Frame Up

Secret Keys to Drawing: Directionality, Intersection, and Constellation

Yesterday's Art-Toon Doodle Experiments using directionality and intersection were inspired by the book "Drawing as a Sacred Activity" by Heather C. Williams.

Art students soon learn that marks--lines, dashes, and dots--can be used to represent forms. The main principle embodied in the line is directionality. Lines can be vertical, horizontal, or diagonal. Lines can be gently curved, wildly wavy, jaggedly crooked, or smoothly straight. Lines can change direction gradually or abruptly. Lines can be continuous or dashed. Lines can be thick, thin, long or short. They can be aggressively dark or hesitantly light. A line changes character depending on whether the hand moves slowly, precisely across the surface--or rapidly and loosely. But, according to Heather C. Williams, the most important question to ask is, "Which direction overlaps the other?"

What is rarely spoken of is the place where lines meet, the place of intersection. This is the relationship of one line to another within the field of space. The intersection is the place where one line stops because another line crosses its path. In the representation of three-dimensional space on a two-dimensional surface, what we need to remember is that one line is always going behind another. As Williams says in her book "Drawing as a Sacred Activity," "Visual information about the form is anchored in the intersection." She then reveals a masterful secret about the visual key to drawing. She says this key to drawing cannot be found in art instruction manuals. It was revealed in a dream to Jan Valentin Saether, with whom she lived and apprenticed. If he had not paid attention to his dream and if he had not shared this dream with Williams, she would not have been able to teach this method to others. In his dream he saw little glyphs, like the letter Ayin in Hebrew. I find it deliciously satisfying to know that the letter-word meaning for Ayin is eye or fountain.

After teaching her students to look for this "y-shaped glyph," she encourages them to take it one step further, and to look for the larger pattern itself, the constellation of several y-shaped intersections seen all at once.

Quotes from "Drawing as a Sacred Activity"

p. 43: "The over-lapping direction on the paper corresponds precisely with the object standing in front of the other thing, whatever it is."

Or in other words:

p. 43: "...the direction on your paper that ends when it intersects the other direction corresponds precisely with the object that visually goes behind the other one."

Directionality and Intersections

Art-Toon Experiments: Black Sumi Ink on Card Stock.

Art-Toons: Daily Doodles

Medium: India Ink with large brush on Strathmore Bristol Smooth, "Excellent art surface for creating comics, cartoons and graphic novel illustrations."

Today's doodle experiment taught me to isolate my images from each other, to work on the panels one at a time. Originally, I had wanted the ink to have time to dry for the next step--embellishment. But after the ink dried, I found myself unable to flow from one panel to the next. Next time, I will start in the middle and work my way up and down, left and right. The drawings lost their sense of continuity and unity when I tried to work sequentially. And to be truthful, I found myself bored with the technique. Putting on the darks in one sitting, panel by panel in sequence, did not allow the freedom of movement I was seeking nor did it allow the entire project to achieve a satisfying overall pattern.

For now, since I do not have a large scanner, I will limit myself to 8 1/2 by 11 inch pages and save the Strathmore for my final inkings. At least I found the Art-Tooning Tools I'd been looking for: Color-erase non-photo blue and 1 oz. jar of Bleed-Proof Opaque White Water Color by Daler Rowney.

Doodle Art as Therapy or Just Neat Warm-Ups for Art-Toonists

Today's Art-Toon Doodle Experiment was inspired by the book, "Doodle Interpretation: A Beginner's Guide," by Michael Watts. These "doodle therapy exercises" are among several suggested therapy doodles at the back of this short, but fun, instruction book.

Instructions from: "Doodle Interpretation"

Top Row: Page 115: "Flowing Hearts: These should flow in smooth, continuous curved strokes. As you draw, focus some awareness on a person (or animal) who fills your heart with love."

Second Row: Page 116: "The Infinity Chain:Choose a size for this doodle that feels good, and then, with smoothly flowing movement, airm to keep the upper and lower loops of this chain as round and consistent in length as possible, and equidistant. Leave plenty of space between each figure 8 as this increases the tranquilizing effects. Also allow enough space between rows to avoid entaglement--if you wish, used lined paper until you master a balanced and symmetrical construction of this doodle. Whilst doing this exercise, let your eyes gradually drift into a soft, lightly focused, effortless gaze. This exercise is designed to create a relaxed, harmonious, balanced state of mind--it can sometimes even relieve headaches."

Third row: Page 117: "Combined Curls: In this pattern you should aim for symmetry and fluidity--loops should be similar in size, and as smooth, round and flowing as possible. The distance between the upward- and downward-pointing pairs of loops should remain consistent throughout each row and the pen should move across the page in a continuous flowing movement maintaining an even temp. When you do this exercise correctly and effortlessly, it feels great."

Fourth Row: Page 116: "Peaceful Swans: The drawing of each swan should begin just above the beak, and continue in one harmonious flowling motion until the body and wings are completed. Only then should the pen be lifted in order to draw the beak and the eye of the swan. After a certain amount of practice you will find this drawing easy to do and highly enjoyable. Draw slowly and smoothly whilst visualizing a swan floating peacefully on a tranquil lake."

Art-Toons: Doodle Book

Art-Toon, Phyllis J. O'Rourke, M.A., 11.10.2009

Art-Toon, Phyllis J. O'Rourke, M.A., 11.8.2009

Art-Toons

Art-Toon, 11/09/2009, PJO

What is an Art-Toon?
(Excerpted from soon-to-be-published book, "Confessions of a Gutter Artist")


Spontaneous, experimental art, what some refer to as "Abstract Comics" and what I like to call "Art-Toons," makes use of color and form to record thoughts and emotions, using the movement or dance of color, dots and lines within a frame or grid or even on a fear-inducing blank, white, page. Instead of words, sentences, or paragraphs, the art-toonist uses direction and force to make marks or lines within a pattern or grid. This pattern language opens the door to thoughts and feelings more swiftly and directly than written forms of language. The images that form spontaneously across the grid or on the page connect the mind of the artist to the depths of the soul through the universal "pattern language of uncovery." This pattern language of color and form cannot be used so easily as words for self-deception. Words can be deliberately vague or misleading. Color and line get right to the point. Shapes and forms can be effervescent, dream-like, and mysterious, or they can be harsh, dark, and forbidding. Either way, their energy is primal and self-sustaining.

Anyone who has ever kept a journal of any kind knows the process can have an impact on self and others, for good as well as ill, especially if words written in private become public. With the Art-Toons, thoughts and feelings can be expressed fearlessly, in their most raw and truthful form. You may not even recognize the meaning of your Art-Toons until later, but you will experience directly what it feels like to have colors and shapes emerge on the page with you as their only witness during the act drawing itself. In addition, using color and form gets around both your interior editor and not-so-friendly art critique. Because you are using line, form, and color to express internal feelings that have yet to be articulated, you do not have to worry about things like perspective or making representative forms of the “real” world.

This frees you from being subject to any sort of internal or external art critique. No one can argue with a wiggly, blue line. No one can say the yellow blob needs to be a different shape or color. The blob is yellow because it is yellow, and it is shaped the way it is because that is how it came out of your hand and into the framework of the page. The yellow blob is a sunflower only if you say it is. Other people may imagine they see things in the yellow blob, but that will tell you more about how they see than about how you draw.

Art-Tooning is not about making realistic copies of people or animals or the work of other artists. Art-Tooning is about which color to use now, and now, and now, and about learning to watch the way each color dances across the grid-lines in contrast with its neighboring lines, shapes and colors. The pattern language of color and form will reveal its own secret beauties over time, but from the very beginning it speaks its truths directly to the soul from a deeper, more ancient source of wisdom.

Art-Tooning does not require expensive canvasses, brushes, or materials. Art-Toons can be done on something as affordable as brown wrapping paper or stones gathered by a river or trash picked up in a street gutter. Artists and scientists have long realized the value of the draft and the sketch to enable the mind to stretch into uncharted territory. It is up to you to decide what form you want your particular exploration to take. Art-Toons can be kept on loose paper, stored in boxes or glued into journals or sketchbooks. You can make or buy journals with paper you like drawing on. The size of a journal can be small and portable, what I call purse-size. Or you can use a larger format. You can even keep more than one journal at a time. The pages can be made out of cut-up paper sacks or card stock. You can use paint, glue, and cut up images from magazines. Entries can be made on both sides of each page or just on the fronts. Some people like to keep their Art-Toons in folders or portfolios. Art-Toons made on 8 ½" by 11" paper can be put in plastic page protectors and stored in three-ring binders. Art-Toons can be kept in chronological order or they can be rearranged according some other pattern or format. Art-Toons don’t necessarily have to be made or looked at “right-side up” or from “front to back.” Smudges, coffee stains or water marks don’t have to be mistakes because they can be incorporated into the process of the record of the over all design or pattern on the page. A line or mark that isn’t meant to represent a “thing” or “object” in the real world can just be what it is--a fiery red slash across a yellow and black background--and mean just what it means to the only person who counts: the person who made the Art-Toon.

A series of Art-Toons can be the record of a particular period of time--a time of transition--with beginnings, middles, or endings--or a record of a birth, a death, a divorce, a childhood, an accident or recovery from an illness. It can be a record of blessings or challenges associated with grief or of an on-going or progressive disease. Art-Toon Journals can document a trip, with representational sketches and drawings interspersed with words or with memorabilia glued on the pages--ticket stubs pasted down next to a new friend’s address. The possibilities are endless.

Once a clear image forms in the mind’s eye of what an Art-Toon Journal can be, you can watch your decision-making process. An Art-Toon Doodle Book can be made with things most people have around the house or that can be purchased at your local school or office supply store. Your only real investment is time. Only you can decide to see what happens if your allow the Art-Toon Book to become a part of your life, to serve your own unique creative uncovery process. Before you start, you might want to ask yourself a few simple questions:

• Do I really want to start a visual record called an Art-Toon Doodle Book?
• If no, why not?
• If yes, why so?
• What would I have to do exactly?
• Just how much time is this going to take?
• Am I to be adding one more thing to my already busy life, hectic schedule, or family obligations?
• What happens if I start it and don’t stick with it?
• Where will it take me?
• What if I don’t like what I uncover or discover about my innermost self?

Imagine you are standing on the edge of a deep pool. The water is still and deep. But you can’t see the bottom and you wonder what lurks beneath its calm surface. No one can make this decision for you. There are no guarantees about results, and no promises being made that your life will change for the better. What do you have to lose? A couple of hours of time? A few pieces of paper? Only you can decide whether or not to take the plunge. But there is one outcome that is guaranteed and most certain. If you don’t take this opportunity to give yourself permission to at least get your feet wet, the odds are 100% certain that things will change anyway, whether you want them to or not.

As Gregory Bateson says, “Break the pattern which connects the items of learning and you necessarily destroy all quality. . . . The pattern which connects is a metapattern. It is a pattern of patterns.” May I dare suggest that keeping a visual record of your evolving Art-Toons and Doodles, which is what the Art-Toon Doodle Book is all about, makes visible hidden patterns and underlying processes that are always there, regardless of whether or not we pay attention to them. Once something becomes conscious, our choices become more informed.

Keeping an Art-Toon Doodle Book doesn’t have to be an act of desperation or something you have to feel guilty about not doing every day if the going gets rocky. Once the decision to go ahead has been made, making entries in your Art-Toon Doodle Book doesn’t have to be a serious or even a sacred quest. Even though for many it becomes just that. Of course, like any journey into uncharted waters, it can bring surprises. The beginning of the voyage into inner space is a brand-new adventure, a scouting of unknown territory. Others have gone this way before, so there are several good maps of the territory . A Reference page is soon to come.

Above all, keep it simple. Don’t worry. An Art-Toon Doodle Book is not a work of art to be auctioned off to the highest bidder. It is a private playgound, a practice arena, a place to record and date dream images, symbols, colors, photographs, collages, sketches, patterns, poems, word clusters, designs, conflicting forces, blue prints, or ideas. Watch for the patterns, watch how you use color and form. What shapes appeal to you? What ones repel you?

Even if you have never thought of yourself as a visual artist, keeping an Art-Toon Doodle Book is just plain fun. It’s an opportunity to experiment with a variety of “art toys” or new media. If you’ve always wanted to try colored pencils or water color, an Art-Toon Doodle Book can be a place to learn about value, hues, tints, chroma, line, shading, form, shape, pattern, and textures of your chosen medium.

An Art-Toon Doodle Book can be a chronological record of your daily emotional environment, much like the weather books kept by amateur meteorologists. If you’ve been trying to make a decision or planning to make a change, but can’t seem to go forward with next step, you can use your response to your Art-Toon Doodle Book entries as an inner wisdom dialog, a way to have a conversation with your inner self. You can use entries to document an event or experience that is still raw or unresolved, one whose meaning may not be fully understood, whose memory causes pain or grief, one that evokes deep feelings of love, fear, resentment or even wrath or rage.

It really is up to you. You may want to make several five-minute entries in a short period of time, or work on one entry that may take several days to complete. It all depends. The Art-Toon Doodle Book is yours and yours alone. You do not have to share it with anyone unless you want to. The Art-Toon Doodle Book is yours to start, to keep, to abandon, to pick up once again. The Art-Toon Doodle Book is never over. It is an on-going process of creative uncovery.

The desire to keep on keeping on with the Art-Toon Doodle Book may wax and wane. The bottom line, though, is about permission giving. Permission to make mistakes, to not be perfect, to let out what has been stored inside, to explore, to discover what has been there all along, to allow your life to unfold along formerly hidden but now exposed patterns. It is about permission to play. Permission to rediscover your inner resources. Permission to become more of who and what you already are.

Homage to Jack Hamm

Here is why all comics are abstract. Jack Hamm was the first teacher I found who showed his students the simple yet profound fact of cartooning: the human mind is predisposed to recognize the human face, no matter how simple, as long as the pattern resembles the positional arrangement of human features, even when disorted by imagination.

I also want to thank Scott McCloud for his wonderful pryamid with the three points depicting the "picture plane," "reality," and  "meaning." I love the scalene triangle where the border of language bends toward the conceptual edge after passing through the retinal edge along the scale of the representational edge.

References:

Jack Hamm, "Cartooning the Head & Figure" (1967).

Scott McCloud, "Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art" (1994).

The Absolute Luxury of Discomfort

As I find my way through the labyrinth, I remember there is only one path to the center. I watch for change, because that is how the eye works best. I find the perfectly-sized journal for the next ROAD TRIP, and I know that I need to start using it now so that I won't forget the transitions.

"Litter-alley" Gutter Art

This morning on the way to coffee as I stepped out of TOR's car, I found a child's drawing in the gutter, literally. I pasted it to a mess painting, scanned it into my computer, and uploaded it here. It makes me feel happy. I'm on my way to Pilates. Back soon.

Awakening & Remembrance

Artist's Breast Prints, Acrylic on Cloth, April 2009

Awakening

&

Remembrance

Never allow, never ever,

one’s awful assessment

of adverse circumstance--

some painful event

(whether real or imagined)

judged unacceptable

in the mundane dance--

to dispel the magic,

the awe, the wonder.

Be it gentle,

heart-felt tug

or sudden, radical uproar

--from the depths

beyond mere despair--

let vision clear

to touch in time

Nature’s secret beauties.

Immediate Presence

stabs the heart

through rainbow

or sun dog,

from ebb & flow

of ocean tides,

by rise & set

of Moon or Sun,

or, perhaps,

ever more subtle

harmonies & rhythm.

Unyielding surrender,

excruciating joy

unfolds

to hidden pleasures

Divine

of Being’s becoming,

observer

& silent witness,

to infinite Mysteries

sublime.

Unleashed,

unveiled,

unmasked,

unasked-for

splendid glory,

as past & future unite

for one everlasting,

transitory

moment—eternally—now

IAM.

©2001; ©2005; ©2009, Phyllis J. O'Rourke, M.A.

Prior to 2001, my work had not been very public. With the event of 9/11, I realized that artists have a sacred calling to express emotional content directly through art--using words and pictures, song and dance. Today, I realized that the breast prints I made in April of 2009 spoke directly to the poem that came through me in the days after 9/11. During 2005, Sally White King and I co-wrote a book of poems called "Nobody's Afraid of the Dark during the Day." While this poem appeared as an illustrated work in the show "Coming through the Loop," I did not fight hard enough for it to be included in the poetry collection. So today, I give it a place in my Heart Storm Series. Breast Prints are made by painting with acrylics the the body of the artist (usually female) and pressing one's chest onto a cloth-covered flat surface. I have come to prefer the vertical to the horizontal presentation of Breast Prints. For those of you trying this at home, do not allow the paint to dry before removing it from the chest. I speak from painful, first-hand experience.