Meaning in a Century-Old Mugshot

I've been working with black and white photography as inspiration during my self-directed learning about contrast and scribbling portraits of people.  Only recently did I discover the excellent collection of vintage photography (much of it free of copyright restriction and labelled as such) at the Flickr stream of the U.S. National Archives.

Of course, the rather random photographs cataloged there do not have the artistry of a photograph by Molly Malone Cook or Vivian Maier, but they do have their own sort of charm.

I had a chunk of time the other day, and after lots of practice lately with the brush pen and big chunky lines and broad areas of black and white, I wanted to do a slow, fine-lined portrait of someone.  It felt like a nice change for a sunny, lazy afternoon.  I floated through dozens of possible resource photos until one completely captured my imagination.

This is my drawing of a mugshot of Lizzie Cardish who in 1906, at the age of 15, was sent to Leavenworth to serve a life sentence for arson.  This was later commuted to confinement until the age of 21.

What struck me about this photograph?  I mean, the Flickr stream holds loads of interesting images to work with.  Well, I just couldn't get past the hat, with its complicated straw wave and the many-folded bow on top of her head juxtaposed to the criminal identification number resting across the tender and vulnerable part of her neck.  Fifteen years old.  Sent to prison for life.

I've mentioned earlier how juxtapostion--the placing of two unrelated things near each other--fascinates me.  I always appreciate it in poetry, fiction, film.  Now I'm learning to appreciate it in visual images.  I just love the energy and tension that vibrates in the gap between the two things.  That gap seems the sort of swirling chaos where new, interesting ideas and understandings can arise.  I'm curious about using it as a new perspective to take on life as well as art.

I'm not sure how long I'll stick with mostly black and white drawings.  I miss my watercolors!  Maybe I'll try to carry some of my new thoughts about contrast and juxtapostion back into my colored sketches.

But this recent interlude of studying high contrast scribbling has certainly been fun.

Practicing Portraits in Black and White

I've done a bunch of high contrast portraits in the last bit of time, mostly using the brush pen.  I like that style and I am going to do more.  But I decided to try using a fine nib fountain pen to do a portrait, to see what I've learned from my brush pen exercises.

For inspiration lately, I've been studying the photography of Vivian Maier.  You can see her work and learn a lot about it at this website. What a story surrounds that woman's life and work and the discovery of it!  

Though my brush pen portraits have all been quick, the lines thrown down in a minute or two or three, I allowed myself a full twenty minutes for this one. 

This is after a photography found on the website linked above, by Vivian Maier, numbered 19XXwoo577-01-MC.

Do you see what an amazing thing she did there with the X shape between the shadow and the man's extended arm?  I didn't see it until I had drawn it.  Which probably says a lot about who poorly I see things!  But that is why I keep my sketchbook--to help me see things better!!

I have no doubt that the quick brush pen portraits I've been doing have helped me begin to understand the basic shapes and shadows of faces and bodies.

I find I'm looking at people a little bit differently!  It's kind of entertaining to be standing waiting in the checkout line at the grocery store, watching the person in front of me unload her cart and think, hmm, how would I draw her in black and white?

Bringing out the Brush Pen for High Contrast Portraits

Lately, I've been interested in drawings that use larger blocks of black, or thicker lines of black, than I usually work with.  I think I'm interested in the look that comes with the juxtaposition of dark and light--the contrast differences.  I also read Roz Stendahl's blog pretty regularly, and her recent portraits using her brush pen inspired me to dig out my Pentel Pocket Brush pen again and begin to use it in my scribbles!

I used to do creativity training for corporate types, and I often had them play with the notion that creativity and innovation comes from putting together two things that don't normally go together.   I try to do that in my own life, when I'm stuck on a problem, or when I'm thinking about what to draw, or when I'm writing new materials for my classes.

So I was walking through my house thinking about what else I could practice my high contrast drawings on other than buildings and my dogs and cats, when my eyes lit on this book which is currently living on my coffee table.

I just adore, Our World, by the luminous poet Mary Oliver, with photographs by Molly Malone Cook.  I have owned this book a long time and often study the images of people which Cook created throughout her life.  I so admire the book as a creation of both text and image by two different people--again, I am fascinated by juxtaposition!

Anyhow, I know that it is pretty obvious to some people, but it honestly hadn't really occurred to me that I could learn and practice drawing in black and white by looking at fantastic black and white photography.  [Head slap.]  So, for me, that was putting two ideas together for the first time and heading somewhere new with it.

Anyhow, with my head full of Roz Stendahl's portrait style and inspired by Cook's photography, I tried to do a high contrast portrait.

This is W. Eugene Peterson inspired by a photo by Molly Malone Cook, printed in the book Our World, also inspired by the style of Roz Stendahl.  I used my Pentel Brush pen loaded with Platinum Carbon black ink (waterproof) and a wide tip blue acrylic marker (by Liquitex).

I drew the man in under one minute--just a quick capture with thicker black lines.  I really like the results.  To me it feels a bit more lively than many of the portraits I labor over.  There's something quite magic about the results from the brush pen.

I also like the notion that I could draw many of these in a short drawing session, and practice practice practice my portrait skills.  Kind of like doing blind contour drawings--fast and loose!

I highly recommend that everyone pick up a copy of Our World to see more of Molly Malone Cook's spectacular photography (along with the always miraculous writing of Mary Oliver).

Stylized Sketching Helps Me Capture My Cats! Finally!

For another adventure in stylized drawings and overcoming my creative blocks in sketchbook scribbling, I decided to have a new go at drawing my cats.

For me, if dogs are hard, cats are impossible.  I hardly even try, they are so impossible.

Does anyone else out there have a problem drawing cats?

Anyhow, as I've shared in the last few posts, I've enjoyed drawing highly stylized scribbles of my dogs because by focusing on the style instead of on any sort of likeness, I am actually succeeding at catching some of the nature of the beasts!

First up with my cats, I continued with the high contrast drawings.  After drawing my earlier dog portraits with a fine line marker (and spending forever filling in the big blocks of black) I used a plain old medium point Sharpie and some marker paper for this portrait of my cat, Hattie.

Scribbling success for me, right here.  This took me only a few minutes to draw (always important, because on many days, I only have a few minutes to stop and really pay attention to the world around me).  And, hey, it looks like an actual cat!  Huzzah!!

Most importantly, thought, this scribble captures a bit of Hattie's indomitable personality.  Hattie is a large presence, both physically and psychologically.  Frankly, she is queen of the house.  And as such, she believes that all boxes should accommodate her.  I see that in this sketch and it makes me smile.

My other cat, Tim, is another story entirely.   For one thing, he is striped and orange and thus, wouldn't fare well in a highly graphic black and white drawing.

For another thing, he is the household sprite.  Nothing ever bothers him.  All is always well.  He derives pleasure and entertainment from everyone and everything.  Frankly, everyone in the world needs "more Tim."  

I wanted to do a stylized drawing, but it needed to be lighter in spirit and tone than the one of Hattie.

So I dug out some of my old cartooning books to get myself in a different sort of graphic frame of mind, and then drew this in under five minutes.

It took me a bit longer to watercolor it, because every layer had to dry before I could put on another. 

Now, does this look like Tim?  Not realistically, of course, no.  But does it capture a big part of Tim's personality?  Yes!!  Especially because he really does sit on or near that cabinet with an ever-hopeful look on his face almost every single evening.  Ten years from now, I know that this silly cartoon scribble of my cat will bring back everything about him that I adore now.

Well, that's probably enough of stylized drawings of my pets for a while!  Still, I hope you have found some useful ideas here for drawing your own pets, or for smashing through your creative sketching blocks. 

High Contrast Drawings of Dogs Really Work!

Last week I talked about how using highly stylized techniques can help you get unstuck when you find yourself unable to sketch something to your liking.

One of the techniques I had just begun to try involved the use of big blocks of black in my scribbles.  The sketches could remain black and white or have a little color added to them or whatever.

What interested me?  Adding heavier contrast and a more graphic feel to the work.

I shared a very quick scribble I did of my Dutch Shepherd, Nik, in this style.  I had tried this with him because I often find myself frustrated in my attempts to draw my dogs.  This was the result.

I took the time to try this technique out on the last German Shepherd I owned, Desmond, who died only a few weeks ago.

The result really intrigued me.

By eliminating the need to capture an accurate face, this style of scribbling frees me to capture bigger shapes and a sense of weight and movement.

The unanticipated result:  these very quick drawings (under 10 minutes each, and most of that because I was filling in with a fine tipped marker) capture these dogs better than anything else I hvae tried.

So much of dogs, of course, is their body language.  You live with a dog for years and you know their patterns, know what the slightest tilt of ears or curl of tail means.

As a human, I think I focus too much on faces when I try to capture a likeness, and I'm not sure I need to do that with a dog.  The body postures convey a lot--I recognize these animals in these scribbles and that recognition brings a lot of powerful memories with it.

This feels like a breakthrough of some sort--not so much for my scribbly drawings, but for creativity and achieving our creative goals for meaning.

Keep at it.  Try lots of different things.  Don't expect the expected to deliver what you expect--and be ready for the unexpected to really deliver the goods.

Get Unstuck with These Two Stylized Sketching Techniques

Getting stuck trying to sketch a particular subject?  Give some stylized drawing methods a try!

Stylized drawing--scribbles that aren't intended to look like the subject but to capture an essence of the subject--helped me make a lot of progress in one of my sketching frustrations.

Here is my story, plus two methods that you may want to try.

I've mentioned before that I really want to learn how to better scribble likenesses of my dogs.

That is what got me started trying to learn to draw in the first place--the desire to capture more of my dogs than what a photography could.

I struggle with it.  I delight in all the other things I scribble away at, including other people's dogs and cats, but I am not quite as free or delighted when I draw my own dogs.  Lots of reasons for that, I suppose.

Anyhow, recently, thanks to the "Stretching" class I am taking at Sketchbook Skool, I have made two drawings of my Dutch Shepherd Nik which I not only like quite a bit, but which capture some of what makes my relationship with this particular dog so special to me.

First, thanks to a lesson by Lapin (check out his work!), I did a "Big Head" style drawing of Nik.  The idea here is that you draw so that the face and head of your subject commands the biggest portion of the page, and then you shrink the body to fit.  Proportion is not a goal.

Lapin recommends drawing your subjects while they look directly at you, starting with the eyes.  Of course, Nik wasn't going to hold still that long, but I was able to take a photo of him looking directly at me.  Then, he fell asleep right next to me while I drew.

Later, inspired by the fascinating use of big blocks of black in the work of Miguel Herranz (his stuff here), I tried a completely different approach using only black and white.

Each of these drawings took less than 10 minutes--in the first case drying layers of watercolor took up most of the time and in the second sketch I spent nearly the entire time filling in the black (I should have used a thicker pen!).

So, doing the exercise has me asking some questions that I think are important for us when we use our creativity.  I know how important it is to be gentle with ourselves and not too critical, and for the most part, I enjoy the heck out of my scribblings.  But why am I so hard on myself when it comes to drawing my own dogs?  And why did these stylized drawings delight me?  What can I learn from these scribbles that will take me to the next steps of both drawing and encouraging myself?  What can I learn from my own experience that will help me help others in the future?

I do think that one reason I like these two drawings of Nik is that they are so stylized.  I had no intention of creating even a reasonable likeness.  And voila!!  I captured the essence of the dog.  His highly connected look (which also means he'd like a treat now, please) and his ever-eager stance with the Frisbee as he entices me to play.

In fact, in both cases (and most of the time, whenever Nik is not sleeping) he is enticing me to something!  He is an enticing dog!

Here's a photo for those of you who wonder what a Dutch Shepherd looks like.

So, remember to be kind to yourselves--and when you are having trouble getting the results you want, give stylized drawing a try!

No Need to Beware of the Blob! Blob Drawing is Pretty Fun.

More like a treasure hunt than a psychological assessment, discovering images within random blobs or scribbles feels more delightful than many kinds of sketching.  It provides a good break if you find yourself frustrated with your work.  And when the drawing blahs strike (and they strike all of us at one time or another) and you think there is just no point to continuing to scribble in your sketchbook, try blobbing and then discovering what's there.

Since you have already made the mess, there's nothing to fuss about.  It's just pure fun.

I spilled some ink the other day and in wiping it up, I made quite a mess on a sketchbook page.  But after it dried, I went searching for the images, and here is what I found.

These three folks don't go together, which I figure is just fine when I look for pictures in blobs.  They don't need to. Sometimes my blob findings aren't even all oriented to the same up and down!

Jonathan Twingley (whose super interesting stuff you can check out here) recommends splotting some ink on a journal page, then closing the book.  You get mirrored blobs on two facing pages.  You can try to make related scribbles.  Or not.  Up to you!  It's all just a creative game.  Here is an example of two facing journal pages I recently did this way.

For me this process feels like magic.  I can't explain it very well, other than to say, I stare at the blob and wait for whatever is there to rise up from the depths.  It's kind of like something floating to the top of water.  

Almost every time, I think of the scene from the film Excalibur, where the Lady of the Lake rises from the depths to give young Arthur the sword of power, Excalibur.  

Not that my blob scribbles are Excalibur--but it does feel pretty cool when something you were not planning just shows up and a picture appears!

Another artist who does fine and fun work with blobs is Carla Sonheim whose work you can check out here.  She does a lot with what she calls "the art of silliness."

Hope this gives you some fun when you're feeling the drawing blahs.  Or when you just need a warm-up. 

Give it a try with some kids some time too!