit slack about working on it out of the classroom, unless a grade deadline loomed. I did, at least, contribute a decent amount to my sketchbook.

But by the time I graduated, I didn't choose to enter the art field, despite my having done quite well at my internship and my school's having a great placement program. I felt that having the pressure to create every day--for some soulless ad agency, no doubt--would take all the joy out of it. I might have been right, but as I entered a succession of service-industry jobs, I didn't spend much of my spare time indulging in that joy.

I find myself filling my spare time with non-productive (and even counter-productive) things like watching television or playing video games. I make time to hang out with friends or check my social media accounts, and I do write (and I also don't do that as often as I'd like or feel I should, although the very high number of blogs out there that had a flurry of posts at the beginning and then went completely dark would indicate I'm certainly not alone). But why don't I make time to create art? I managed to do three whole drawings for Inktober's 31 days, even though, as a kid, I would empty ball point pens with regularity.

When I see artists at work, I watch with fascination, just as people watch with fascination to see me at work (with this in mind, I have sometimes taken a sketch pad to a public space just to entertain folks and keep myself motivated, but I don't do that often enough). I feel inspired by them, and awfully jealous that they seem to have that drive that I have found lacking in myself. Just to get some sort of "art" going, I will sometimes fill in designs in those popular coloring books for adults. It's fun, but I always feel a little ashamed, thinking I should be producing those designs, not just filling them in. I have the ability, after all.

I do know this--once I get started, I can go for a good bit, just like I've done in writing this article. But what do I need to get me started? And why do I need it?



Image of something cool that I colored in but didn't draw, so kinda yay.

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