five

Posting Dreamy's pic here because I think it fits

http://www.thinkdraw.com/picture.php?pictureId=100109

Qsilv

By that same logic, extended, I'll include this one--

http://www.thinkdraw.com/picture.php?pictureId=104218


The trick here is that I'm exploring more dimensions than the physical.


EXPLANATION of PROCESS
(because there's a famous quote: "Art is process!")
(sub-titled: "More than you really want to know and were wisely afraid to ask")

This is one that "grew on its own", although I did have an originating concept and most of that is still in evidence.

I wanted to work with that golden-mean curve, using it as a boundary, holding back some figure which would just slightly peek over it and at the same time be cradled by it.

Chel saw that and suggested a madonna/child theme, but that actually had not entered my mind at all. (Well, conscious mind, anyway... who knows what lurks in the Jungian archetypal closet...)

I began with a nose, pointing toward the lower right. Layered it up to build nostrils. Added eyes... each one pointing in a different direction.

Kept those eyes through thick and thin, tho the darned nose seems to have shifted to a westerly orientation and shortened itself to a muzzle. *I* can see the original, but I'm betting it's lost to anyone else.

Then a mouth; the red lips are clearly there, tho they rest on a green pearl that probably forced the muzzle issue... and some pure linear tinkering (for the sensual pleasure of it) has shifted the emphasis enormously. Those original lips now could be a mere reflection of light upward onto a chin or even a frog's throat pouch.

When I was confronted by the classic mickeymouse triad, I began building cheekbones and brow ridges... and fussing with textures for the joy of that.

Went away for a few hours (RL is so intrusive sometimes...) and when I got back it seemed done... but... lonely.

So I build the "frame" that had been visible to my own mind's eye all along...
but when I got to the top... er... well... I'd been seeing a hand... either acting as an umbrella... or pushing down on the head... in my mind the wrist was straight up noon.... but these curved lines have a life of their own, so this one insisted on completing its way around as an increasingly tight curve (stubborn golden mean thing) and there I was, stuck with a horizontal wrist.

Tinker... tinker... I liked the bird claw effect, even tho it was originally just the bones of a real hand... so I left it there without fleshing it out further... in fact made sure the tips were pointy.

THEN I added some chantilly lace to anchor the lower left...

and layered vertebral bits along that "spinal column" (I do love thick-thin twisty-turny things)...

and extended the cheekbones into something that mostly is about balancing the composition but, in typical Q fashion, cherishing ambiguity, CAN call to mind a rattlesnake tail...

...sooo, far from a madonna and child, what I've got here is more of a single emerging figure, sort of a model of "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny" meets Eve-and-the-snake in the garden............


;>

Qsilv

...and thank you, five -- I'll think more on the interplay 'tween ground and elements... I'm afraid I generally would prefer the ground to go away and leave me and all my concepts hanging around in thin air... ;>

>>"fragmenting forms themselves into their multiple perspectives (as opposed to the relation of one form to another) and does away with figure & ground interpenetrating" --five

five

http://www.thinkdraw.com/picture.php?pictureId=104252

five

Q, what a wonderful picture into your process. Everyone can learn from it.

If you really push your instinct to leave the ground behind and hang your concepts in thin air -- as you phrase it -- applying it to the forms themselves -- you'll end up interpenetrating figure and ground, I suspect . FWIW, I suggest completely ignoring borders/edges at first, then looking back at where bits of borders/edges might go for spatial emphasis and dynamism (or if you are oppositely inclined, anti-dynamism)

Qsilv

nod... yep, I regularly do both, concurrently, mostly... lol... ambiguity again!

five

http://www.thinkdraw.com/picture.php?pictureId=104256

chelydra

gosh... i'm speechless... overwhelmed... feeling like polenta now!

chelydra

But deeply honored to have brought this out in you two, and to have it happening here in my mild cubism party - fully come to life now! (Or maybe you've been carrying on like this all along and I hadn't noticed)

five

Yes, concurrently, generally, back and forth.

We tend to start from the place we are most comfortable. Unless I make myself do otherwise (so as not to be a creature of habit) I tend to start from seeing/marking borders/edges and then evaporate/obliterate them, because visually I see points and lines more than great swaths of color. Then I go back to borders/edges, etc. It's all relatively seamless eventually. I find, wherever one starts, the trick is watching what is happening in progress.

Chelydra, your challenge did make me go back and think through some basics I had started to take for granted. Thanks for that.

chelydra

Feeling like clorophilia i meant, rather than polenta; i keep mixing them up for some reason.

chelydra

You're very welcome five, and thanks to you and Qsliv for getting the party off the ground (after a shaky start). Now I gotta figure out what you meant about figure and ground interpenetrating. I should understand that, and maybe i do but not in words...

chelydra

Actually the bridge was channelling John Marin, or trying to. I always try to channel John Marin but am only beginning to figure out how to work him into TD pix.

five

You do even of you don't use those words. On the flat "2-D" painting, the ground is the background; the figure is the element/object sitting on/in the background. In a yin/yang diagram, each equal half is both figure and ground. In an architectural scene, the building is the figure and the space the building occupies is the ground. For a human figure, the figure is, well, the human, and the ground is the space the figure occupies. Etc.

five

Oops, I typed in the wrong name -- I meant Marin.

chelydra

Since we're producing a textbook on the subject of Mild Cubism, we might as well include a few examples of High Cubism (which the Mild Cubists absorbed and transformed). I guess it's worth noting that none of the Mild Cubists (other than Matisse) were artists of this calibre; several were excellent but none were among the all-time greats of art history. That's partly why I like them so much.

These samples should illustrate what five has been explaining about cubist methodology...




http://blogs.princeton.edu/wri152-3/f05/fkherani/picassos_full_body_selfportraits.html
http://pet-portraitartist.com/learning-to-paint-and-draw/painting-styles/Cubism.htm
http://www.brown.edu/Courses/CG11/2005/Group024/techniques.html

five

I looked at Marin's Brooklyn Bridge before I did my own

chelydra

I thought your bridge was related to Joe Stella... who I should have included maybe on the shortlist of Mild Cubists... also Charles Demuth maybe (His 'I saw the number five in gold' blew mind mind when I was about 8 yrs old.).... I used to try channelling J. Villon but he always eluded me. Marin is easier:
http://www.londonart.co.uk/sales/big_set.asp?size=800&i=28125
http://www.londonart.co.uk/sales/big_set.asp?size=800&i=28124

five

I didn't look at Stella's until just now, but yes, mine looks similar to his and I can see why you'd relate it to him.

chelydra

Actually, Stella's is quite different, more art deco or something:
http://www.easyart.com/art-prints/Joseph-Stella/The-Brooklyn-Bridge-25819.html