Redrawing is Necessary

When I started to paint this week, I realized that my drawing had been smudged beyond usefulness. I could not put in the planks of the deck until I knew where the feet of the chairs would go, etc. So the sisters needed to be redrawn more specifically as to place. Redrawing is a necessary part of painting. After painting around and on the subjects, they have become fuzzy and a little pushed around. Creating a clear and concise drawing makes a path to a better painting.

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Compare the before and after and see what I changed and how I determined where things should plant their feet on the planks of the porch. The chairs will now be ready when I am. That is if I don’t smudge them again in the meantime. It happens… You can also see the windows have had another “treatment.”

Most of the time I had this week to work on the painting was in the evening. It is a good time to redraw. At night glare and color are a problem. Not insurmountable, but it sure is easier to work with a piece of charcoal and get things in order. I use a very soft vine charcoal. This allows me to move it around. If I don’t like it, I just dust it off. That is why it smudges so easily. It is a tradeoff, because I don’t want a sketch to be permanent. It moves with the artist’s plans.

So, look at all those straight lines that were redrawn this week. Eaves, windows, door, the bottom of the house, and the bottom of the porch are all in their correct place. It takes a while to get them right and then make them look effortless in the final painting.

Open image in a new tab to get a good look.

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I did get a chance to paint a little. I worked on the roof and finally got a good hold on the chiminey. It is important to me because it is a brick “Charleston” chiminey made with the distinctive arch of brick and put together with tabby.

Tabby (noun): a cement made of lime, sand or gravel, and oyster shells and used chiefly along the coast of Georgia and South Carolina in the 17th and 18th centuries – Miriam Webster Dictionary

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Thank you! If you are enjoying this series, please help spread the word. Forward to a friend who may also enjoy it. I would appreciate it very much.

Michel

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Until next week Art Friends, I will be deep in the creative chaos.

“Matthew Fox suggests that creativity thrives on the border between chaos and order, where artists “wrestle with chaos” to deconstruct and reconstruct it into something new. He states that chaos is a necessary prelude to creativity and an opportunity for growth, not something to be feared. Instead of avoiding chaos, he advises embracing it, even “dancing with it,” to transform it into something beautiful and sustainable through a combination of patience and a certain holy impatience.”

(Google search: Creative Chaos)