Pop Goes the Artist!

I haven’t been posting about my own art lately because I haven’t been doing much lately.  I’ve been sketching, but even though I’m at home, I don’t have access to most of my art supplies (and my workspace) while our basement is being finished.  (Excuses, excuses… I know.)  However, the work should be done by Friday (fingers crossed!), so I’m very eager to set up my easel and start painting again.  I’d like to finish the last Lucy painting as well as a still life I started at the end of the summer.

I also have a block printing project planned.  I don’t do much block printing (it is so. much. work.), but every so often the fit takes me and I crank out a couple Christmas cards or something.  This time I’d like to do bookplates.  I’m accumulating quite a collection of nice hardcover books, so I’m going to design and print some bookplates and then hand-color them with watercolor.  I think that will look nicer and be easier than a multi-color block print.  I’ll post a sketch once I settle on a design.

I’m also finally trying out Daniel Smith for supplies.  I’ve heard good things about their printmaking inks (and they have to be better than Speedball’s), so I ordered a tube of oil-based black ink, a piece of linoleum, and a tube of acrylic paint, because I needed that anyway.  I’ll post reviews of the paint and the ink once I try them.

Tomorrow, I’ll post once of my recent charcoal sketches.

Many people are aware of Vincent van Gogh’s extensive correspondence with his brother Theo, but he also corresponded with a number of artists, including Paul Gauguin and a younger artist named Emile Bernard, for whom he became something of a mentor.

I was not aware of these letters, which also included sketches of his works in progress, until I read an article about them in this month’s Smithsonian magazine. (The article can be found here, and does not require registration to read, although I don’t know how long it will remain available.) Emile Bernard was a relatively unimportant artist, but van Gogh’s advice-filled letters to him reveal a lot about van Gogh’s methods of working, opinions on working from life vs. reality, and color theory. Here’s a sample:

I follow no system of brushwork at all, I hit the canvas with irregular strokes, which I leave as they are, impastos, uncovered spots of canvas—corners here and there left inevitably unfinished—reworkings, roughnesses…. Anyway, my dear pal, no trompe l’oeil in any case…

I’ve always been attracted to van Gogh’s work, partially because of the dynamism he finds in landscapes (which I talked about once here) and partially because of his brilliant use of colors. This article quotes him as saying “I could hardly give a damn about the veracity of the color” and that’s almost something I want to write on an index card and tape above my easel. Color has so much emotional and visual power, it almost seems a pity to limit oneself to strict realism.

Anyway, it’s a very interesting article and includes a number of pictures of his sketches, letters, and finished paintings of his and Bernard’s. Worth a read.

(Smithsonian frequently has fantastic art history articles. In particular, I enjoyed (but forgot to blog about) this July article about Edward Hopper, another favorite artist of mine, and his lonely, evocative, quintessentially American paintings.)

It’s hitting crunch time at school (exams start on Monday), so it’s time for a cop-out links post.  Hard-hitting social commentary will just have to wait until later.

• Part of the problem I have with trying to sketch every day is that I run out of things to draw–or at least, I feel like I do.  After all, I spend most of my time in the same tiny dorm room, surrounded by the same objects that have surrounded me since freshman year.  Times like those, I turn to lists of sketching challenges like this one from Flickr’s Everyday Matters group.  Sometimes it takes outside prompting to look at a familiar object in a different light.
• This isn’t exactly art-related, but I think it will come in handy when/if I ever set up an Etsy shop for my crafty projects as well as my art.  The photography blog Strobist posted instructions for making an effective “photo studio” for under $10.
• I love retro, pop-art stuff, particularly old advertising and illustrations.  This photoset on Flickr includes more than 500 matchbox labels, mostly from Eastern Europe in the 50s and 60s.  There are some really cute ones.
• Along those same lines, here’s a collection of really over-the-top romance and “good girl” comic book covers, featuring some fantastic, super-pulpy illustrations.  As a bonus, the cover copy is frequently hilarious.  (A little more poking around on the same site reveals a gallery of superhero and war comics as well as some crime and horror comics.  Gold!)
• Spam subject lines are almost always hilarious.  They’re even better made into funky hand-lettered artwork.  Here’s the photoset on Flickr and here’s where you can buy prints.  Too bad I just spent too much money buying prints on Etsy…
• I occasionally dabble in book arts, but I have a full-time obsession with beautiful paper, notebooks, pens, etc.  PaperStudio.com sells beautiful paper as well as other tools and supplies for all your bookbinding, collage-making, obsessively admiring needs.  I particularly love the chiyogami Japanese paper.

That’s all for now.  I really should work on making flashcards for my art history final.  Those Gothic cathedrals are beautiful, but they do all look awfully similar to each other.