Lots of Lines

The suburban backyard series also includes drawings.  This one is approximately 12 x 9 inches.

In the biography of the Polish painter Josef Czapski by Eric Karpeles, one encounters the story of Degas and the poet Mallarme.  Degas complained that he had too many ideas for a sonnet he was working on.  Mallarme replied: "But Degas, it's not with ideas that you make verses, but with words."  Czapski, upon hearing this story again, responded with the famous words that Ingres urged upon Degas: "Make lines, lots of lines!"

Left Field

An 11x14 drawing that I did last week.  I am working on a non-field painting (with color!), but it's taking its sweet time, though I think it will be worth the wait.   The sun is not yet risen beyond the field in the above drawing.   I will post a drawing in the future done from the same spot during the day.

Lately I have been reading slowly a biography of Degas by Denys Sutton.  The author writes about the artifice of Degas' equestrian works, "As the artist was fond of saying, 'one gives the idea of truth with the false'."  There isn't anything true about what an artist does on the surface, but a deeper truth is the goal.  Otherwise it wouldn't be worth doing.

Fourth Avenue Pastel

An 11x14 pastel.  I recently borrowed from the library a book called Degas: in Search of His Technique by Denis Rouart.   I'm still searching.

Sketchbook Tree and Degas

The above drawing from my sketchbook is what I would like to achieve more often.  Light in the shadows.  The media is hard charcoal pencil and fingers.  I did this one a couple days before Christmas.

I have been looking at and reading a lot about Degas lately (besides Cezanne).  Degas started the switch to pastel in the mid-late 1870's, and used predominantly all pastel from the 1880's on.  "...[H]e took full advantage of the different ways of handling pastel, sometimes drawing with the sticks, at other times creating tonal areas with a stump or with his fingers; often he worked with pastel and water, either wetting the stick or working the powdery pigment with brush and water to create fluid passages of color ...With pastel he was able to apply color in a linear manner, not so much to delineate form as to model it...the late pastels have a tonal substructure drawn by Degas the draftsman beneath their brilliant surfaces finished by Degas the colorist." (from Degas, Jean Sutherland Boggs.  The words above are by Gary Tinterow).

Fourth Avenue

A 9x12 pastel of Fourth Avenue near Carroll Street in Brooklyn.  I have been changing my approach to pastels, trying to use them in layers, keeping them loose and allowing the layers to show, building up as in an oil painting using fixative to simulate drying, sort of the way I imagine Degas worked.

Yesterday marked my fourth year with this blog.  I wish I had time to improve the blog, but I would rather paint.  At least the paintings have improved.