Doing artwork on the iPad has been both frustrating and rewarding.  Why frustrating?  I have been in a comfortable rut with charcoal and pastel on Kraft paper for awhile.  And doing charcoal gesture drawings on printer paper.  I've received a lot of positive feedback on those works.  So, I'm impatient with the learning curve of the iPad.  I want to be just as skilled with it as I am with more traditional media.  The tactile sensation is nothing like drawing with charcoal on paper.  The tools provided by the app simulate oil painting, watercolors, pen, pencil, crayon, etc.  But, it doesn't act exactly the same. 

But. learning new skills is inherently rewarding.  It's like solving a puzzle.  I'm convinced that what we call self-esteem comes, in part, from mastery.  The other component is unconditional love, but that's a different blog.

The iPad offers some interesting possibilities.  I took a picture of a drawing that I gave away to the model.  Taking a picture indoors with my iPhone camera produced a very blurry image.  So, in iPhoto, I straightened and cropped the image, then uploaded it to the iPad.  Brought up the ArtRage app, and started working on the image.  Here is the progression:

Here is the first blurry photo.














Then, straightened and cropped:

And, then, after some time playing around with ArtRage.  

Is it better?  Worse?  Or, just different.  The original drawing was a three-minute pose, if I recall correctly.  Gesture drawings have a great feeling of energy.  The ArtRage version looks more like an illustration, I think.  I hope some of the energy remains.

The model still has the original drawing.  The iPad offers the possibility of manipulating the original image many, many times over, without in any way altering the original piece.  So, if I liked the original charcoal on printer paper piece, the wonderful thing is: it is still there, unchanged.  Unless, of course, the model smeared the charcoal.  Pretty cool.

"I think continually of those who were truly great," begins British poet Stephen Spender (1909-1995).

in my family, less than an "A" on the report card was failure.  I graduated 5th in my large high school class and thought myself a failure.  In our entertainment-driven culture, we celebrate the Big Stars, forget the Has-Beens, and pity the Wanna-bees.  
I made a B+ in my first college drawing class.  Therefore, I believed I was a no-talent failure.  So, I majored in art history instead of studio art, as I had planned.  
 
About 5 years later, I returned to school and earned that BFA in Studio Art.  "So there!" I could tell my past self.

Twenty five years later, am I famous?  No.  Does it matter?  Not at all.  Will I achieve the stature of a Leonardo, a Michelangelo, a Raphael?  Extreeeeeeeemely doubtful.  Will I ever even be a big fish in a small pond?  Does it matter? What matters is to keep at it, despite the lack of glory, fortune and fame.  

Perfectionists get very little done, you know.  Sometimes a "good enough" job really is good enough, if you put your heart and soul into it.  I give you a Leonardo.  And, one of my small paintings.  His is magnificent.  And mine?  Well, it's good enough.

Mona Lisa, by Leonardo da Vinci (as if I really needed to tell you)

Senalka, acrylic on panel, 12 x 12 inch, by Laura Grimes


And, here is Stephen Spenders poem, in its entirety:

 I think continually of those who were truly great.
Who, from the womb, remembered the soul's history
Through corridors of light where the hours are suns,
Endless and singing. Whose lovely ambition
Was that their lips, still touched with fire,
Should tell of the spirit clothed from head to foot in song.
And who hoarded from the spring branches
The desires falling across their bodies like blossoms. What is precious is never to forget
The delight of the blood drawn from ancient springs
Breaking through rocks in worlds before our earth;
Never to deny its pleasure in the simple morning light,
Nor its grave evening demand for love;
Never to allow gradually the traffic to smother
With noise and fog the flowering of the spirit. Near the snow, near the sun, in the highest fields
See how these names are fêted by the waving grass,
And by the streamers of white cloud,
And whispers of wind in the listening sky;
The names of those who in their lives fought for life,
Who wore at their hearts the fire's center.
Born of the sun, they traveled a short while towards the sun,
And left the vivid air signed with their honor. 
~ Stephen Spender ~

For over 25 years now, a lifedrawing open studio has met on Tuesday mornings at the Dougherty Cultural Arts Center in Austin, TX.  I attended this studio in the 80's, intermittently in the '90's.  In this, the first decade of the 21st Century, I became more regular.  Dorothy Billman started this endeavor, and she stayed on as the studio monitor for 25 years.  Aa few years ago, at the age of 83, she fell and cracked her pelvis.  I substituted for her, expecting her return.  She planned to return.  But, she did not get back to driving.  No one was willing to take it on, and I wanted to keep drawing, so I stepped in officially.  The group has grown, so much so, that I opened up another open studio at the Austin Visual Arts Association on Wednesday mornings.  I put us on MeetUp.com, where I promote, not only my group, but every lifedrawing group in the Austin area, at least the ones I know about.

Lifedrawing sessions normally begin with gestures.  The model does very short poses, usually one-minute ones, poses that could not be held for much more than a minute.  Gesture poses are active, dynamic.  My favorite part of lifedrawing studio is the gestures.  I could do an all-gesture class of 3 hours, but, even with breaks, the model would collapse with exhaustion. 


I believe gesture drawings are similar to calligraphy.  When we watch a master of Asian calligraphy at work, we do not see the years of practice, the honing of skill over time.  We see deft strokes of the brush, quick, yet somehow without haste.  Perhaps the brush moves for a minute or less.  Yet,  the artist's hand produces great works of art in that small space of time.


So I offer you, the reader, just a few of the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of gesture drawings I have done in the last 25 years or so
I will not claim they are great works of art.  They are a record of a moment, a moment that is gone, but not lost.