Black chalk on handmade paper, detail

I’ve been working on a new series of drawings. I will use some as a starting point for paintings. It’s all work from my imagination.

black chalk on handmade paper, detail

When I draw I don’t worry about anatomy problems. I know I can sort all of that out later. Also, often the “problems” are what make the drawings say what I want to say.

black chalk on handmade paper

This is just a small sample, with the most sexy parts cropped out. I think it is going to be something special.

I made this paper myself. It took a lot of research and work to learn to make it, but there was no other way to get what I wanted.

[2 April 2009]

Here are the drawings I have been working on in the new year.

This thing is not interesting to eat anymore, but it is interesting to draw!

These are the most beautiful ginger pots I have ever seen. They look to me like they are crying because of the dripping glaze.

Why do I draw these things? To see if I am able to achieve the texture and glow that these things have, because they are old and worn out. I am scared for old age and getting old and wrinkled, but the thing is I see a tremendous amount of beauty in these old things that I draw because they have gathered so many experiences.

I enjoy so much drawing because I can do it at home with the kids. As long as I have a drawing there I feel fine. Without these, if I have to miss my studio for two days, I get totally crazy!

How do you get though these days where you cannot really work but you have to have something around that keeps you happy?

Earlier we came to an informal consensus that children’s art is not real “art.” I don’t see that as a problem, but it makes me curious: what are children doing when they draw? To try to get some insight, I’ve been drawing together with Nino and Fran.

This is a drawing that Nino (three years old) and I made together. The starting point was to draw circles using a roll of scotch tape as a template. Then we drew larger shapes and colored them in.

What were we doing here? It was a bit like playing a game. Most of all, it was fun. The obvious finally occurred to me: children’s art is art done for fun. If they stopped enjoying what they were doing, they wouldn’t go on with it. I found it fun and also relaxing to do the coloring, seeing how I could fill up the spaces. At an artistic level, I was pleased with the different texture results we got when using a fresh marker (the green for example) as compared to half-dried out markers (pink and blue, for example).

Later I made this drawing together with Fran (four and a half years old). We didn’t use any templates here, simply worked free-hand. The dynamic here was something of a dialogue in coloring: she colored in the areas I established, and I colored in her areas.

Magic marker has not been my drawing medium for at least twenty five years. It took me some time to enjoy working with them, but now I am hooked on them, just as I was as a kid!

Do you draw with your kids? Do you ever draw like a kid — as in, just for fun? What are the limitations of this approach? Is a certain amount of “pain” necessary to create real “art”?

UPDATE, 12 January

Sunil pointed out that young children have an ability called ‘perceptual closure’ that allows them to understand drawings like these. I was surprised that my kids didn’t recognize these as faces. Do yours?

We seem not to have as much of a “consensus” as I thought. David said “I totally consider children’s art to be real art.” Leslie and Colin agreed,” but Arthur remained skeptical (which is why we love him so much).

What about “no pain, no art?” Pain does not seem to be a requirement for art, but fun seems to be a useful ingredient — at least this seems to be the consensus from the comments so far . . .

KARL: What is this?

FRAN: A snake.

KARL: What kind of snake?

FRAN: A normal snake.

KARL: Is it art?

FRAN: No.

KARL: What is art?

FRAN: Nothing, I don’t know.

KARL: What is this?

FRAN: Fireworks.

KARL: Is this art?

FRAN: [Shakes her head, meaning no.]

KARL: Is this art?

FRAN: No.

KARL: How old is the person that made it?

FRAN: Five years old.

KARL: Did a kid make this?

FRAN: No, a big person made that.

KARL: Is it art?

FRAN: Yes.

KARL: Is this art?

FRAN: No, that is not beautiful. My little brother Nino made that.

KARL: Did you make this?

FRAN: I can’t make that. A big kid made that.

KARL: Is it art?

FRAN: Yes.

KARL: What about this?

FRAN: I find that beautiful. It is a bit mixed together.

KARL: Who made it?

FRAN: A little kid, 25, no, 50, no, 15 years old.

KARL: Is it art?

FRAN: Well yes, um, no. Can I use the computer now?

For Colorful Underpainting, Steve wrote “my first impression was that the cloth was somehow mounted on a wall. The bunch of grapes and the way they rest on it make this interpretation virtually impossible, of course, but I still don’t feel the correct perspective as strongly as I would like to.”

Hanneke paints her still life paintings “from life” and she tries to paint what she sees. Is she trying to show multiple viewpoints, or to produce distortion in perspective? Not intentionally, she has said. But is she doing so unintentionally?

Let’s take a look at Hanneke’s imaginary still life drawing and see if can find out more about the viewpoint issue.

In this imaginary still-life, the vessel is seen directly from the side, but the table top and fruit are seen from a different perspective, from above. We seem to look down on the table top while looking at the vessel from the side. This merging of different perspective points lends an interesting quality to the imaginary drawings. More examples of her “multiple viewpoint” imaginary drawings are here, here and here.

Let’s compare this to a drawing made directly from a real still life the same week when she made the imaginary drawings:

Do you see the difference? In this drawing from a real still-life, multiple viewpoints are not manifest. The fruit and the vessel are both seen from the same viewpoint.

I think that Colin and Steve are on to something with their comments about Hanneke’s painted still life work. In the “from life” still life paintings, the perspective may be technically correct, but she sometimes manages to produce a feeling of different viewpoints nonetheless. Would it be interesting if she tried to bring this difference in viewpoints more explicitly into her “from life” still life paintings? Or, should she work to correct the apparent flaw when it occurs?

Karl: Who do you want to see your drawings?

Fran: All the people from the whole world, and also grandma and grandpa.

Karl: What is this?

Fran: A pig, a green pig with gold and gray.

Karl: Why did you make this?

Fran: For you, papa.

Karl: But why?

Fran: Because.

Karl: What is this?

Fran: That is a little heart.

Karl: Why did you make this?

Fran: Also for you.

Karl: But why?

Fran: I just did it, I don’t know why. There is also brown in it. It’s not so easy to see.

Karl: What is this?

Fran: I don’t know.

Karl: Why did you make it?

Fran: What? Don’t speak in English.

Karl: Sorry, why did you make this?

Fran: I made it for you.

Karl: What is this?

Fran: Funny. That is a little man named Nino.

Karl: Is that your brother?

Fran: Yeah, my little baby brother.

Karl: Why did you make this?

Fran: Because.

Karl: What is the other stuff?

Fran: Flowers.

Karl: And?

Fran: A hat. And a little man, and a butterfly and hearts.

Fran: All the people from the whole world, and also grandma and grandpa.

Karl: What is this?

Fran: A pig, a green pig with gold and gray.

Karl: Why did you make this?

Fran: For you, papa.

Karl: But why?

Fran: Because.

Karl: What is this?

Fran: That is a little hart.

Karl: Why did you make this?

Fran: Also for you.

Karl: But why?

Fran: I just did it, I don’t know why. There is also brown in it. It’s not so easy to see.

Karl: What is that?

Fran: I don’t know.

Karl: Why did you make it?

Fran: What? Don’t speak in English.

Karl: Sorry, why did you make that?

Fran: I made it for you.

Karl: What is this?

Fran: Funny. That is a little man named Nino.

Karl: Is that your brother?

Fran: Yeah, my little baby brother.

Karl: Why did you make this?

Fran: Because.

Karl: What is the other stuff?

Fran: Flowers.

Karl: And?

Fran: A hat. And a little man, and a butterfly and hearts.

Not long ago, Françesca enjoyed typing random letters into a text editor for about ten minutes a day. Now that she is nearing five years old, that doesn’t satisfy her any longer. She learned how to use the mouse, and she’s beginning to understand how to use the Safari web browser. She can spend an hour on-line without a break.What to do? This is the point where Hanneke and I have a choice. We can take the computer away and have our kids grow up in a “traditional” pre-internet household. Or we can let them go online and accept the consequences.

I am of two minds about this. One view is that the kids should be able to grow up in an internet-free home, the way we grew up. The opposing view is that the kids should go online because the internet is part of the world we live in — keeping the kids away from it would be like refusing to let them learn to read or write.

I am torn between these two views, but I am leaning toward letting her go online because:

1. Our kids will come into contact with the internet no matter what we do.
2. By guiding her internet use at home, we can help Fran find and be involved in the positive things on the internet; for example, looking at artwork by other children her age.
3. The internet is intensely stimulating, of course. My response is that we need to make our “off-line” home environment even more fun, more stimulating, so that the internet is not such a magnet for the kids.

Anyone else out there with similar problems / opportunities?

. . .

Underdrawing on panel:

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Underpainting with acrylic:

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Overpainting with oil:

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Overpainting with oil, second day (click image to enlarge):

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Comments?

by Hanneke van Oosterhout

Recently we looked at one of Hanneke van Oosterhout‘s finished still life paintings. There were a number of excellent critiques. The painting was already sold, however, so comments could have no further impact on that picture.

Now Hanneke is in the progress of making another still life. It is not yet finished, which means that your comments could help her make this painting better.

We can follow the painting’s development over several days.

Here is an underdrawing made directly on the panel with black acrylic and a fine brush. The underdrawing took less than an hour. This underdrawing was transferred from a pencil drawing on paper made the previous day (click images to enlarge; work on paper not shown).

The next day Hanneke did the underpainting in acrylic, painting over the underdrawing thinly so that the hatching shading of the underdrawing is almost hidden, but still has an optical effect. The work in acrylic took less than an hour.

Next she did a first pass at overpainting with oil, begun immediately after the work in acrylic was dry. Hanneke painted very thinly, starting with the dark tone in the background. Then she added lighter color on the right side. Then she started to paint the grapes because she understood the the grapes would not last long (but would dry out in a few days). “I gave all the grapes shading, then started to paint lighter parts. Started with left top grape, that part is done the best,” she says. She used oil paint from a tube (Old Holland) and thinned it with a bit of linseed oil. No turpentine was used.

Below is the results from another day where she overpaints with oils (the previous layer had already dried).

Below, two images from yet another day working with oil paint, where she develops the glass. First she applies a transparent “glaze” . . .

Then she works wet-in-wet in the glaze, adding highlights and deeper shadows

This painting is pretty good now, but it needs something. Any suggestions?

[Below is the final version of the painting, now sold]

Glass with grapes by Hanneke van Oosterhout