Start with an Eye

I don’t know if it’s the heat, or facing another rapidly-approaching birthday or what, but I’ve been in a foul temper of late, finding it difficult to be grateful for anything.  I hate when I get like this! 

However…

…to distract myself from my grumpy state of being, I am turning to art.  Rather, I am trying to learn a new art form – illustration and watercolors.  While cruising the Internet for info on an unrelated matter, I followed several links to various sites until I stumbled across a silly-looking bird drawing that made me laugh out loud, a loud, long and joyful laugh, like I used to have when I was a kid.  (I have no idea how I ended up at that site, but I’m glad I did.  Oh.  I guess I am grateful for something, after all.)

The artist is Carla Sonheim.  She’s written a couple of books I now have in my library: Drawing and Painting Imaginary Animals and Drawing Lab for Mixed Media Artists: 52 Creative Exercises to Make Drawing Fun.

Just perusing the first one had me in stitches, my fingers itching to grab paper, pencils and ink to see if I could make silliness happen for myself.  I’m no Sonheim, to be sure, but I had a blast.  Each drawing has a story that came together as I finished adding ink lines.

Carla advises us to start with an eye.  I love the eyes on her blobimals (blob-animals), which are not that easy to accomplish – leastwise, not for me.  Here’s my first attempt.

(This eye belonged to an alligator that had been trained by the US Navy to retrieve underwater explosive devices [UEDs, for short] and take them out to sea where they would be detonated away from ships.  This gator was the slowest one in his class, and didn’t remember he was to spit it out when he reached the destination.  The alligators were supposed to drop the UED, then swim to the reward buoy, where they’d receive a whole turkey.)

Another technique I tried is blind contour drawing, though I think it’s called something else.  You close your eyes, pencil to paper and begin drawing a shape – animal or plant or anything.  Some of Carla's funniest looking creatures started out unintentional; no particular form in mind.  Alejandro was my first attempt. 

Carla states there are a lot of three-legged dogs in her neighborhood.  Same in mine, evidently.  Our minds seem to forget that fourth leg!  (Alejandro is a Chihuahua.  He lives on a Basque sheep ranch in Wyoming.  Alejandro weighs about five pounds/two kilos and is the prime herd dog for his owner.  In fact, he is the only remaining sheep dog.  Sheep ate the others, and tried to take Alejandro down, but he escaped…with his attacker’s nose.  Since that event, the sheep give him a wide berth whenever he enters their pens.)

Next blind contour was intended to be a cat.  By the time I finished drawing the features (my eyes open, though not much better), it resembled neither a cat nor a dog, but made me think of a fox.  Meet Reggie. 

(Reggie is a ladies’ man, a smooth operator, a cunning fellow.  His sartorial style is the envy of all canids the world over.  A rakish devil, Reggie has been divorced nineteen times and is the father of 37 kits.)

Next, I tried letting watercolors flow into quasi-animal shapes, trying to keep a loose hand, as Carla suggests in her bird tutorial.  My first one was too wet and colors flowed everywhere.  In addition, I thought the first color I used was too watery, but it turned out not watery enough.  It dried much more opaque than hers did.  This is Gloria, a Vegas fan dancer.  Not happy with the results – overworked, tried to ‘think’ the results instead of just letting things happen naturally.

(Gloria is from Chile, originally.  She was brought to the US by magazine-magnate, ex-society-prison-inmate Martha Stewart to be one of the breeder hens for Stewart’s planned “Easter Egg” line of chickens, the name of which she would copyright and sue anyone who dared refer to the birds in writing, or even just say the name out loud.  Remember, “It’s a good thing”?  Gloria ran away from Stewart’s farm when Stewart went to prison.  Gloria held a variety of jobs [nanny to a nest of copperheads, her least favorite] before landing in Vegas, where the green hue of her feathers made her a natural for the chorus line – no expensive costumes needed, you see.  In the drawing above, Gloria stepped on a sequin and did an unexpected split, causing all the other girls to collide with each other, many of whom fell off the stage and into the audience...of a convention of weasels from Manhattan.)

Finally, there’s Charlie.  With this one, I followed Carla’s bird tutorial closely.  I thinned the color, wiped the brush tip to remove the excess and just let the color go where it would.  I changed colors and added the rear end of another bird, to create the illusion that Charlie was in a flock of birds.  Then, unfortunately, I gilded the lily.  Carla flicks additional color onto her backgrounds to give texture to the painting.  I picked up some lovely brown color and tapped the brush against my finger.

Oops!  Brown blobs fell across the beautiful bird shape I had just carefully created.  Drat!

I thought the painting was ruined, until I turned it around and around, as Carla teaches, to see if anything else ‘appears’.  That’s when I knew how to finish the drawing after the blobs dried.

  (Charlie was flying back east to visit his brothers and sisters, but couldn’t afford first-class accommodations.  He ended up in coach, at the end of a long line of grasshopper-eating pigeons.  Charlie vowed he’d never again fly coach, with pigeons, or eat grasshoppers!)

If any of you like to draw, or just want some silliness in your lives, I recommend Carla Sonheim’s web site and her books. (The only payment I've received for this unsolicited recommendation is the laughter and joyfulness found therein.)

(Edited because of grandson.  7-21-2-13)