Molly At The Window

I’ve discovered that the blinds are going to be both the beauty and beast of this piece! I can’t draw them straight enough freehand, and yet if I make them with a hard lead and a straight edge, they’ll look too perfect. After a hour or so of feeling like I couldn’t win at getting these little details drawn properly, I stumbled on a combination of straight edge, battery powered eraser, hard lead, and a little grace from the Powers that Be that worked well enough. I can use what I have here as a base for what I need to draw.

The mood of this piece is “waiting” and “calm” and those delicate feelings are conveyed by the shadows the blinds cast. Because the blinds are a link in the chain of events that cause the mood, they’re very important and must be drawn with just the perfect touch. Too much emphasis on perfection and they become like the bars of a jail, too little and they recede into the background and emotional power of the mood is broken by an inconsistency that catches the eye like a sharp hook.

Molly In The Window

Here’s the current progress on my miniature drawing of Molly the cat. If you’re screen resolution is 1280 x 800, you’re seeing this drawing at about actual size.

After creating a light line drawing on my paper, I brushed value into the background because it’s easier to create a soft edged texture, like Molly’s fur, over a background that’s already there rather than the other way around. Then I hatched in Molly, even though the background is not completely done.

Because I’m working from such a contrasty photo reference, I’ll have to carefully balance values as I work, playing the background values against Molly’s until they look like some version of reality. I suspect the reality I come up with will be somewhere between what I actually saw and what the reference shows me now.

I love this drawing already. I hope I can honor it by drawing it well.

Molly In The Window Photo

I’m getting ready to begin a new drawing using this fairly awful photo of my cat Molly. The shadows are completely black in this version, but I’m able to pull some detail out of them by manipulating “curves” in Photoshop. If all else fails, I’ll have to get Molly to pose for me again. (And let me tell you, that’s way more easier said than done!)

My main obstacle in getting started on this small piece, I’ll draw it at about the size you see it here, is that I’m out of the habit of drawing every morning! I was setting aside some time every morning for drawing over the winter, but got off track when I had to shift gears and throw myself into creating a new drawing lesson. Somehow my personal drawing time got lost in the shuffle.

I’m not a schedule freak, and tend to think they’re made to be broken, but they sure do help me get things done. Housework, exercising, and my precious personal art time all flourish under the influence of reasonably managed time. Tonight I’ll get all the little pre-drawing steps done so I can easily step back into my old drawing schedule tomorrow morning.

I love to take off my glasses (I’m very near sighted) and draw about six inches from my nose, and I love to use very finely pointed leads to create tiny detail. I can work like this for hours and feel refreshed afterwards. This kind of drawing feels very intimate to me, like it’s part of who I am. I was born to be a miniaturist!

I’ve been struggling to understand why I don’t embrace this knowledge about myself. After all, it’s nothing to be ashamed of. Is it? Well, yes, as a matter of fact it was something to be ashamed of when I was in college. Those were very formative years for my art. I listened to and absorbed all the ideas I heard in my art classes during those years and what I heard over and over again was that only “big” art was good art. Drawings had to be large and quickly made, and they were only studies for even bigger things. This was during the 70’s and there was simply no room for small refined art.

To tell you the truth, I thought I was a failure as an artist and I became an apprentice jeweler after college instead of pursuing fine art or teaching. Good old Abe taught me all about goldsmithing and carving wax and everyone appreciated my ability to create tiny detail. Looking back, I think I took that job to prove my abilities had value.

I’m revisiting this issue once again because I have several drawing ideas queued up and waiting to be drawn, and they’re starting to get impatient! I don’t want to make these drawings miniature out of expediency, though, I want to make them miniatures because that’s how I draw best. I think I owe these ideas my very best.