I drew the outlines of his sign, jacket, shirt, and head and painted a ginormous sheet of watercolor paper bright red, white, and blue.  I imagined that these colors would remain pretty intense (as they had in two previous drawings) and I’d get a kind of American icon out of the work.  As the drawing progressed, I was just never satisfied with it and I kept drawing layers of white over layers of black and then more layers of black and more layers of white until the ink became so opaque that the color was more or less lost and I wound up with something sorta pink and blue-gray.  The trick, I suppose, is not only KNOWing when to stop, but then having the balls to actually STOP then!  Still, it’s a striking drawing with lots of good stuff, I think…

"Scotty" September 7, 2011, 92 x 45 inches, pen and ink drawing in white ink and black ink on tinted watercolor paper

photographing the drawing in progress -- sense of scale?

drawing well underway August 22, 2011

detail

detail

in studio September 7, 2011

America Now and Here wound up premiering in Kansas City and Eric made sure that my work was included among local artists.  Great that local work was exhibited alongside the touring pieces – that was a requirement of local curator David Ford.  There were many iconic artists in the show: Alex Katz, Chuck Close, Laurie Anderson, Edward Albee, Adrienne Rich, Joan Baez, Jeff Koons, Philip Glass, Robert Longo, Cindy Sherman — the list goes on and on — and me, of course!  You can find official event information at the ANH-KC web site.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gysWz0Py0bg

I love that my drawing became the thumbnail image in the official video

America Now and Here was national news – here’s some of the press:

New York Times March 31, 2011
The Nation August 30, 2011
Chicago Art Magazine November 7, 2011
Aspen Times October 20, 2011

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPb5LDwvvJE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rp-9l7-95zs

…more from enthusiastic videographer Ramsey Mohsen at his blog site

May 1, 2011 Kansas City Star article.

Allison Long photo of my "Michael" drawing being hung at America Now and Here exhibition at Leedy Voulkos Art Center in Kansas City.

Eric Fischl welcomes visitors to the opening of America Now and Here.

Photographer Ralph Gibson, April Gornik, uncertain , Donald Rosenfeld

Nicholas Naughon, Linda Lyon, Frank Feigenbaum

Peregrine Honig and Linda Lyon

ANH staff member, Maggie Mull

with the fabulous Maggie Mull (America Now and Here staff) - another of those weird, sweaty, iPhone self portraits. See Maggie's work at www.hellogiggles.com/something-for-my-therapist

Fellow artist Martin Mull with Mike Lyon at America Now and Here opening.

In 1991 I was in Japan with a group of US, Canadian, and European karate guys led by Tsutomu Ohshima.  Ohshima Sensei organized a fabulous and exhausting tour which included visits to Hiroshima, Miyajima, Kyoto — we met and watched demonstrations by elderly masters of kyudo, judo, kendo, were wined and dined in traditional Japanese fashion, and ended in Tokyo where we participated in the 60th anniversary of the karate club at Mr. Ohshima’s alma mater, Waseda University.

One evening we dined at a wonderful sukiyaki restaurant where groups of four or five of us sat around low tables with hot braziers.  I must have appeared to be the senior in our group,  because our very young waitress singled me out to receive instructions for preparation of our meal.

My Japanese is limited to counting, karate words, printmaking words, “please, thank you, excuse me, where is the …”, etc.

Wakarimas-ka? (do you understand?).
Wakarimas (I understand).
Wakarimas-sen (I do not understand).

The movie, “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure” had premiered a year or two earlier and the youthful fad of that time was to append a sarcastic “NOT” to the end of statements — like — Don’t worry, I love you… NOT!  So this waitress, pointing with hashi (chop sticks) to each different meat and vegetable and to the metal pot of boiling broth in front of us gave long and detailed explanation of each step.  A full minute or more of monologue and I didn’t understand a single word of what she’d said, but I listened intently and, at the end, she asked, “Wakarimas-ka”?  Now THAT was something I understood and, Bill and Ted style, I made my first effective joke in Japanese. YES, I replied with enthusiasm — “HAI!  Wakarimas… SEN!”  And our pretty young waitress in her beautiful traditional kimono fell over on the floor laughing, tears streaming down her cheeks, her hand fluttering in front of her teeth and another waitress, ancient and wrinkled scooted over, scolded her, shooed her away and looked after us for the rest of the evening with boring decorum.  Sigh.

So I’m reminding you that, although this LOOKS a bit like an oddly colored photographic portrait of a talking head, it is NOT.  It is ‘merely’ a collection of completely abstract lines and squiggles drawn in ink on tinted paper using many ink-pens and NOWHERE is there a face, a shirt, an eye, a button, a tooth, anything plaid, etc.  ONLY ink on paper!  But organized in such a way that, in spite of the completely non-representational nature of the marks, their whiteness and blackness, the unexpected pinkness of the paper — our eyes and minds effortlessly re-integrate all this into “Joel” – if you knew Joel, you’d recognize him.  It’s the same with all portraits, paintings, sculpture where there’s some meaning encoded — although there is NOTHING human-like in the ink, paint, marble, etc — our minds are expert at associating our visual experience with things we ‘know’ and in a weird way we think we are seeing, in this instance, a person.  Just sayin…  This is Joel…  NOT!

The white ink on this rose tinted paper POPS. I prepared the large sheet by painting it with several washes of quinacridone red pigment plus a bit of carbon black pigment mixed into water. I drew the brightest 2/3 of the image with white ink squiggles and the darkest 2/3 of the image with black ink squiggles. So 1/3 of the image is white line over rose tinted paper, 1/3 of the image is black line over rose tinted paper, and 1/3 of the image is white over black over rose tinted paper.

"Joel", completed Mar 20, 2011, 87 x 45 inches, white and black ink on tinted watercolor paper

My model, Joel Goldman, is an attorney turned novelist. We’ve known one another since childhood. He’s a great guy – clever, articulate, sarcastic, interesting. You can see all that and more in the portrait, I hope. He likes the drawing. The other night, we had dinner with his sister, Susan Tivol, who, it seemed to me from her reaction to seeing an iPhone image of Joel, didn’t much care for it.  I think it was the particular image, catching Joel in mid-something she (subtly) objected to — and this is a shame, really, because she has a GREAT face and I’ve been trying to convince HER to model for me. Maybe SOME day… Meanwhile, if you’re interested in Joel’s books, have a look at these:

Technically, this is another drawing in light and dark on mid-value ground. I continue to follow some giant footsteps including:

I spent several months working on the image and calculating all the miles of ink squiggles – this one was a huge challenge for me and I made a number of experiments in advance of my final push to complete “Joel” (see previous articles). The actual execution of the drawing took only about 230 hours. Here are some photos of the work in progress…

detail of white/black interaction

detail of white/black interaction

March 10 - second layer of white contours goes down

March 14 - one more day of white ink

March 15 - black ink begins

March 19 - as the sun rises - about 20 hours of drawing still ahead.

composite of the six variations of "Elizabeth" drawn during January, February, and March 2011

The underlying images of the six Elizabeth drawings are identical but my approach to drawing each is different.

As with most of the images on my web site, you can click on these images to pop up an enlargement. To view a popped-up image full-size, right-click the image click ‘View Image’.  You can magnify it by left-clicking on it.  Click the ‘back’ button on your browser to return to this page.

"Elizabeth 1", Jan 2011, 24 x 20 inches, black ink in squiggles on white paper

"Elizabeth 2", Feb 2011, 24 x 20 inches, white ink and black ink in squiggles on white paper

"Elizabeth 3", Feb 2011, 24 x 20 inches, white ink and black ink in hatches on tinted paper

Detail of "Elizabeth 3" in straight hatches

"Elizabeth 4", Feb 2011, 24 x 20 inches, white ink and black ink in spirals on tinted paper

"Elizabeth 3" black spirals underway

"Elizabeth 5", Feb 2011, 24 x 20 inches, white ink and black ink in squiggles on sumi-blackened paper

"Elizabeth 6", Mar 2011, 24 x 20 inches, white ink and black ink in squiggles on sumi-blackened paper

My kids know of my interest  — for Christmas Scott and Andy gave me a variety of white and silver ink-pens for my drawing experiments!  What a GREAT gift!  And they turned me on to JetPens.com at the same time (Japanese pens — VAST variety OMG — though my kids all tell me NEVER to say ‘OMG’ in public)!

In preparation for larger scale work, I made several series of small drawings in order to experiment with color and value for the tinted areas and to learn more about how the white inks might work for me in these drawings.  The first series were three drawings of “Danielle”.  I later made six of “Elizabeth” which I’ll show in my next post.

A little like the story of the three bears, my first tinted ground was ‘too dark’.  Then I came to the second drawing, and I made that one ‘too light’.  Then I made a third drawing and the ground in that one was ‘just right’ — or close enough.  My wife thinks “Danielle” is spooky looking, but the image stirs me in an indescribably delicious way (from Goldilocks to Peter Paul Mounds)…  I really like the way this drawing pulls at my gut!  I also really like the somewhat opaque nature of the white ink — it gets whiter and whiter with each subsequent layer (a dozen or so layers of white in this drawing) and covers both the tinted ground and the black ink in a very appealing way!

“Danielle 3″, Jan 2011, 20 x 12 inches, white and black ink on tinted paper

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyYwB56Tkbk

three Danielle drawings -- like the three bears, the first ground was tooooo dark, the next one was tooooo light, and the last one was JUST RIGHT (or at least getting pretty close)!

"Danielle 2", Jan 2011, 20 x 12 inches, white and black ink on tinted paper

"Danielle 3", Jan 2011, 20 x 12 inches, white and black ink on tinted paper

Danielle 1 underway in the bright morning sun

Danielle 2 (foreground) and Danielle 3 (top) just getting underway

setup for time lapse video of application of white ink to Danielle 3

Late in 2010 I came across some silverpoint supplies and from November 2010 through December 2011 I made numerous experiments drawing by machinery using silver, copper, and gold (silverpoint, copperpoint, goldpoint) on prepared panels and papers.  These were very interesting to me and I made a number of jigs to hold the fine metal wires so that I could lift and drop them easily using a solenoid mounted in the CNC machine for drawing.  None of my jigs to date have been very successful — there are many problems still to overcome.  In the meantime, I ruined half a dozen complex drawings and only a couple (illustrated below) were worth photographing and showing here. I’m still considering ways to improve my jigs in order to allow me to complete large drawings — the silverpoints, in particular, have a soft pencil-like character which is very appealing to me — graphite abrades much too quickly for any simple holder I’ve come up with, but the silver wire lasts a long time long enough so that I SHOULD be able to use it for my work.  So far, however, the wires tend to harden and break at the tip of the tubular holder or at the set screw which I use to adjust and hold the length of wire for drawing.  The tip tube must be less than a wire diameter from the paper or the (soft) wire will bend and pull out.  This tends to make overly dark and wide marks which are not generally aesthetic.

As I mentioned, there’s still a lot of work left to do before I’ll be able to produce decent large-scale drawings in silverpoint.

"Sara with dog and shoes", Nov 2010, 16 x 20 inches, silverpoint on panel

"Jessica", Dec 2010, 20 x 16 inches, copperpoint on panel

For my first attempts, I glued a silver wire into one of the used pen cartridges and used the pen jig to hold and move the wire.

Later, I made some fancier jugs to guide and hold the wire.

22 guage silver and gold wire and jigs.

'Grass-2', July 16, 2010, woodblock print, 22.5 x 72 inches, 16 blocks printed onto 8 sheets of hosho paper by Iwano Ichibei

computer controlled router carves block on sheet of quarter-inch plywood

another view of CNC machining area

Printing accessories, clockwise from lower left: larger mizu-bake (water brush), camelia oil (baren lubricant), pigment suspensions and pigment application brush, smaller mizu-bake, baren (printing pad), hanga bake (printing brush)

Using misu-bake to dampen block

applying pigment to dampened block

using hanga-bake to brush pigment evenly into block

sliding sheet out of paper-delivery drawer and registering it to kento in block -- right foot about to tap switch to close drawer

turning crank to print sheet

after printing block four -- prints in take-up drawer under press.

after printing block 15 -- sheets in take-up drawer under press

detail of completed print

detail of completed print

detail of completed print

detail of signature and seal on completed print

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1rqU-TUiBI

Paul Catanese and Dr. Angela Geary have been contracted by A&C Black Publishers to co-author a book on Computer Aided Manufacturing in Fine Art Printmaking.  Paul was in the audience during my talk at SGC Chicago and later asked me if I’d be willing to ‘be a chapter’ in the book.  I said ‘SURE’ (duh)! In recent months, Paul has interviewed me at length by email, phone, and now in person, since he was in Kansas City last Friday and Saturday recording our conversations, photographing in the studio, poking around, and getting real specific on exactly how I use CNC and other computer technology in my work, especially in woodblock printmaking.  Friday morning when my drawing of Chandler was nearly complete, Chandler and Zac (videographer) met Paul and me here in the studio and shot video of Paul saying nice things about my work (and Chandler saying nice things about his portrait).  So it’s turning out to be a nice little collaboration!  Chandler, by the way, seemed to really like this drawing:

"Chandler", 2010, 84 x 45 inches, drawing in pen and ink on 300 lb. hot press Lanaquarelle paper

detail of head

detail of bottom center

detail of bottom left

June 23, 2010 5:19 PM John Hansen The Sedalia Democrat

An artist using a computer to create art is nothing new, yet they are always using it to push boundaries.

At the Daum Museum’s “Virtual Media: Computer-aided Art from the Collection,” visitors can marvel at pieces that were obviously made digitally and others that seem traditional if you don’t know the story behind it.

Included in the Goddard Gallery's “Virtual Media: Computer-aided Art from the Collection,” are, from left, “Jon,” an ink-on-paper by Mike Lyon, and “Line Operations,” a pigment-based ink, oil and silicone on canvas by Fabian Marcaccio. (photo: Sydney Brink / Sedalia Democrat)

“One of the things that makes this show interesting is some pieces you look at it and say, ‘That must’ve been made by a computer,’ but in other cases it would not occur to you,” said Daum director Tom Piche as he gave a visiting reporter a tour on Tuesday. “So artists have incorporated the ability of computers just as they would a pencil, a brush or a crayon. It’s one of many tools they use.”

In the art world, no one uses the terms “computer artist” or “traditional artist,” because those are not distinct categories.

“Several of the works here show that crossover very clearly,” Piche said. “And that’s why I wanted to call this ‘Computer-aided Art’ instead of ‘Computer Art,’ because I don’t think we call things ‘computer art’ anymore. The computer is so integrated into art-making that its just part of what they do.”

The eight pieces in “Virtual Media,” which can be found in the Goddard Gallery, include paintings, drawings, mixed media and even a sculpture. One drawing was made by a computer programmed by a human. One “painting” was created by a human using a computer and then printed with ink onto a canvas.

For the sculpture, the artist used a computer program to extract the colors in old paintings, then used those colors to make a three-dimensional mash-up that gave an impression of those paintings.

Computer-aided art has come a long way in the last 20 years. The oldest of the eight pieces in the Daum exhibit is from 1992.

“The history of computer art, of course, isn’t that long,” Piche said. “But it’s longer than people might think. Pretty much as soon as scientists started working with computers in the late 1950s, they began doodling with computers. And artists began experiments with computers in the 1960s, but it was difficult to do. You had to go someplace that had a computer, first of all. They were large and bulky and awkward contraptions.

“But with the revolution of the personal computer, a lot of artists were keen to develop the potential of computers. Not to experiment so much, but to make it a serious part of what they were doing.”

Piche recalled his first visit to a computer art exhibit in the late 1980s. At that time, “computer art” generally meant architectural drawings, and little else.

“Artists were using it in very flat ways that we would now consider to be kids’ stuff, because it was all so new, and what you could do was still pretty rudimentary,” Piche said.

Today, the computer is the most versatile tool in an artist’s toolbox.

One of the most eye-catching pieces in “Virtual Media” is a 2009 collage by Sedalia native Larry Thomas, who teaches at Johnson County Community College in Kansas. It’s the visual-art equivalent to what James Cameron did for movies with “Avatar.” “Poser’s Decoy” is on a flat canvas, but it looks three-dimensional thanks to a variety of tricks Thomas uses.

“Even though it’s a flat plain and a stretched canvas, you get the sense that we’re looking into something that has depth,” Piche said.

For more details about Thomas’ piece, see the video on the Swoop page.

In addition to “Virtual Media,” Daum visitors can check out “Arboresque” in the upstairs gallery. It’s a selection of two- and three-dimensional works from the permanent collection centered around trees and the natural world.

But, if you need more proof that computers are now a ubiquitous art tool, one of the nature drawings was created in a computer.

If you go
What: “Virtual Media: Computer-aided Art from the Collection” and “Arboresque”
When: Through Sept. 5
Hours: 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesdays through Fridays and 1 to 5 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays
Where: Daum Museum, State Fair Community College, Sedalia
Admission: Free

Michael is a great guy, established artist, extroverted, outspoken, and a bit larger than life.  We’d made a date for him to visit my studio and shoot sources for a portrait while he was here, and I thoroughly enjoyed him!  After the shoot I went to a huge breakfast with Michael, his wife Mary Ann Strandell, and Chris Brown (another guest artist in town for the event) at YJ’s, the cozy cafe next door to Birdies (Peregrine Honig’s lingerie shop)…  What a great morning — I don’t get out much –  this was so VERY stimulating!!!

Thanks, Michael, for the wonderful morning, and for your patience in modeling — I think you turned out to be a very interesting head!

"Michael", 74 x 44 inches, completed June 20, 2010, pen and ink on heavy watercolor paper. Exhibited in AMERICA: Here and Now in 2011

Detail of pencil signature and ink squiggles

Detail around eye

Detail

detail

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IvmKYXyyAk

Michael Rees lectures above — See more of Michael Rees on YouTube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rp-9l7-95zs

Impromptu video review from AMERICA: Here and Now exhibition May 5, 2011

What a HUGE disconnect between the instant of the snapshot, the hundreds of hours to produce the drawing, and the video record of the lecture…  Mind boggling!  So mind boggling that I can’t comment beyond the mention…  YOU think about it! 

Thanks SO much to artist, Peregrine Honig (also see HERE), who bounced purposefully for two hours on the small trampoline in my studio as we chatted and photographed hundreds of mostly very blurry images while she wore her fabulous black and silver sequined mini dress with matching bunny eared hat!!

You may open a higher resolution version in a new window by CLICKING HERE

It’s a bit difficult for me to illustrate such a long image on a web page, so here’s an experiment suggested by Scott Goldberg — I’ve rotated the drawing vertically and enabled a script so that as you move your mouse over the image below, an enlargement window should appear and you can magnify any area you please.

You can make the window larger or smaller and magnify or reduce the image in the window by holding down your mouse button and moving left and right and up and down.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C38ADTUEJlo

The six eccentric turnings which are the legs were VERY fun to carve!  I used a ridiculously sharp one inch skew chisel to accomplish the turnings — what a satisfying activity!  Because I repeatedly switched the centers of each workpiece, the knife was only in contact with the wood through part of each rotation (and it’s rotating FAST) — so with patience, a steady hand, and many pounds of paper-thin shavings removed, the completed turnings were shiny and smooth and ready for finish without sanding or anything else!  Each cut was improvised and it felt to me that the leg called out to me each time to switch centers and continue — it seems trite to say this, but…  I do SOOOoooo  enjoy the so-called dialog between mind and object with  each moment of process leading the way to the next.

One part of the project which made me very nervous whenever I thought about it was the significant hand-carving which would be required to perfect the intersections between the turnings and the rectangular solids of the leg tops.  Because these were all very eccentric turnings, the curvy parts had to terminate well before the rectangular solid parts began.  Because the location of the rectangular solid leg-top was improvised AFTER the turning was completed, it was all very touchy-feely and interactive decision making on the fly.  Once I’d completed the turnings and then completed cutting the rectangular solid leg-tops from the turnings, I could begin to find the intersections of the rectangular solids with the curves by hand carving with a sharp flat chisel.  I began on a Saturday morning and intended to take a break a few hours later.  I was really getting into the gentle carving, making very thin shavings and approaching each intersection slowly and precisely.  When it seemed I’d been at it an hour or two, I checked the time.  Ten hours had flown by and I was already late for dinner!  What a perfectly pleasant way to spend a day — very slowly, one shaving at a time, carving down to precisely the surfaces of the curves and planes.  It was SO much easier than I’d imagined and my mind was SO light and happy as I worked out these shapes.  Satisfying.  Very satisfying.

The bench and upholstery all turned out decently enough and the bench feels (and is) strong and comfortable. 

Eccentric turnings from 3 1/2 inch square mahogany blocks -- the leg tops will be cut from the unturned blocks and the bottom blocks will be removed.

The top blocks have been cut to 2x2 inch dimension prior to mortising. Then I'll hand carve the precise intersections between curves and the planes of the tops.

upside-down legs -- mortises have been cut and a first coat of shellac applied -- looking VERY good to me! Three coats of shellac were applied in all -- each rubbed in with a cloth -- very nice looking finish!

rail tenons have been glued into mortises in legs -- everything fits!

bench assembly and glueup almost complete

corner braces installed (these make the mortise and tenon construction VERY strong) and the bench is ready for upholstery.

Upholstery looks good and bench sits in its new home (our home) under my portrait of Linda. It sits well and is quite comfortable! YAY!

I first painted the paper black with sumi ink.  Then I gilded the clothing area in silver leaf.  My plan was to paint black on the silver leaf in order to define her clothing and to build white acrylic in layers to define her skin.  After completing my plan, I dug back into the darker areas of her skin with black acrylic and then repainted with the white.  It improved!

Now I’m very much looking forward to my next Peregrine project which is ready to begin now.  It’ll be an 18 x 8 inch accordion-fold book of 16 pen and ink drawings of Peregrine in this same black and silver sequined bunny-dress.  The plan looks spectacular.  Maybe an edition of three of these?

Peregrine, painting in acrylic and sumi ink on silver-gilded paper, 90 x 38.5 inches, completed April 17, 2010 (collection: Bishop-McCann, an award-winning brand experiences agency)

detail

Closer detail showing paint application white over black over white over sumi in face and black over silver gilding in clothing