Philadelphia heat

I feel like I ought to have some snappy commentary to accompany this, but the heat wave has my brain working sluggishly, and my first cup of strong coffee hasn't kicked in yet. Yesterday, my daughter Noble graduated from the Moore College of Art & Design's Summer Art & Design Institute, earning the first three of what I hope will be a BFA worth of college credits. She and her twin sister, just back from two years in Mexico, a Mexican schoolmate, and my son spent a couple of hours after the reception poking about on Chestnut and Walnut Streets in center city Philadelphia, giving me time to sweat over my sketchbook for two short segments between ducking into air conditioned coffee shops for iced tea and relief from the heat.

It occurred to me last night, as I questioned the value of these sketchbook posts, what it is that I'm trying to share. Ever since early adolescence, I have loved looking at artists' study drawings. I like the feeling of having an intimate peek at work and thinking in progress. The redrawn lines, the multiple images trying to capture a form or gesture or mood, the energy. I like that better than finished works, which often feel staged and static to me. So I hope that these posts help satisfy a similar craving in you. If I were cynical I'd call it voyeurism. But I'm not. I think we just naturally like to be connected in some way to any act of creation. I think that desire is at the core of what we are.

philadelphia fragments on a very hot day, 8 1/4 x 11 9/16, watercolor pencil and 2B graphite closeup of maiden and swan representing Wissahickon Creek, from the Logan Square fountain

Revisiting the crow

a very quick sketch of the studio crow, 8 x 10, 2B graphite pencil

100 degrees in the shade

How did they do it?

Before there was air conditioning, how did architects and artists work when the paper got so soggy with humidity that it would tear under a pencil point? Not to mention sweat dripping onto their work. I'm not a hot weather guy. It was all I could do to sit out on the front steps to sketch a quick image of my old Saab 99 before 7:00 this morning, and it wasn't skin poachingly hot yet. My watercolor pencils were actually dissolving onto the paper, which was like a damp blotter. I'll revise this post later when I have something more to say than spluttering about the sticky weather.

my no air conditioning 1978 Saab 99GL on a subtropical morning. 8 1/4 x 11 9/16, watercolor pencil

The Purist

When I began to draw in earnest in my early adolescence, a lot of what I drew was copied from the pages of "Learn To Draw" books and scenic calendars. I have tattered old sketchbooks with carbon pencil drawings of lions and polar bears, along with images of houses, barns, and sometimes people that I drew from life. And of course battling robots with laser beams shooting out of their mechanical fingers. But before long, I found myself drawing only from my imagination or from the three dimensional world around me. That position was reinforced by art school exercises - blind contour drawing and gesture drawing, particularly working in figure drawing class from a live model. During those formative years, I developed an almost moralistic attitude that anything translated from another two dimensional image lacked integrity and was not art. It was just skillful copying. Never mind that many great artists have done famous works after the work of earlier masters.

This attitude has persisted in me for over forty years. While I do use AutoCAD wireframe plots and magazine photographs when I do architectural interior renderings, I otherwise draw just what's in front of me, and I almost never do anything that requires more than one sitting. There's something for me about the direct experience of the moment, and the spontaneity of my response on paper, that I have always found compelling. And honestly, there's a macho element in there - sort of a "real men only draw from life and never use erasers" kind of thing. But it does have its drawbacks when taken to the extreme. Maybe I need to get more serious about extending the energy of a single sitting into more involved pieces, instead of allowing myself to be limited by this rigid idea I have that studio work will lose that vitality. It's a big and scary challenge that I think I have to come to grips with.This morning, as usual, from life. 8 1/4 x 11 9/16, 2B graphite and watercolor pencil

Party time in Rockefeller Center

I'm not much of a party animal. The prospect of standing in the middle of a crowd of people at an event designed for socializing and networking is more than way outside of my comfort zone; it hits my "get me outta here!" button, hard. But Grothouse Lumber, with whom I collaborated in the development of a series of work and dining tables for luxury kitchens last year, got me a ticket to House Beautiful magazine's "Kitchen of the Year" V.I.P. party last night, and since one of our pieces is featured in the design, I decided at the last minute to knot a bow tie around my neck and drive up to New York for the event.

It was 98 degrees fahrenheit with jungle humidity in midtown Manhattan, and I ducked into the MOMA Design Store, a couple of office building lobbies, and air conditioned bars to fend off sweat as I made my way  down sidewalks full of more sensibly clad (short and tank tops) people to Rockefeller Center. The kitchen pavilion is set up all this week right on the spot famously occupied by the giant Christmas tree during the holiday season, just behind the ice rink presided over by the wonderful gilt statue of Prometheus. With a little time on my hands before the gala began, I did my daily sketch from the promenade, just above eye level with Prometheus floating above the fountains. Behind him, inscribed along the top of the polished granite wall, are these words: "Prometheus, teacher in every art, brought the fire that hath proved to mortals a means to mighty ends." That relaxed me enough to get me calmly through meeting editors and publishers and the celebrity chef at the crowded reception. Well, that and a couple of the excellent iced blueberry mojitos at the party's open bar.

Prometheus above the ice rink at Rockefeller Center, New York City

the House Beautiful Kitchen of the Year party at Rockefeller Center