Tag Archives: drawing

“Keeping Busy”

Posted on March 17, 2019 by JMN

I remember … what my teacher said [about a tree study]. “Your tree is beautiful, Sarah, but I don’t know what an art director is going to do with that tree.” No matter, no mind. I was on my own … Continue reading →

Posted in Quotations | Tagged | Leave a comment

Miguel Covarrubias

Posted on February 11, 2019 by JMN

Born in Mexico City in 1904, Covarrubias was a member of Kahlo’s inner circle — a highly sociable workaholic, painter, anthropologist, teacher, writer and sometime curator — who had a chameleonic talent for drawing. He would illustrate his own books … Continue reading →

Posted in Quotations | Tagged | Leave a comment

Pierre Puvis de Chavannes

Posted on February 5, 2019 by JMN

He was especially admired by Seurat and Gauguin, and also Cézanne, and later, Matisse and Picasso as well as the perennially underestimated American Maurice Prendergast. In their works and that of many others, you’ll find different combinations of Puvis’s carefully … Continue reading →

Posted in Anthology, Quotations | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Draw It, Remember It

Posted on January 18, 2019 by JMN

In other words, drawing out the things we want to remember can be a powerful technique to combat our natural declines in memory, better even than repeatedly writing them down or listing characteristics and descriptors. (Tim Herrera, “A Simple Way … Continue reading →

Posted in Commentary | Tagged | 4 Comments

The Dry Heaves

Posted on December 5, 2018 by JMN

I picked up a colored marker, a sketchpad, and sat down. I looked around the room for a shape, a blade of light, a shadow, an assonance, a blur, something to trigger a spasm in my drawing hand and stain … Continue reading →

Posted in Commentary | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Airport

Posted on November 25, 2018 by JMN

(c) 2018 JMN.

Posted in Commentary | Tagged | Leave a comment

Trying to figure markers out

Posted on November 25, 2018 by JMN

When you try to add color, they insist on making a line. Is that how they get their name?! This project is definitely up hill. Maybe just try black and white for a while. Can do virtually no image editing … Continue reading →

Posted in Commentary | Tagged , | 2 Comments

“Cream-colored Screams”

Posted on November 8, 2018 by JMN

“I swear if I had to do this over again, I would just do the paintings and never show them,” [Twombly] said in a 1994 profile in Vogue. “I was brought up to think you don’t talk about yourself. I … Continue reading →

Posted in Quotations | Tagged , | 1 Comment

“Two Different Paths into the Distance”

Posted on October 21, 2018 by JMN

Challenged to create work that could travel back to the States, Twombly created a series of wall hangings made from brightly colored fabrics. None of these works survive today, but in pictures of them, it is clear how Twombly is … Continue reading →

Posted in Quotations | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Leonardo’s Weird Faces

Posted on October 7, 2018 by JMN

[All images are from Frank Zöllner, “Leonardo da Vinci: The Complete Paintings and Drawings,” Taschen] [Leonardo’s] drawings often of men and women with strangely deformed or exaggerated features — which he called “visi mostruosi,” or “monstrous faces,” and which scholars … Continue reading →

Posted in Quotations | Tagged | 2 Comments