Basics

These past 2 months passed without me touching a brush or drawing tool, except for a weak attempt at a sketch on a hike here and there.
The first three sketches were done on different days on different hikes;

...a walk in the coutryside of Esvres where we crossed the roman bridge which was apparently crossed by Jean d'Arc in 1429 to get across the Echandon valley...
...sketching the photographer while he was executing his professional tricks...

...and lastly a lake at the Beaufoux estate with its calm waters and willows, the boats waiting patiently for summer to erupt...

I wanted to show up here with a beautiful watery painting of something watery, but helas, I am showing up instead with my process of relearning. My well intentioned painting resembles something of the French revolution on gray and busy guillotine days, so I hid it safely from the public eye.

While staring at my attempt, my professor of first year graphics, entered my somewhat desperate thoughts. He told me years ago that I couldn't draw. Our work was all put up on the board at the end of a day for critic and when he came to my "driftwood and key" still life, he was very silent. Then he turned to me and said abruptly that I can't draw and need to do 100 more drawings, on top of the already 100 drawings we all had to do. The tools were simply to be cheap white paper and any tool except the normal pencil or graphite or charcoal or brush, like ear buds, cottonwool, sticks, pins, needles, toothbrushes, etc, along with cheap black ink. We had to really dig in with the ink and get our hands dirty and draw, draw and draw. Not be fancy or pretty or dainty or finicky, but convey our subject/object on our paper by various marks, shapes, values. It was invaluable teaching, al those hours of drawing, which admittedly, I sometimes(more than sometimes!) did with heavy sighing and stubborn shoulders.

This morning I took my professor in my head along to the river. Cheap drawing paper. Cheap ink. My chair. I sought out a spot down stream with several interesting views. Gathered some sticks, stones, leaves, bundles of grass which served as my painting tools. The first attempt was still stiff and careful but by the third drawing I started loosening up and just focused on marks on the paper. The rocks in the water started losing their name and became dark shapes, the water ripples became squigly lines, the trees became thick lines and featherings, the grass became patches...

Hopefully the ice is now broken so I can provide a real painting next time!
But for now;

...the corner of the river where I painted..

...a shot on the tools and materials...

...and three of the many efforts from this morning...

The pond and the sea

The pond and the sea. As concepts, metaphors and symbols, they are really miles apart, aren't they? Take these two poems by Rainer Maria Rilke: Firstly, the pond in Fortschritt/Progress:

wieder rauscht mein tiefes Leben lauter, als ob es jetzt in breitern Ufern ginge. Immer verwandter werden mir die Dinge und alle Bilder immer angeschauter. Dem Namenlosen fühl ich mich vertrauter: Mit meinen Sinnen, wie mit Vögeln, reiche ich in die windigen Himmel aus der Eiche, und in den abgebrochnen Tag der Teiche sinkt, wie auf Fischen stehend, mein Gefühl.

And an English version is here:

The deep parts of my life pour onward, as if the river shores were opening out. I seems that things are more like me now, that I can see farther into paintings. I feel closer to what language can't reach. With my senses, as with birds, I climb into the windy heaven, out of the oak,and in the ponds broken off from the sky my feeling sinks, as if standing on fishes. (translation by Robert Bly)

 

Where the wild things live, detail Soft pastel on Arches, 58x39cm

Secondly, Der Einsame/ The lonely one

DER EINSAME Wie einer, der auf fremden Meeren fuhr, so bin ich bei den ewig Einheimischen; die vollen Tage stehn auf ihren Tischen, mir aber ist die Fremde voll Figur. In mein Gesicht reicht eine Welt herein, die vielleicht unbewohnt ist wie ein Mond, sie aber lassen kein Gefühl allein, und alle ihre Worte sind bewohnt. Die Dinge, die ich weither mit mir nahm, sehn selten aus, gehalten an das Ihre - : in ihrer großen Heimat sind sie Tiere, hier halten sie den Atem an vor Scham.

I found a translation by Phillip Kellmeyer (with a few alterations)

The lonely one Like someone who sailed distant seas, I am with the ever natives; full days are standing on their tables, yet for me distance is full of promise. In my face a world reaches in, perhaps deserted like a moon, they leave no feeling alone, and all their words are inhabited. The things which I took with me look rare, compared to theirs -: in their great home they are animals, here they hold their breath in shame.

The one, the former, uses the pond as a metaphor for introspection: for digging deeper, further and further down to reveal, unearth one’s authentic self. ‘My sunken treasure’ by Duke Spirit captures that, don't you think so?  The other, the sea, is full of expectation, anticipation. The gaze turned to the horizon, the distance, the afar, expectant of what may come. Hm... while I've been doing some thinking around this when, before and after painting and printing, I think I may continue that - I find it helpful in trying to let some of the more abstract aspects of the scenes I'm working on develop. What made me think of this? Distance did, and how it's connected so closely to the sea for me. It is becoming a bit clearer since I've continued to work on the ponds - in drawing as the detail above shows, but even more so in printing, but that's for another post.