Lendy and I have been trading drawing images lately. She sent me these by Ginny Grayson. Lendy and I often share artworks with each other, some of them end up in V. Notes. We’ve been sharing drawings especially because we both love them so much, and they are underrepresented in galleries and museums. People often want to learn drawing so they can move on to other mediums, like painting. But why? How can an entire medium of loveliness be seen as being inferior to another, viewed as a stepping stone, when clearly they are beautiful and conceptually rich on their own.
Perhaps it is the money. Drawings on paper need to be framed and protected, and often the frame ends up costing more than the artwork itself. Paper and graphite earns 1/10th of what paint and canvas earn (I am making this number up but I am publishing this on the Internet so it must be true), and work on paper doesn’t last 300 years like some paintings do, leaving drawings unprofitable for investors and unaffordable for both the artist and the gallery. What a pity.
And yet drawings are wonderful to make, and lovely to look at. So much is learned and experienced through drawing. I have deep reverence for the sound of charcoal on paper in an otherwise quiet room. The soft brush of charcoal on paper is the sound of focus and curiosity. The process of drawing is the process of seeing, and that is not unlike the experience of falling in love.
On the artist’s website, Ginny Grayson says “(…) my preference has always been for the works that look more like a smudge / pile of dust, then the form slowly becomes recognisable. It is the process of working with the medium, mistakes and what evolves that I find most rewarding.”
See more on her website.
There’s a Tuesday evening drawing class starting October 8th. Who’s tempted? Click here to learn more.
The surrealist movement was, in part, a reaction to fascism. As a student I assumed some of the surrealist art was motivated by political protest, a refusal to make sense or be pretty. Looking around today at a world I thought I understood, but now seems misshapen and horrifying, I think I understand why the …
Andre Breton – Writer André Breton (French: [ɑ̃dʁe bʁətɔ̃]; 19 February 1896 – 28 September 1966) was a French writer, poet, and anti-fascist. He is known best as the founder of Surrealism. His writings include the first Surrealist Manifesto (Manifeste du surréalisme) of 1924, in which he defined surrealism as “pure psychic automatism”. [divider line_type=”Full …
SAL Challenge Pics More and more and more creative challenges are getting posted online! You can find them by using the hashtags #salchallenge @seattleartistleague. I posted some of my SAL Challenge favorites for week one, and my favorites for week two. Below are my favorite discoveries for week three. The word prompts are erinaceous, agastopia, floccinaucinihilipilification, …
[image_with_animation image_url=”9524″ alignment=”” animation=”None” box_shadow=”none” max_width=”100%”] This is the sixth and last part of a multi day series, sharing work by my beginning figure drawing classes. Many of these students have never taken a drawing class before, nearly all of them are new to figure drawing. Rather than learning one style, we study a different …
Ginny Grayson’s drawings
Lendy and I have been trading drawing images lately. She sent me these by Ginny Grayson. Lendy and I often share artworks with each other, some of them end up in V. Notes. We’ve been sharing drawings especially because we both love them so much, and they are underrepresented in galleries and museums. People often want to learn drawing so they can move on to other mediums, like painting. But why? How can an entire medium of loveliness be seen as being inferior to another, viewed as a stepping stone, when clearly they are beautiful and conceptually rich on their own.
Perhaps it is the money. Drawings on paper need to be framed and protected, and often the frame ends up costing more than the artwork itself. Paper and graphite earns 1/10th of what paint and canvas earn (I am making this number up but I am publishing this on the Internet so it must be true), and work on paper doesn’t last 300 years like some paintings do, leaving drawings unprofitable for investors and unaffordable for both the artist and the gallery. What a pity.
And yet drawings are wonderful to make, and lovely to look at. So much is learned and experienced through drawing. I have deep reverence for the sound of charcoal on paper in an otherwise quiet room. The soft brush of charcoal on paper is the sound of focus and curiosity. The process of drawing is the process of seeing, and that is not unlike the experience of falling in love.
On the artist’s website, Ginny Grayson says “(…) my preference has always been for the works that look more like a smudge / pile of dust, then the form slowly becomes recognisable. It is the process of working with the medium, mistakes and what evolves that I find most rewarding.”
See more on her website.
There’s a Tuesday evening drawing class starting October 8th. Who’s tempted? Click here to learn more.
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The surrealist movement was, in part, a reaction to fascism. As a student I assumed some of the surrealist art was motivated by political protest, a refusal to make sense or be pretty. Looking around today at a world I thought I understood, but now seems misshapen and horrifying, I think I understand why the …
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Andre Breton – Writer André Breton (French: [ɑ̃dʁe bʁətɔ̃]; 19 February 1896 – 28 September 1966) was a French writer, poet, and anti-fascist. He is known best as the founder of Surrealism. His writings include the first Surrealist Manifesto (Manifeste du surréalisme) of 1924, in which he defined surrealism as “pure psychic automatism”. [divider line_type=”Full …
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