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.
[image_with_animation image_url=”7459″ alignment=”center” animation=”None” box_shadow=”none” max_width=”100%”] Andrea Myers Find an old catalogue, magazine, maps, or a stack of used paper. Working with an x-acto blade, or tearing by hand, remove paper to create windows to previous layers. If using a blade, slip a cutting mat or piece of matboard between the pages. Take a picture …
Take a class with SAL – anywhere! Ever wonder what the name for the cleft between your nose and mouth is called? Did you know there’s a name for where your mouth turns from lip color to skin color? Here are some slang and scientific names for a few of the bits on your phiz. …
[image_with_animation image_url=”9047″ alignment=”center” animation=”None” box_shadow=”none” max_width=”100%”] John Singer Sargent’s portrait of Eleanora Duse When looking at John Singer Sargent’s “effortless” portraits, I often wonder how long he actually spent on each. He wanted the painting to look fresh, with an economy of brush strokes, so a painting that looks like it was done in one …
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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Take a class with SAL – anywhere! Ever wonder what the name for the cleft between your nose and mouth is called? Did you know there’s a name for where your mouth turns from lip color to skin color? Here are some slang and scientific names for a few of the bits on your phiz. …
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