Remember this picture that I said was unfinished? It was supposed to be a picture called The Stag in Snow. But I was always reluctant to dab the snowflakes on over top of the picture I basically felt was good the way it was. So, I have experimented with art editing programs to the point of putting snow flakes into the picture without risking spoiling the original with blobs of white paint.
I successfully added snowflakes to the blue background. I couldn’t help but feel like it is a starry night in the background rather than snowfall. And so I saved this product separately before continuing to experiment.
The final product faithfully carried out my original plan. And it does look like a rather mechanical snowfall. But I don’t like it as much as I like the starry background step. It makes me truly glad that I did not put white paint on the original. I would be happy to have your opinion in the comments. Of course that is also a tricky way to make you reveal whether you are actually reading the words of this post or just looking at the pictures.
There is a link above to a book of essays that takes some pains to describe life as a writer, artist, and all-around far-too-creative idiot.
Yesterday, on Friday the Thirteenth, we went to the Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth. My parents, both in their eighties, took us there in a week-long celebration of Dorin’s graduation from high school. It was a worthy thing. Unlike most kids, my three are not bored to apoplexy by art museums. In fact, for most of the exhibitions, they traveled at my heels. It seems I know enough about art to fascinate them. All three of them are amateur artists themselves.
The Amon Carter Museum is centered on old Mr. Carter’s collection of the paintings of Frederick Remington and Charles Russell.
Remington was an adventurer and story-teller. He was also a sculptor with a gift for creating action-filled scenes in bronze. The Bronco Buster, the statue pictured here, is on prominent display in the foyer of the museum. It is one of Remington’s first, and one of his best known (in large part due to the Amon Carter Collection). The painting that follows was used as an illustration for one of his western stories. Remington wrote western novels, articles about the west, and factual essays about Native Americans. He had actually lived with Indians for a while and did a lot to lend credibility to everything he wrote about them. He didn’t save them from the depredations of the white man, but then, who could have done that? His nighttime scene is ultra-realistic and you can learn a lot about Indians just by studying the picture.
Russell came after Remington by a few years, but he was a contemporary and an admirer of Remington’s work. Russell is also an artist of intricate detail and accuracy, having also studied Indians from inside their villages and camps. The Silk Robe painting shown below and exhibited at the Carter reveals detailed knowledge of curing a buffalo hide that only could have come from watching the process in real life. He also did bronze sculpture and watercolor paintings along with his fantastic oil paintings. In fact, in his day, Russell was considered a sculptor who also paints. I don’t know how you can look at his cowboy art and still believe that. He is a truly masterful painter.
You’ll have to forgive me for taking a break from the usual humor blog, but I have an overwhelming love for art and painting, and this museum visit put an Indian arrow right through my silly old heart.
Drawing people with no clothes on is something I actually learned to do in college. Even more ironic is the fact that I was still suffering a nude-o-phobia at the time due to being traumatized by a sexual assault at age ten that had been a repressed memory until the year before I took the anatomy drawing class with live nude models. It was not a class full of guys since you had to have made high grades in three previous levels of drawing classes. There were only three other males in the class, and none of them were significantly more secure in their own nakedness than I was. Virgins all. (What do you expect from male art majors?) But it began my journey into drawing nudes and eventually becoming a nudist.
Drawing a nude figure in a work of art, whether by painting, drawing with a pencil, colored pencils, or digital art on a computer, is an essential step to creating believable figures even after you put clothing on them. Anatomical correctness in structure and proportions are far more realistic when originally drawn by your practiced hand as a nude figure. My mother noted when watching me paint that the pencil drawing underneath looked like a naked body until clothed by a rendering of a body covering, even if I was working from a model or photo that was fully clothed. Being a modest Methodist she often asked if I intended to draw clothes on before painting, which I usually did… especially on pictures painted at home where she would see.
When I am intentionally drawing a nudist picture, I will depict an activity that I enjoy doing in the nude myself. The figure, a male figure, represents me. I do tend to depict myself as an innocent child rather than a fat old man with a beard. I also draw nude girls, usually in the age of innocence, because I don’t have any reason to do porn. And drawing nudes helps me immensely with my own positive body image problem.
Pictures of nudists do not need to reveal sexual features. I don’t particularly enjoy drawing genitals. And the idea of the picture usually does not require those things to be in the picture.
Sometimes the theme of the picture is intended to be humorous. Streaking back in the 1970s always got a lot of laughs, as well as evil looks from old church ladies.
Fairy nudity is also usually given a pass. Why would tiny magical creatures really need clothes?
Some pictures evoke memories of camping, Something we did as a family every summer in the 60s and 70s, though never in the nude… except in my imagination.
And of course, some pictures need to exist simply because the human body is inherently beautiful.
All of this is talked about in the essay I wrote about it in book form on Amazon. It goes into much greater detail with many more illustrations.
I was born an artist. It has to be developed and nurtured and practiced over time to become what it can truly be, but artistic talent is something you are born with, and there is a genetic aspect to it. Great Aunt Viola could draw and paint. She produced impressive art during her lifetime. My father can draw. He has demonstrated ability a number of times, though he never developed it. Both my brother and I can draw and have done a lot of it. All three of my children can draw and paint. My daughter, the Princess, even wants to pursue a career in graphic design and animation.
One of the factors that weighs heavily on a career in art is the starving artist factor. To be a serious artist, you have to study art in great detail. You need lots of practice, developing not only pencil-pushing prowess, but having an artist’s eyeball, that way of seeing that twists and turns the artist’s subject to find the most novel and interesting angle. It takes a great deal of time. And if you are doing this alone, you are responsible also for building your own following and marketing your own work and creating your own brand. You need to be three people in one and do this while potentially not being able to make any money at all for it. I have taught myself to do the art part, but I paid the bills with something else I loved to do, teaching English to hormone-crazed middle-schoolers.
An important part of art is what you have to sacrifice to do it.
Many artists become alcoholics, drug users, or suicidal manic-depressives. There is an artistic sort of PTSD. Doing real art costs a lot because it alters your lifestyle, your mental geography, and your spiritual equilibrium. Depending on how much of yourself you put into it, it can use you up, leaving no “you” left within you.
I am not trying to leave you with the impression that I mean to scare you into not wanting to be an artist. For many reasons it is a great thing to be. But it is a lot like whether you are born gay or straight… or somewhere in between. The choice is not entirely up to you. You can only control what you do with the awful gift of art once it is given to you. And that is a serious choice to make. Me, I have to draw. I have to tell stories. My life and well-being depend on it. It is the only way I can be me.
One of the most important things about my blog has been that I can share my artwork. I have always been capable of a reasonably high level of drawing ability. I can also paint and create artistically original photographs. I have that artist’s eye that sees creatively. If you follow directions in this first Paffooney, you will see a wider variety of the kind of Paffoonies I post than I will post here. This will be, however, a picture post. I intend to share a bunch of my artwork here, both old and new. Take a gander. (And while you hold on to that male goose, look at some of my pictures, too.)
You have to admit that I am clearly not an artist like Van Gogh or Picasso… certainly nothing like Andrew Wyeth or Winslow Homer. I am more of an illustrator, or … worse, a cartoonist.
So, this is at least partially about sharing artwork. I am not a professional artist. I have made no money from drawing, even though my artwork has been published before. I have been given this talent by God not to be famous and wealthy, but to be a better teacher and a better storyteller.
Being a sort of amateur artist with extremely artistical tendencies, I naturally love to paint. My daughter also likes to paint. So one way to combine our love for sloshing colors on stuff with paint brushes with our love for playing nerdy role-playing games like Dungeons and Dragonsis to buy and paint our own miniatures to play with in the game. I used to do this a lot when I was a single goofer with time and money on my hands, so I have boxes and boxes of painted little people and little critters made out of lead or pewter or plastic.
When doing these dastardly deeds of nerdling paintery to little metal people, we have to choose how we are going to go about it. Different paints work in different ways. I like to use brightly colored enamels like the Testors stuff I have used since the 1960’s. The Princess prefers acrylic because it is less permanently messy. Once you laminate your fingertips with enamel, you have to wear blue and green and brown on your hands in school for most of a week as it wears off. Acrylic is less socially mortifying, in that it is removed more easily as a water-based paint. Even after it dries on your hands, it still comes off with a little scrubbing and you don’t have to use turpentine.
Finding new figures to paint is not as easy as it once was. You used to be able to locate such things easily in the nearest comic book shop or game shop. Hobby Lobby and Michael’s used to have sections where you could find the figures as well as the paints. Now that those things are becoming extinct and increasingly rare, you have to take advantage of serendipity. We discovered a magically preserved and timeless game shop in a dying mall next to the movie theater where we recently went to watch Jumanji. I bought the elves above in that shop from the young elf running the place all by himself. An elf bard with a fiddle and bow, and another elf with a crossbow. I also found two exquisite sculpts of children which I haven’t even removed from the card yet. All that is left to do now is argue over who is going to paint what. And that can be a difficult thing. I am older and cannier than her, but she outweighs me by ten pounds. The decision has not been made yet.
I am finishing this essay on painting nerdling painter-deeds with a look at two finished works from my glorious nerd-painting past. Ganser the Wizard of Gansdorf is actually painted in acrylic, while Anya the Amazon is painted in enamel. I did them both in the 1980’s. We shall soon see if I can still do as good as I used to do. And if the Princess can match me or surpass me. It is not actually a contest, but I still hope I win.
These are a couple of unfinished Acrylic paintings awaiting the opportunity to complete them. One is a pair of Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders. No mystery about that. I live in the Dallas area, and I’m a male creature with eyes. The other is about a Native American story-teller and the tale he is telling his grandson. It will be mostly about pattern and design when I am finished. I am not fond of the opaque nature of Acrylic paint, so I need to use it differently than I do oil.
Catch a Falling Star 