Clara Lieu's Blog, page 30

Pie in the Sky

Recently I’ve been thinking about other opportunities I could create for myself that would allow me to broaden my teaching.  Currently, my teaching is focused on my classes at RISD and through writing my “Ask the Art Professor” column for the Huffington Post. (although the column has been on hiatus because I am preparing for my solo exhibitions in November.  I’ll resume the column when the two exhibitions are up) I enjoy both, but lately I have been feeling an itch to somehow expand beyond those two veins of teaching.

In graduate school, I once helped a friend with some sculpture techniques, and she said to me “you should have your own cooking show!” From what I’ve seen online, it seems like there is a huge audience that is starving for tutorials in art.  In some ways, I’m thinking of taking my friend’s suggestion literally:  a “cooking” show for artists.  This is totally pie in the sky, but I figure that it doesn’t hurt to think about it, and we all have to start somewhere.  I like that this is percolating in my head right now, and that something new is stirring in me. What do you think?  What would you like to see from me?

6th drawing

I am working on the 6th and final drawing for my November exhibition at Simmons College. This drawing by far has the most solid and opaque central standing figure.  The surrounding figures will have almost entirely disappeared.  They will be transparent and slightly hinted at. I’m glad this is the final drawing I’m doing before the show, by contrast it’s going to be much less work because most of the figures will be barely there.  The drawings that are packed with figures took multiple revisions and adjustments because they were so dense. It’s a relief to finish the work for the show with a drawing that is so much less labor by comparison.

4 weeks

I have 4 weeks left until I install my exhibition at Simmons College, and there is still so much that needs to be done before then.  It looks like I really will be working up until the last minute.

Over the past week, I’ve been working on adjusting several of the large figure drawings, mostly scraping away at the etching ink areas with an x-acto knife. I’ve been trying to get the figures to become more transparent, and to soften the transitions in the tonal areas so that they are more gradual.

One aspect that has come up in the scraping process is that for some reason, areas that are scraped with the x-acto knife have a slightly different color than the etching ink areas.  In some ways, this introduces a third color into the images.  The etching ink is very brown, the lithographic crayon is a fairly straightforward black, while the scraped areas verge on looking blue by comparison. The issue is that when I scraped one area of the drawing, that color difference really stood out a lot against the rest of the drawing. I ended up scraping significantly more than I initially planned on, in order to more evenly distribute the scraped areas throughout the entire drawing.  This way, the color change from the scraping process won’t appear to be isolated to one area.

Adjustments

Today I finished the last areas that needed etching ink, which means I really am on the verge of being finished with these drawings for my November exhibition. From here on, I don’t anticipate any major changes in the composition of these drawings.  I’ll focus mostly on slight adjustments in all of the drawings to try to balance the dynamics between the five drawings. Mostly I will spend time scraping away at the etching ink areas with the x-acto knife.  There are many passages throughout all five drawings that are too heavy and lack the transparency that I’m looking to achieve.

Immersed

Every day I’m getting deeper into these drawings, which is a great feeling.  I had been thinking earlier that I was tired of working on this series.  The original plan was to finish these 5 large figure drawings for my November solo show and then to walk away and start something else. On the contrary, the more I work on these drawings, the more work I am finding myself wanting to make in the near future.

Last fall, I scrapped several large figure drawings because I knew they weren’t working.  I thought that was the end of those drawings, since none of them were any good, but now I’m thinking that I can resurrect several of those drawings for this new series. The next few drawings I want to create will be extremely dark and heavy, where the figures are barely discernible. I’ll use several of these failed figure drawings and work many more layers on top. I like the thought of being able to use past failures to start new work, something I’ve never really done before.

Logistics

Although I am actively working in the studio on these large figure drawings, the logistics of my November solo exhibition at the Trustman Gallery are starting to need more attention. I spent most of the morning shooting photographs of the three figure drawings I’ve finished so far, and I have to get started on a new artist statement for this show. I already have an artist statement that is an overview of “Falling“, but this series of large figure drawings really warrants a new statement since it’s much more specific than the previous works in this series.

Within just a few weeks of working, I’ve already seen a learning curve in these figure drawings.  My marks with the etching ink have loosened up a lot recently, and the consequence is the the figure drawing on the left in the image below feels too controlled and stiff right now.  That drawing is nowhere near finished, but I’m really going to have to make some major changes to get the composition more dynamic and lively.

Good momentum

I’ve gained some really good momentum with these figure drawings.  Just a few weeks ago I was dreading working on these drawings, but I’ve made enough progress lately that working on the drawings has become a very satisfying experience. A huge part of this is the fact that my schedule allows for significant time in the studio four days a week. I am almost finished with the etching ink sections of the drawings, which means I am close to completing the work I need for my November solo exhibitions. This is great news, because it means I don’t have to stress anymore about meeting the November deadline. Knowing that the majority of the hard work is behind me,  I can now work at a less frantic pace.

Sequence

Last night I created the digital image above so I could look at all 5 figure drawings together as a group.  My studio doesn’t have enough wall space for me to hang all 5 drawings together, so this digital image allows me to critique the drawings as a group. The final stage of this series will be tweaking each drawing in response to the others in order to create the dynamics I’m looking to achieve in the series overall.

When I started this series of drawings, I conceived the images as a sequence. The idea was that the first image was extremely dark and dense, packed with anguished figures. As the progression moved forward in the drawings, the anguished figures would start to diminish, become more ghost-like, until they almost disappeared altogether. Simultaneously, the single standing figure in the center of the composition would begin to emerge more with every image, becoming more solid and concrete as the sequence went along.

At first I put the 5 drawings together in a digital image in this linear sequence that I described above. However, seeing the digital image of the 5 drawings together got me questioning whether this sequence was truly representative of my intentions. These drawings are meant to represent my treatment and recovery from depression, but the more that I think about it, the process has been anything but linear. You don’t start out depressed, and then get incrementally better every day through treatment.  The process is much more complicated than that.  Even with treatment, your mood still fluctuates.  The depression comes and goes; sometimes it’s barely there, while other times it comes back full force. As a reaction to this thinking, I’ve decided to instead to mix up the images, so that the moods leap and change with every drawing.

Close to finish

This drawing above is very close to being finished. Today I devoted most of my time to solidifying details with the lithographic crayon pencil, as well as lightening up various areas by scraping away at etching ink on the Dura-Lar with an x-acto knife.The Dura-lar is very thick and strong, so I can be really aggressive with the x-acto knife without worrying about damaging the Dura-Lar. It’s times like these that I’m really glad that I’m not working on paper, paper is so fragile and wouldn’t be able to take the physical beating that I put my drawings through.

These last stages of a drawing are extremely satisfying, since all of the really difficult grunt work is done, and the essential structure is well established.  As a result, it feels effortless to finish off areas with the lithographic crayon pencil and x-acto knife. The work at this stage in the process is mostly cosmetic and gets instantaneous results. I’m going to leave this drawing alone for now, and do one final pass after I get the other drawings further along.

I also added another figure in the upper left hand corner, which you can see in the image below.  There was only one figure in that area before, so that section felt flat and lacked the transparency and layers that were throughout the rest of the piece.

Moving on

I finished up the etching ink part of the process in this drawing above today. I’m putting this drawing aside temporarily so it can dry before I go back into it and firm up the details with lithographic crayon. The top left hand corner and the lower right hand corner feel a little sparse, so I might eventually add some extremely light and subtle figures.   I’m going to get some distance from this piece and decide later if I want to add more into those areas. 

I started into this drawing below which felt great, considering that I haven’t touched it since July. The figures in this drawing will be very light and ghost-like, whereas the figure will be much darker, defined, and concrete by comparison. 

Before, I thought that these 5 large figure drawings I’m making for my solo exhibition at the Trustman Gallery would be the end for this series.  I’m thinking now that I might want to do two more large figure drawings, making for a total of 7.  These 5 figure drawings go in a sequence, and I think I need more contrast at the beginning and end of the sequence.