by Marty Coleman | Jul 27, 2024 | Sketchbook History Tour |
I love drawing pregnant people. I don’t get the chance to draw them from life very often but I make them up regularly in my sketchbook. Obviously the round shape of the belly is a perfect design element because of it’s shape but it’s so much more than that. One of the main reason is that it often is a decisive way to avoid sexualizing someone. I don’t mean that women who are pregnant aren’t sexually attractive. What I mean is that seeing pregnancy in art forces the viewer to look at something besides sexuality. The preeminent message of the pregnant image is about motherhood, family, children.
It’s can also be about pain, discomfort, confusion, fear, the future. The future is implicit in pregnancy because a child is due. It is also about the future of the mother and all the questions that go along with her having a new role, a new body transition, and new place in the world. For all those reasons I like playing with the maternal image.
Here are two galleries of paintings. The first is of clothed women and abstract spiral bodies. The second is of nudes.
Do you have one that stands out to you? Let me know what you think.
NON NUDE and SPIRAL
NUDES
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by Marty Coleman | Jul 11, 2024 | Art, Artists I Love |
Artists I Love – Figures from the LACMA Permanent Collection
When we vacationed in LA in the summer of 2024 I knew I wanted to see the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). It was one of my favorite museums when I was growing up in LA and when I lived there again as a young adult. The main reason I wanted to go was because of a special exhibition of Ed Ruscha’s lifetime of work. He is among the top artists in my life. You can see why in the post, ‘Artists I Love: Ed Ruscha‘ from 2015. The images in that post were from a retrospective of his work at the Denver Museum of Art and covers most of what was in the LACMA exhibition.
I didn’t know what I would find in the permanent collection but was very pleasantly surprised. I easily took over 100 photographs of the art in that collection and obviously had to edit it down. No surprise, I found the figurative theme most interesting. This selection is centered in the Expressionist paintings of the early 20th century. The paintings that are not in that movement either lead the way into the expressive use of form and color the expressionists are known for or show the lasting affect expressionism had on painting later in the century.
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by Marty Coleman | Jun 29, 2024 | Christianity - 2011-2013, Sketchbook History Tour |
Bible People, Part One
As anyone who has followed me for any time knows, I draw in church. I Became a Christian in 1976 and I think the earliest drawing I have from church is probably from about 1979. I continue to this day 45 years later.
This selection is from a bible that was given to me by a Pastor friend back in 1997. I drew in it from 1997 to1998. I didn’t draw over actual scriptural text, only over the opinion pages or blank areas. I liked having the text show through, sometimes because it helped inform the image and sometimes because it was a non sequitur to the image. Either way it adds interest to the image.
Part One is of people I have drawn with thoughts they may be thinking. Sometimes the thoughts may have stemmed from whatever the pastor was preaching about but often times it was just my imagination of what someone is thinking, unrelated to anything else.
Let me know if you have a favorite or if an image brings up some interesting thoughts of your own.
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by Marty Coleman | Jun 19, 2024 | Sketchbook History Tour |
Los Angeles Drawings, 2024
My wife and I went on vacation last week. We had airline vouchers we had to use by mid-June but we procrastinated deciding where to go because we couldn’t agree on a place. Finally it was getting down to it and we were talking about various place in California. Both places in California that we discussed had relatives we would either stay with or visit and as much as we love them we wanted this to be a ‘just us’ escape. Finally Linda said, How about LA? I said, sounds great! I was raised there so going back is always fun so off we went.
Each morning I got up early and walked a few blocks to Caffe Luxxe, a cool little spot on Montana Ave in Santa Monica near the ocean. I would get myself a Cafe Mocha and sit down to draw in my large sketchbook. It was fun because the same crowd was there most mornings and I got to know them and the staff. There were a lot of people in puffy coats and leggings!
When we left we sat at the departure gate for quite a while so I brought out my small sketchbook and did some quick drawings of those around me. During the flight I ink painted one of the drawings and gave her a thought that I saw reflected in her look.
I haven’t decided if I will paint the three cafe drawings but if I do I will edit this post and include those versions as well.
Click on a drawing to see it full size and scroll to see the rest.
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by Marty Coleman | Jun 9, 2024 | Artists I Love |
The Impressionist Revolution – From Monet to Matisse
Selections from the Dallas Museum of Art Special Exhibitions
Not an Apple
A few weeks ago a friend of mine who was trying to make a political statement online showed an apple with accompanying text saying “This is a watermelon. If you see an apple it’s because you are a right wing conspiracy theorist.” The inference being it should be obvious to everyone it is an apple, not a watermelon, and those who think it’s a watermelon are being deceived by the main stream media. I called her out on this post, not only because I disagreed with her politics, but because she herself began by believing a lie. She said it was an apple. It was not an apple, it was a photograph of an apple.
An Impression
Simple as it may be, this is a mistake many people make about art as well and this was the delusion from which the Impressionists set out to free themselves. No longer were they going to create something that was built on a lie. They were no longer going to try to convince their audience the painting before them was actually the person, place or thing. They would paint in such a way that everyone would know it was not the real thing but a creative representation made with brushstrokes of paint on a two-dimensional surface. It was an impression. It was the most radical idea in the history of painting up to that point and it turned the art world upside down as a result. For many decades they were not accepted, they were even hated, because they broke a sacred illusion that had lived in art for hundreds of years, the illusion of reality.
The Geniuses
Here are 10 examples of paintings by some of the great impressionists and those that came them; the post-impressionists, the pointillists, and others. Take a look at the whole painting then at the close up showing the actual paint strokes. If you have a large screen view it on that. They were geniuses of the first order and the magic is real.
‘Wow, it looks just like a photograph!’ school of adoration
When you look at art in the future hopefully you will be less enamored with the ‘Wow, it looks just like a photograph!’ school of adoration. It isn’t the height of skill to be able to do that actually. Anyone can learn how, I know because I taught drawing for a decade and had students who couldn’t draw a stick figure render incredibly life-like drawings at the end because their skills improved. But the best of my students weren’t the ones who could do that. The best were the ones who had something interesting to say. They had a unique way of seeing and creating and their artwork reflected that. That, to me, is the sign of a true artist.
© 2024 Marty Coleman | napkindad.com
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