DRAWINGS DAILY

winter reflection

2012-03-03T13:34:00.000-05:00

Mimosa

2012-03-02T14:58:00.001-05:00

The plant, not the drink.

Another iPad still-life by Tarragon. He's aiming here for a more painterly style: Camille Pissarro rather than Dutch still-life, if you will. It's possible - even natural - to make everything very sharp in iPad paintings, just as it was in the golden age of Dutch still life painting. The gleaming precision of it was part of the point, after all.

But a digital picture is not about the materiality of possessions. How could it be? It barely exists in itself. So instead Tarragon has opted to play an impressionist-style game of focus, in which the subject is not the objects in the picture, but the light streaming through them, and the reflections they cast.

in the student lounge

2012-02-29T18:29:00.003-05:00

cafe sketchbook

2012-02-28T23:52:00.003-05:00

the dock at Sirmione

2012-02-27T23:44:00.000-05:00

A memento of a pleasant day in May. It was a day trip from Verona; we were there to see the water-courtyard of the castle, eat gelato and maybe swim a bit. And the very authentic house of Catullus, of course.

So naturally it rained. But between the rainfall - which came down from the Alps regular as clockwork - there was time for a few watercolour sketches. This is one of them. Another is here. It's not impossible that the pictures are better for the lousy weather.

Distant Star

2012-02-26T21:10:00.000-05:00

Alone

2012-02-25T23:44:00.001-05:00

Years ago Tarragon sojourned on the North Atlantic coast, and amidst the fog and the Labrador current, something Scandinavian stole into his work. His figures turned their backs on one another, or took up station alone in empty rooms, as here. It's a stage many of us go through, but not all of us do it on canvas.

A thread of attenuated minimalism runs through Tarragon's paintings to this day, but it now expresses itself more in the landscapes than in figurative paintings. And so the nordic angst of works like this one has relaxed a bit, into a quiet sense of solitude. That's the way life goes.

I don't know anything about this painting, or if it still exists. For myself, I have decided that it shows the protagonist of Kurt Hamsun's Hunger, sitting disconsolate in a Hammershoi interior. He is dreaming, perhaps, of richer colour and thicker paint.

steve

2012-02-23T21:24:00.000-05:00

A quick life-drawing in marker.

messy red lines

2012-02-22T23:36:00.001-05:00

An old drawing, done with a red china marker on low-grade paper. It's yellowed even more since.

It's a nostalgic feeling, looking at an eleven year old drawing. The occasion has vanished from my memory, but I look at the two aborted starts in this picture and know I must have been a frustrated draftsman that day. How fortunate to have a patient model.

class is almost over

2012-02-21T21:47:00.000-05:00

Capri

2012-02-20T23:56:00.001-05:00

A sketch made while waiting for the ferry back to Naples. Capri is a weirdly charming place, redolent of past glories without being pretentious. Perhaps because those glories were themselves a sequence of nervous foreigners, men and women in pseudo-exile, trying to forget and failing miserably. Like poor Alfred Krupp, for example.

Anyway, the view shows the rise leading up to Tiberius' villa. Perhaps the cliff in the picture is the point from which ill-performing catamites were tossed, if we can believe Suetonius' account. (We can't...)

the red tie

2012-02-18T19:30:00.001-05:00

I dropped by the Keyhole Session in Toronto this week. It was a Valentine's themed version, and therefore all about lust and romance. Well, just lust.

So pretty much the same as every other keyhole event.

cafe sketchbook

2012-02-17T17:00:00.000-05:00

Pete pays attention.

A boot for Saint Valentine

2012-02-14T16:24:00.000-05:00

People sometimes complain that holidays are ruined by materialism. But really, we all live in a material world. And so I made this picture of material things as a Be My Valentine. Everybody likes flowers, after all, and quite a few of us like boots, too.

Wikipedia tells me that 190 million cards are exchanged each year on Valentine's day. This, presumably, won't contribute to that statistic.

The picture was made with pencil, watercolours, and several kinds of marker.

unfinished sketch

2012-02-12T19:03:00.003-05:00

The trouble with randomly drawing people in cafes is they get up and leave...

2 generations

2012-02-11T22:22:00.003-05:00

Drawn from life in an Italian deli in Mississauaga.

Keyhole Session: A Romantic Gesture

2012-02-09T11:13:00.000-05:00

Two women at the Keyhole Session drawing event last march. The drawing was done with various markers and a red china marker. It took about ten minutes.

The sparrow calls

2012-02-08T23:13:00.000-05:00

Brilliant Laundry

2012-02-06T22:46:00.002-05:00

The vivid Italian sun against a house and its laundry in the village of Ponte a Mensola, a frazione on the eastern outskirts of Florence. I lived nearby, and often walked out to make sketches.

While I was making this one, a local man approached and started telling me about the stone quarries up the road in Settignano, and how Michelangelo swallowed the dust from the stone along with his mother's milk. I knew the story, but it sounds better served up with the spice of regional (or is it subregional?) patriotism.

The picture was made with pencil, gouache and watercolour in something less than an hour.

Jacki and Rob

2012-02-05T23:09:00.001-05:00

Drawn from life in about fifteen minutes, while listening to Nathaniel Merriweather. Good times.

Surrey Woods

2012-02-04T22:59:00.002-05:00

The woods in winter, in the Downs south of Guildford.

Tarragon has painted in these woods before, in the spring. I've also made a drawing of the same woods, and of a lonely man stopping at the crossroads in their midst.

sketchbook page

2012-02-02T16:43:00.001-05:00

Ah, it's February, the month of romance.

For anyone who's curious, here's what a warm-up page from my life-drawing sketchbook looks like:

Jason

2012-01-30T21:22:00.003-05:00

red shoes, and nudity

2012-01-29T22:33:00.000-05:00

Here's a bit more life drawing. Our model very kindly agreed to sit still for a lengthy pose. This picture took about 30 or 40 minutes, and was done with several different kinds of marker.

Convention calls for artist's models to be naked, but I'm always happier to see some brightly coloured clothing. Nonetheless, I'm ambivalent about the merits of lingerie in drawings. It compartmentalizes the figure in a way that makes drawing easier, and more visually complex, but on the other hand, because it's so close fitting, there's no disruption of the natural lines of the body, and the process of drawing remains very predictable. Clothing that has lines of its own is often more interesting.

Of course, clothing is interesting for another reason. As Kenneth Clark long ago observed, the state of nudity in art "takes the most sensual and immediately interesting object, the human body, and puts it out of reach of time and desire." A clothed body implies that a decision has been made about what to wear, and that in turn implies a personality.

Our model chose to keep on her shoes and stockings and panties and glasses; had she decided to be naked, she would have presented a very different aspect. Ironically, it would have been far less sexual. One of the reasons the convention of nudity still exists is because it allows us to use models as mere objects of art, or at least of art instruction, without the distraction of remembering that they are real people.

*He said it in The Nude: A Study in Ideal Form, Princeton: Princeton University Press, p.25. It's all very old news, but worth reiterating.

cafe sketchbook

2012-01-28T23:19:00.003-05:00

It's a Mickey Mouse bag.

Across the Horse-Jumping Fields

2012-01-27T22:49:00.001-05:00

A new landscape by Tarragon, showing us a portion of the village of Compton in winter. One of the most illuminating things about the English countryside is the tracery of footpaths, established by common law centuries old, that crisscrosses the farms and hills. Due to their origin as old peasant right of ways, the contours of the paths are often obscure.

In this picture, the trees on the hill to the left wreath the graveyard and the Watts Mortuary Chapel; another view can be seen here. To get to the chapel from the spot Tarragon painted from, a walker must trek several hundred metres to the right, traverse the trees to the right of the farm buildings and then travel along a sunken road to ascend the hill on its far side.

The system has its advantages. The town of Guildford, population 70,000, is a fifteen minute walk from the same spot. You would never know it.

the wise man sleeps alone

2012-01-26T22:24:00.000-05:00

Girl with pillow

2012-01-23T23:57:00.001-05:00

A picture drawn from life with a pencil, and coloured with acrylic paints.

Rachel

2012-01-22T22:32:00.000-05:00

A five minute pose, done with a china marker.

2 views in Venice

2012-01-20T23:12:00.001-05:00

A page from a small sketchbook I once carried in Venice. Above, the view down the canal from the entrance to the Guggenheim done with a marker; below, the Ponte dell'Academia, drawn in pencil.

greg

2012-01-19T16:47:00.001-05:00

iPad drawing: The Blue Plate

2012-01-18T16:46:00.001-05:00

There's a school of thought that holds that every still-life is a memento mori, whether the artist has included a skull or not. The idea is implicit in the French word for the genre, nature mort.

The thing about still-lives is that they're supposed to be still. But those done on the iPad are anything but. The colours are too lively, the strokes record every gesture of the artist's finger. And of course, in a literal sense, they are alive with the electricity that maintains the image on our screens.

Of course, in its original incarnation the still-life was about conspicuous consumption. What was best in life was for the sideboard to groan with gold and silver plate, a big side of bacon, and bones of your enemies. But if that wasn't possible, a painting of it made a good substitute.

iPad still-lives don't work exactly like that either. How exactly they do work is an open question.

Tarragon made this still-life using the brushes app on the iPad.

Winter likeness

2012-01-16T22:37:00.000-05:00

Two from the daily sketchbook, all wrapped up for winter.

At the bar

2012-01-15T23:42:00.001-05:00

The Bedford Academy in Toronto.

A Sazerac and Danielle, II

2012-01-14T17:49:00.000-05:00

And here's the original line drawing that served as the base for yesterday's picture. Not radically different, of course. Some may prefer the simplicity of the penwork. I'm a bit divided, myself.

It was done with fine tipped micron pens, plus some Copic brand brush markers for the boots and the hair. She had to sit still for quite a while; 40 minutes maybe. Which was enough time for at least three Sazeracs.

A Sazerac, and Danielle

2012-01-13T23:32:00.000-05:00

A fairly detailed life drawing, in which I failed to restrain my love of rendering clothing. I made the drink by way of bribing my model to keep still after a long day of clomping around in those boots.

For the purists out there, the Sazerac that day was made with bourbon, not rye, so it's not 100% authentic. But it was delicious.

I've been experimenting with photoshop of late. It's a bit too easy to go overboard with colour using the computer, so I've been conscientious about keeping it to a minimum. I'll post the original line drawing tomorrow.

Joan at the Christmas Party

2012-01-12T22:49:00.003-05:00

And a poinsettia, of course. It's a quick sketch from life. She was watching the antics of those who had consumed far more wine than she.

Jason stretches

2012-01-10T22:58:00.003-05:00

He's a yoga instructor. He's very good at stretching.

self-portrait

2012-01-08T22:07:00.000-05:00

Another old self-portrait, drawn with a china marker on heavily textured paper - you can see the vertical lines from the weave. I used a mirror to make the drawings in this series. Later on, I got my visual memory to the point where I could include the hand I was drawing with, but this is an early one.

It's visible how much younger I was when I made this. I'm wearing a random beret that I used to keep my hair under control, a jumper later stolen in a internet cafe in Florence, and an old cavalry gauntlet I found in the market in Piazza del Ciompi.

painting quickly in Verona

2012-01-07T23:53:00.000-05:00

Occasionally I set out to make an architectural watercolour without doing a drawing first. I'm of two minds as to whether this is a good idea or not.

I did this one in Verona a few years back:

It's a lot sketchier than I prefer.

The buildings are among the many gothic survivals in Verona. I did the painting in the Piazza del Erbe - the old market, as the name implies. Through the arch you can see one of the Scaliger tombs (Mastino's, if I recall correctly). These are among the most spectacular funerary art of the entire Gothic era, but for some reason are underrepresented in both the academic and tourist literature.

don't slouch so much, you look so pensive

2012-01-06T23:48:00.001-05:00

Drawn quickly from life with a china marker, while waiting around in a French train station. I felt like some colour so I added the overlay in photoshop.

The man with the strawberry

2012-01-04T15:22:00.002-05:00

It's a man, with a strawberry.

Drawn in under ten minutes with some markers and two colours of china marker.

cafe sketchbook

2012-01-03T23:23:00.001-05:00

you don't know the pseudonyms I've assumed

2012-01-02T20:59:00.000-05:00

Porphyria's Lover

2012-01-01T23:56:00.004-05:00

This beautiful painting by Tarragon is neither his first, nor his last, attack on Browning's great poem Porphyria's Lover. Another one is here. More are forthcoming.

It's a good sized oil, about five feet tall.

Recurrent motifs in the work of any artist often appear for reasons that are deeply personal and frankly obscure, even to the artist him or herself. I don't think Mikhail Vroubel could have explained his own obsession with Lermontov's Demon.

As for why Porphyria and her lover keep cropping up in Tarragon's work, to read the poem is to understand one possible answer. It's famous for a reason.

Perhaps another reason is the dictum of Edgar Allen Poe, undoubtedly known to Tarragon, that "the death of a beautiful woman… is unquestionably the most poetical topic in the world," especially if heard from "the lips… of a bereaved lover." Thus the impetus of The Raven, a poem even more famous than Porphyria.

Do we agree with Poe's rule?
Well, perhaps not. But certainly the pathos of loss is proportional to the value of what is lost, and without doubt, beauty is valuable.

Whether Poe read Porphyria I have no idea. He could have. It was collected in 1842, three years before The Raven. The two poems have some bombast in common, which we might charitably attribute to their near contemporaneity. The final lines of Porphyria, in which God says not a word, seem almost to invite in the Raven, through whom God says one word.

It's a pleasing conceit to imagine that Lenore and Porphyria were the same woman. One who had chosen a lover more muscular than the weepy protagonist of Poe's poem. As it turned out, she choose unwisely. Not, of course, that either poem is much concerned with women's choices. Indeed, a main subject of both poems is obsessive male possessiveness. Perhaps too of the painting above.

The quote is from Poe's Philosophy of Composition, which is certainly one of the most humorous documents in the history of artistic autobiography.

Pretty Good Year

2011-12-31T18:19:00.001-05:00

But now it's over. Sic transit omnia, I suppose.

Here's a picture, done near the beginning of another year. It was painted from life with acrylics on a layer of primed cardboard.

Pete

2011-12-30T22:16:00.002-05:00

Vitaleta

2011-12-29T22:46:00.000-05:00

The Vitaleta chapel gleams like a bevel-cut diamond amidst the greenery of the Val d'Orcia. It is not for nothing that it appears in so many tourist postcards. It is a small object, but so immaculate in its simplicity that to capture it in a drawing feels like an impossible task. I visited a few years back, and made several attempts, two of which you see here:

The mystery of the place is inversely proportional to its size. I gather that it was designed in 1884 by one Giuseppe Partini, who clearly possessed a knowledge of proportion not often displayed in 19th century architecture. Or indeed, anywhere since Leon Battista Alberti or Bramante. The question of where he acquired such knowledge might easily fuel a novel in the style of Umberto Eco.

I cycled by the site a few years ago, en route between Monte Amiata and Chiusi. As I arrived, I encountered a black-haired Italian PhD student who ushered me into the private property surrounding the chapel. She was there to measure precisely its entablature. I like to think she was searching for a code of some sort, concealed in the ratios of the construction. Maybe she was; we didn't talk about that.

Yes, I know I misspelled the name in my sketchbook.

undraped model, draped

2011-12-28T20:11:00.000-05:00

A drawing done from life with two markers and two china markers in about ten minutes.

Lithuanian Lancer

2011-12-27T21:34:00.001-05:00

Stephen Pinker recently argued that wars are obsolete, not least because they consume far more money and resources than they can possibly generate.

In the past, things were different. A good conquest might easily recoup the cost of war. What was more difficult was making good lost manpower. At the battle of Wagram, Napoleon won the War of the Fifth Coalition and made a good profit, but in the two days of combat he lost 34,000 men.

No surprise, then, that for new wars he recruited new armies from his various conquered territories. Many were happy to serve. In Poland, for example, Napoleon could plausibly pose as a liberator from Russian overlordship.

The same was true in Lithuania, which had not been an independent country since it merged with Poland in 1569. But its people, as phlegmatic and mournful as any in Eastern Europe, still had dreams. And so Napoleon had a regiment of Lithuanian Lancers during his famous war against Russia. Their fate is illustrated in this early classic of the visual representation of quantitative data.

Here's a drawing of a Lithuanian Lancer of 1812, in the regulation uniform. My colour notes are attached, but as you can see, it never made it past the pencil stage.

I had the time of my life

2011-12-26T21:28:00.000-05:00

A Christmas Card

2011-12-24T17:14:00.002-05:00

I made this screen-print for the Open Studio's Christmas fundraiser a few years back. It's based on a china-maker drawing of Danielle from the daily sketchbook.

Spleen and Ideal

2011-12-23T09:49:00.000-05:00

Christopher Logue is dead

2011-12-21T07:56:00.000-05:00

My favourite of the old grumpy poets of the world died this month; one of my favourite poets altogether, in fact. He was a man of conspicuous faults, but he also wrote War Music. If mad science engineered the love child of Sergei Eisenstein and Ezra Pound, Logue's rendition of the Iliad is what he would shout out (to general ridicule) in your favourite public square.

The obituary in the Guardian tells us a final instalment of War Music was in preparation when he died. I can only hope some venturesome editor at Faber and Faber will be able to assemble whatever fragments exist. Hopefully with a title as pithy as All Day Permanent Red.

The picture is a marker and acrylic painting on an eight by ten inch canvas.

By the light of the Eurostar

2011-12-20T10:01:00.002-05:00

Art in the age of mechanical transportation allows for some interesting variations. Tarragon is today in Paris, sipping mulled wine in the Tuileries, so here are some French landscapes he has recently painted, inspired by views glimpsed from the window of the Eurostar.

They are small oil paintings, eight by ten inches, and were recently on display at The Other Art Fair in London, England. Some other paintings by Tarragon from that venue can be seen here.

The harbour at dawn

2011-12-19T10:30:00.000-05:00

An early 20th century harbour on the Great Lakes - possibly on Lake Huron. Alongside the quay, two schooners. The white hull in front may be a private yacht, while the darker vessel was one of the many trade ships still in operation at the beginning of the century.

It's a tiny acrylic painting - only four by six inches - done on canvas. Private collection.

just another student...

2011-12-18T13:42:00.000-05:00

...flummoxed by organic chemistry.

vicolo di ferro

2011-12-16T22:45:00.003-05:00

A view down an alleyway - the vicolo di Ferro - of an old shrine. Or apparently old. In fact, it dates only to the 19th century, which in Florence counts as recent, or even modern.

Vast quantities of fake-medieval adorn the richer parts of western Europe. In some areas, such as London, Paris or Carcassonne, there is more of it than the genuine article.

It's nice enough to look at, but it represents an obvious danger for the conscientious medievalist. After a while, you start to question every crenellation or lancet window.

On the up side, the fun of the detective work is sometimes worth the price of admission.

la culotte rouge

2011-12-15T21:03:00.001-05:00

A life drawing done with three markers in about 20 minutes.

catherine considers

2011-12-13T16:13:00.004-05:00

Angry Naked Man

2011-12-12T14:42:00.000-05:00

A life drawing in marker, done in about ten minutes.

Montaubon

2011-12-10T17:27:00.001-05:00

Some years ago I visited the small, russet-coloured town of Montaubon. My objective there was to visit the Jean-Dominique Ingres museum. It was a disappointment. Its contents - donated by his widow to his hometown - consist of the leavings of his studio and various other bits and pieces he was unable to sell.

None, in short, of the fabulous portrait drawings that make up his most interesting body of work. Nor any of the great paintings either.

But the trip was not a waste. Just a bit north of Toulouse, Montaubon is likewise built entirely from the pinkish-red local brick, and is quite beautiful. My favourite spot was the place de ville, a square courtyard completely enclosed by a double arcade that lent it a homey, almost claustrophobic, appeal.

A good place to hide from the afternoon sun, and one in which people were constantly appearing and disappearing, as if by magic, behind the many columns.

I made this etching of it at the Open Studio in Toronto. It's approximately nine by six inches, and printed on 140lb. Somerset cotton-rag paper, in an edition of forty. My main interest in the composition was in capturing the sharpness of the afternoon sun.

self-portrait...

2011-12-09T18:51:00.001-05:00

...with china marker in hand. I was much younger when I did this.

Asleep on the job

2011-12-08T23:49:00.001-05:00

Although the job is really just hanging around in the study area, apparently.

The advantages of flexibilty

2011-12-07T18:20:00.001-05:00

A quick contortion on a summer's day.

I often find I don't like complicated poses, especially those that involve a lot of stretching. In part it's because drawing is one step removed from reality, and attention can often focus not on the drawing, but on the gap between representation and real life. If we see something wrong in any representation, we are inclined to attribute a problem to the drawing, or painting, etc., instead of accepting our surprise at an outlandish contortion.

Also, our ability to understand representation depends a lot on what we're used to. What one admires as an example of the contortionist's art when seen in real life becomes in a drawing - because it's unfamiliar - simply a confused mess.

All of which sounds a bit defensive. It doesn't need to be. The drawing above is quite simple.

Results are in

2011-12-06T17:52:00.001-05:00

Tea is serious business

2011-12-05T21:44:00.001-05:00

Two views of the same model, each drawn in two minutes. Some models are particularly talented at striking and holding facial expressions, and Steve is one of them.

A view of rain over water

2011-12-04T21:18:00.001-05:00

The rain over the Lago di Garda, painted very quickly one day in May.

I always struggle with this sort of thing. My instinct is to give everything hard edges, which is why my favourite pictures tend to be Austrian expressionists or ukiyo-e prints, not Camille Pissarro or Toni Onley. But it's impossible to resist a soft misty morning, or the indeterminate way rain advances. And so I make watercolours like this one, which can't decide whether to respect its outlines, or just splash all over them.

Time for a drag

2011-12-03T16:27:00.001-05:00

Taking a break from a drawing session.

On Via Montalbano

2011-12-02T18:06:00.001-05:00

I walked up into the hills east of Florence and found a small castle, now converted into an apartment building. This is the driveway.

Are you satisfied?

2011-11-30T22:02:00.001-05:00

Drawing on the iPad

2011-11-28T23:34:00.001-05:00

I made a drawing of Tarragon drawing on the iPad. It was done last May, while we were hanging around at Katherine's flat in Islington. The iPad was new at that point; I think this was the drawing he made.

My drawing was made with a brush pen and some red china marker. It took 30-40 minutes.

truth or stare

2011-11-27T22:14:00.001-05:00

Inez de Castro sketch

2011-11-25T18:19:00.001-05:00

A sketch for a new drawing depicting the legend of Inez de Castro. It's a story replete with murder, revenge, desecration, and over-the-top violence. Which is everything I want from a medieval tale.

In the sketch, the lords of Lisboa pay homage to the dead body of Inez, overlooked by the "king still young there beside her." The words are Ezra Pound's, from his Canto XXX.

The drawing is in pencil, and photographed rather than scanned, so please forgive the image quality.

Hopefully less time will elapse between this sketch and the finished version than between the early version and complete drawing of Eurydice, Eurydice.

Woman with Hat

2011-11-24T17:30:00.001-05:00

A small linocut.

cafe sketchbook

2011-11-20T20:16:00.001-05:00

Il castello di Frosini

2011-11-19T17:03:00.001-05:00

A very small etching that I recently made at the Open Studio in Toronto. It's just over an inch tall.

There's a certain pleasure in miniaturization. I've always wondered if it's the same enjoyment we take in high-density imagery, such as Russian icons or paintings by Klimpt - the sense of too much information crammed into too little space can be very enticing.

In any case, I starting making the tiny landscapes because there's often no time for a larger drawing, especially when you're cycling across Tuscany.

This scene is of the castle and small hamlet of Frosini (population: 45) in the Province of Siena. It rests on the flank of the low mountains dividing two fertile river valleys. The road in the picture has, with various pavements, served as Siena's main link to the sea for over a thousand years. In short, exactly where you would expect to find a castle, and indeed, it first appears in history in an 11th century document.

A century or so later it belonged to the Knights Templar, and then to the city of Siena. These days, it's privately owned. I'd love to see the inside of the castle.

research beckons

2011-11-17T17:30:00.001-05:00

Academics pondering hard.

Tattoo Design: Nec Spe, Nec Metu

2011-11-16T23:17:00.001-05:00

A restrained and deliberately classisizing design for a tattoo, derived from an intarsia panel I once saw in the church of San Miniato al Monte in Florence.

The Latin text, on the other hand, I encountered in a monastery in Parma, where it formed part of the decoration painted by Correggio in the Camera di San Paolo. It was the personal motto of that incredible megabitch of the Italian renaissance, Isabella d'Este.

The lines come from Cicero, who observed that the magistrates of Rome should be overcome neque terror nec vis, nec spes nec metus, nec promissa nec minae, nec tela nec faces, i.e. neither by terror nor violence, neither hope nor fear, nor promises or threats, nor arms or fire.

The phrase has been used ever since to characterize individuals of power and authority. Isabella, herself a ruling duchess, certainly possessed both qualities. Whether she lived up to the motto is another story.

The Public Viewing

2011-11-15T23:47:00.001-05:00

The Tree on the Heath

2011-11-14T22:29:00.001-05:00

That little tree, lonely as a monk on a beach, reminds us that in life perfection is inversely proportional to its duration. Which is a traditional enough theme in recent landscape art. One might think of Kawase Hasui, or Anselm Kiefer.
The green of the tree may signify a sliver of hope in bleak times, as in Casper David Friedrich's Winter Landscape. But it is equally possible that its denuded branches are telling us that hope is fleeting.

From such equivocations art is made.

And therefore, a poem by Bashō:

This autumn -
why am I growing old?
bird disappearing among clouds.

Antonella in Rome

2011-11-13T23:01:00.001-05:00

Well, in a bed in a hotel in Rome.

Keyhole Session: Medusa

2011-11-12T19:03:00.001-05:00

Why not another picture from this week's Keyhole Session?

It's Medusa, post transformation. Still looking pretty, snakes notwithstanding. But the model did do an excellent job of conveying a suitable degree of creepy fierceness.

In reality, her lipstick was a not-very-vivid bluish black. But had I left it that colour, the octopus (or is it Cthulhu?) tattoo would have been the focus of the composition, and we can't have that. If I'd had time for the other dozen tattoos and scarification things might have been different.

Slumber more sweet than toil

2011-11-11T20:52:00.001-05:00

Keyhole Session: The Unexpected Present

2011-11-10T23:12:00.001-05:00

Earlier this week I dropped in at the monthly Keyhole Session here in Toronto. It had a classical theme, with the models dressed (well, undressed) as Athena, Perseus and Medusa. Good fun all round.

The pose in this drawing was supposed to be Athena transfiguring Medusa into her new hideous form, but it somehow lacked the severity the scene calls for. Nor did she become very hideous.

(Mind you, the repulsiveness of Medusa is a vexed question. The ugly face originally had an apotropaic function, but a host of (male) artists and poets seem to have decided that she remained pretty after Athena's curse, in a snakes-for-hair kind of way. Although not in Clash of the Titans.)

A nice composition, anyway. It was fifteen minutes long, which is never enough for me to finish two figures.

Asleep and dreaming

2011-11-09T23:28:00.001-05:00

Sometimes your model falls asleep. In would be a sin not to take advantage of the opportunity.

As you can see, it's an old drawing. Sometimes I wonder whether I've improved at all...

study time

2011-11-06T23:29:00.002-05:00

At the library of St.Michael's College, Toronto.

Castel di Poggio

2011-11-05T18:28:00.003-04:00

Another castle, this time in the hills overlooking Florence. It's a private residence, and difficult to approach. I was walking up to Fiesole on a drear November day, and took a break to make this sketch.

This one might be another entry in a hypothetical book of boring castles. I'd buy it.

Portrait of a young art historian

2011-11-04T12:48:00.001-04:00

Château de Lourmarin

2011-11-02T23:51:00.001-04:00

Castles are one of those things that should be interesting. Evocative, mysterious, foreboding. Things like that.

But they speckle the landscape of Europe like ants at a family picnic. Inevitably, some of them are boring.

The Château de Lourmarin is one of the boring ones. Despite its location in one of France's most ostentatiously charming villages, there is really nothing engaging about it. It has a vague association with King Rene of Provence - who was an intriguing man - but he had many castles, most of which are more distinguished than this one.

For those who like medieval things, I should note that it was founded in the 12th century to guard the pass between the greater and smaller Luberon massifs. But the oldest extant fabric dates from 1475, and the renaissance embellishments from the 1520s. There was a further, extensive, restoration in the 1920s, on the part of one Robert Laurent-Vibert, a cosmetics magnate, who perished in an automobile accident before he had time to enjoy his private castle. These days it's a museum. I visited a few years back.

There is another drawing of the castle, with attendant village, here.

Take a shot

2011-11-01T23:04:00.000-04:00

Keyhole Session: The Sibyl

2011-10-31T19:39:00.000-04:00

A Sibyl or some other pagan witch, looming out of the underworld, rests her hand on the shoulder of a nubile shade.

The drawing was done from life at a Keyhole Session in Toronto last June. I made a few interpretive modifications and found I had a chthonic figure from classical antiquity; whether she's a Sibyl or Medea or someone else I leave up to the viewer. Either way, it's suitable for Halloween.

I visited the Cave of the Cumean Sibyl some years ago. Archaeology cannot, of course, uncover the dwelling of a fictional character, but the place is evocative enough without her, and for her.

Matt

2011-10-30T22:54:00.003-04:00

Another life drawing, this time done with a china marker in ten minutes or so. As so often happens, I decided the carpet was as interesting as the naked body. Or perhaps that the naked body was more interesting with a carpet.

kim

2011-10-29T19:00:00.005-04:00

Sometimes coffee is not enough.

Mortal things touch my thoughts.

2011-10-27T16:05:00.000-04:00

The Aeneid I.461-62:

En Priamus! Sunt hic etiam sua praemia laudi,
Sunt lacrimae rerum, et mentem mortalia tangunt.

A ten minute life drawing.

False Outline

2011-10-26T17:39:00.001-04:00

A model on the stand, rendered from life using a china marker and watercolours. She looks rather pensive, but that's the usual "concentrating on holding still" expression you see in so many pictures.

Marcus

2011-10-25T16:27:00.001-04:00

The Bleak Shore

2011-10-24T23:58:00.000-04:00

For some years in the early 2000s, Tarragon lived in Halifax. Its rather bleak topography served for several landscape paintings. Or seascapes, as in this oil painting of an unladen container-ship passing the oil refinery on the north shore of Halifax Harbour.

It's one of my favourites of Tarragon's landscapes. The economy of the composition serves to suggest both the vast danger of the natural world, which multiplies beyond our capacity to grasp, and how heavily humanity's hand lies upon it.

"In the beginning, sometimes I left messages in the street."

2011-10-22T23:26:00.004-04:00

That's what was on the cover of the novel I was reading at the time.

The wild geese at Loseley

2011-10-21T15:15:00.001-04:00

I was sitting at a bench in the grounds of Loseley Manor, a Tudor pile a few minutes from where I was staying in Surrey, when towards me came a herd of foraging geese. They were an irresistible subject.