JcSparks.com

I know I haven’t posted much of my work lately. I do apologize. A lot of what I am doing in class right now is either photographically uninteresting (e.g. perspectival prep-work) or multi-week work that I’ve already posted. But here are a couple of new things.

Friday was another watershed day in Frank Porcu’s anatomical drawing class. We’ve been working on developing these mass-conceptions for a lot of the underlying structure of the human form. On Friday, Frank had us drawing from the model all day. Everyone started drawing the mass conceptions, but Frank admonished us to get rid of the crutch and that we needed to use the mass conceptions to aid the visual phenomenon. Or, as he has said on several memorable occasions, “Drawing is half of what you see and half of what you know.”

So after some demonstration, we started again, using the mass conceptions as a very initial scaffolding of foundation upon which all of the visual phenomenon could be accurately mounted. Here’s an example from the class (each one of the drawings was a 20 minute pose):

I was amazed at how much I was able to capture in twenty minutes. Normally I can get a pretty fair contour drawing in that amount of time. Now I am getting a pretty accurate contour as well as a planar break-down of the interior forms. I know the drawings look very architectonic, but that is easy to hide with rendering.

In the figure drawing class, we’ve been given the assignment of copying a drawing by Prud’hon. No small feat. I’ve spend several days working on this one, and it’s starting to get close. Hope that I get a chance to finish—it’s due later this week.

Ted Schmidt also took our Figure Drawing class to the Met’s Drawing Resource room this past week. There we were able to see master drawings by Leonardo, Ingres, Degas and Prud’hon, among others. The drawings aren’t out on exhibition in the museum, so it was nice to have the opportunity to see them.

I did take another picture of my painting, but, alas, the images didn’t turn out. Hopefully I’ll be able to find some better light and do a re-shoot this coming week.

– Jeremy

As you may, or may not know, Central Park has been covered in 7,500 brightly colored orange “gates”. Apparently a project that Christo has wanted to do since 1979, it has, for two weeks only, come to fruition. I took some pictures, but there are some much better ones on Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s website.

Not really art, but definitely an event. They were estimating that something like 1 million New Yorkers would have come to Central Park during the first week to see The Gates.

However, images really don’t give one a feel for the experience. I’ve put together something for those of you who really want to know what it was like to come to Central Park on a cold February Saturday afternoon and walk through The Gates.

(If you are having trouble viewing the movie, you may need to update your version of Quicktime. It’s a free download)

– Jeremy

I know that I haven’t posted much of my own work lately. Sorry about that. Here’s a brief update.

This is a figure drawing that I’ve been working on. We’ve started to do multi-day poses. This one is basically the better part of 5 hours. I think we’ll get another shot at the pose next week. If you are curious about the sanguine color, I’m using a Pablo Caran d’Ache pencil, which I like very much.

Here is a painting that we’ve been working on. The canvas is 36″ x 36″, which is really pretty large. The entire painting has been done using nothing other than Transparent Red Oxide, Blue Black and White. The basic idea is to get a strong change of temperature as the form turns away from the light. Not the best picture, but there is still a lot of work to be done on it. I’ll take another picture next weekend.

– Jeremy

New York’s Museum of Modern Art was established at a time when no one was buying modern art. As such, they were able to snap up a good percentage of the really important pieces of that period. Yes, despite the anachronistic name, the age of the avant-garde is now past (ended around 1970) and for better or worse we are in a post-modern period.

MoMA just recently renovated their Central Manhattan building and reopened to the public in late November of last year. Ever since, the place has been packed to the gills with modern art lovers. Unfortunately, renovating a building in Manhattan is expensive; as a result, so are the ticket prices. Fortunately, the have a free time from 4 to 8 pm on Friday evenings. Myself and a couple of classmates decided to head over there after classes today. Apparently so did many, many other New Yorkers…

Here’s a picture of one of the rooms… bear in mind that they have five floors with several rooms on each floor. Once we got into the building, every room looked like this:

There really are quite a few very important works in the museum… here are some of the highlights:

Cezanne was well represented at the museum, which is good as both the Fauvists and the Cubists claim him as their grandfather.

Salvador Dali’s famous Persistence of Memory. For such an important and recognizable work, I was amazed at how small it is. The pocket watches are basically life-sized in this one.

Kirchner was a German Expressionist. This work was completed on the eve of World War I and shows what Kirchner thought of the Berlin upper-crust. He was one of those intellectuals, who, at the time, wished for some sort of massive world event to bring things back into alignment with nature. Reminds one to be careful what you wish for. Kirchner got his wish, but the horror of modern war was not what anyone had anticpated; Kirchner himself, though he lived through the war, was deeply traumatized by what he saw on the front lines.

Rene Magritte is basically a sign painter working with surrealist metaphors. His paintings of generic men wearing bowler hats, with their faces obscured by apples is standard college dorm-room fodder. Fun stuff.

Matisse was also well represented at MoMA. This is his famous Red Studio.

Another Matisse, this one his equally famous Joy of Life. An enormous painting that was basically lifted from a detail in one of his earlier paintings. He made a couple of copies of this work.

A watershed piece; Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’ Avignon. As I understand it, Picasso created something like 800 studies for this work within the span of a year. This painting is basically 10 feet tall and contains all of the germs that would develop into full Cubist language. The faces are distorted to look like primitive Iberian and African masks. The cloth drapery in the background is fractured and pulled to the foreground. Broken color and Fauvist colors… it’s all there.

Another Picasso, this one a full—though early—Cubist piece. Still quite representational.

Picasso was so prolific and so involved with not only painting but drawing and printmaking. This is one of my favorite etchings of all time; La Minotaurmachia (the Minotaur Figher). It’s loaded with archetypical and personal mythology. The minotaur to Picasso was a symbol of the ugly side of the male libido. The man on the ladder is a typical wise-man figure who arrives whenever the world is out of joint. The little girl, who is in fact the only one fighting the Minotaur, is holding up a candle. It is the light of truth which holds the creature at bay. As you can see, he is being blinded by the light. However, we also find that the woman depicted over the eviscerated horse was one of Picasso’s lovers. At the time this was done, she had become pregnant, but by another man. We see then that the sword she wields is pointed not at the Minotaur, but instead at her own pregnant belly.

Everyone knows Van Gogh’s Starry Night.

They also had works by Max Ernst, Gustave Klimt, Francis Bacon, Otto Dix, Roy Lichenstein, Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, Andrew Wyeth and Henri Rousseau, among others. I was hoping they might have some paintings by Lucian Freud and Jenny Saville as well, but no luck. Still a very worthwhile trip. Someday, when I’m a little more flush, I’ll have to go back at a time when the musuem isn’t severely overrun.

– Jeremy

In case you were wondering, Jeremy recently updated the software on our blog, but has not yet had a chance to re-personalize the look of it. It won’t be this generic forever!

-Julie

Title: Bagboy
Medium: linocut with chine colle
Size: 8×10 image size, 10×15 paper size
Materials: Daniel Smith oil-based relief ink on cream Stonehenge and bisque Canson Mi-Teintes paper
Edition Size: 34

I’ve finally finished off the last set of prints for exchange. This piece is for the Pets (Factual or Fantastical) Exchange through PrintmakingLinks. I’ve been working on it for quite a while, and have struggled with both concept and execution. I ended up doing a chine colle linocut, which means there is an additional piece of paper pasted onto the print as it is put through the press. In this case I ended up using a brown Canson Mi-Teintes paper, because it was all I had access to in the right colors. Ideally, the collaged paper should be much thinner, so I had to deal with some serious buckling issues.

In any case, it was a good learning experience all around, and the finished prints (when they came out right) look pretty decent, I think. It is definitely worth experimenting with some more.

Fridays for me involove six hours of drawing geometrized conceptions of anatomy. NYAA calls this Anatomical Drawing. However, I know that this is really my opportunity to glean as much information as I can from Frank Porcu.

Here’s an example of the drawings we have to copy into a notebook.

Here is a full-sized one… note that the skeleton is life-sized.
Click to enlarge

And here is the man himself…

Don’t get me wrong, all of the faculty members at NYAA are excellent; just some are a little more excellent than others.

– Jeremy

Well, maybe the Fuzzy Feet aren’t interesting enough to have their own blog entry. I felted them yesterday, and they are still quite damp, but I am happy with how they turned out. Warm feet coming right up…

I also finished the Dresser Scarf socks this evening, and they fit nicely. I am definitely not so thrilled about the bind-off over the top of the foot, and if I make these socks again it will be on smaller needles. But they are lovely, interesting socks:

I found the pattern quick and entertaining, and I love the elasticy cotton yarn, which should prevent slouching, yet doesn’t feel gravely under my feet. And it is so nice to have socks that fit!

I must be in a sock-making mood. Last week I knit myself a second pair of Fuzzy Feet from scraps of Lamb’s Pride. They knit up fast, and gave me something to do during the slow afternoon of our library’s annual book sale. I just have to weave in ends on one sock and felt them, and I will give them their very own blog entry.

This week, while trying to acclimate my eyes to a new lens prescription that I am now convinced is just wrong, I decided to start a new project—working on a pair of Dresser Scarf Socks from the Spring 2003 issue of Interweave Knits, in Elann.com’s Esprit yarn). Working on and off for a day and a half, or thereabouts, I was able to finish the first sock last night.

This sock pattern uses rather clever construction—the understated lace cuff is knit sideways with a provisional cast-on and grafted seam that almost disappears. Then stitches are picked up at the ankle, and the sock progresses quickly with short-rowed heel and toe, and a decorative 3-needle bind-off over the top of the foot. That part I am not so sure I like, as it seems bulky for wearing with socks. If I were to make this pattern again, I might just graft the seam with kitchener stitch.

The sock itself fits well and is comfortable. For my extra-small feet I made some slight pattern adjustments, decreasing the cuff depth by two pattern repeats, which also changed the number of stitches in the foot, and decreasing in needle size from #5 to #4 when I reached the ankle. If I were to make this pattern again, I might well use the smaller needles the whole way through.

Now to try making the second sock the same as the first, and I’ll have a pair of socks that perfectly matches my Blue Diamond tank for this summer.

I hope you have a wonderful 30th birthday today, sweetheart. I’m thinking of you and wishing I could be there to celebrate with you. I miss you! (Watch for your birthday package to arrive…)

- Julie