Posts By Alex Zonis
Obligatory trees
Autumn Aspens
There are pretty good and logical reasons for beginner painters to choose predictable subjects. There are beginner fruit, mainly pears and apples, then come trees of different seasons, then sheds and old houses and so on. I speculate that these subjects are selected because they are tangible and contained, have reasonably interesting but not complicated forms, are easily found and well known. It is much easier to paint something you know. The subjects being well contained allow the student to concentrate on a small area at hand with little worry of what’s next. These qualities make them well suited for teaching and learning.
I did my predictable “beginner” pears and now have moved on to my “beginner” trees. My teacher complimented my brush work in class yesterday, even showed it to other people. She is very kind and a very experienced educator. She is able to find something to compliment in a most hideous work – a remarkable ability and at the same time a necessity for a teacher. When I am faced with ugly art, the best I can do is keep my opinion to myself.
I also learned some color “recipes”. I find the approach similar to cooking recipes. When I start cooking a new cuisine, say Thai, I cook from cookbooks at first. Then something happens, I internalize the essence of new cuisine, abandon cookbooks and cook “free hand” so to speak. But in the beginning I need recipes. I was very excited yesterday to mix my own Payne’s Grey from Burnt Umber and Ultramarine Blue. The best part is that I can now vary my Payne’s Grey to be warmer or cooler as I need it.
SOFA without the glamour
SOFA Chicago came and went.
I did not have anything on display this year, but I spent 3 days there to see what other artists have been doing and get my imagination charged. And also to hang around my gallery and spent time with Sami whom I adore but only get to see once a year. Here’s Sami, the owner of Mostly Glass gallery, and I.
We love each other, don't we?
I also worked after the show closed , from 6pm till 11pm, and helped my gallery pack – a Herculean task to say the least – nearly everything the gallery shows is glass. Here’s how SOFA looks after the doors are closed, fancy public in designer duds is gone and spot lights are turned off. Not the images from glossy brochures – the real deal.
This is not easy!
Box #117
Almost done!
Watercolor homework
Two pears
I started working with an artist and teacher from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. I am trying to introduce some sense of direction to my drawing and painting explorations. My teacher works with numerous media, but her monumental pen and ink works as well as her watercolors are particularly noteworthy. I am not taking formal classes in the Art Institute, this is too structured for me. Instead I work with Kaye in her studio where the class is very small and takes more of an open studio format. There are about half a dozen of us, all working in different media as it happens. I am the only watercolor student.
This is my first homework. The subject is inspired by wonderfully talented Jacqueline Gnott of Contemporary Realism. Initially I wanted this little painting to have some kind of a background, some painterly washes in complementary colors and so spent significant time mixing colors and making swatches in class yesterday. In the end my teacher made a suggestion that the subject is perfect and complete in its current form and only needs shadows to settle, the minimalist “incomplete” look just works. I agree.
Oh, and we ate one of the model pears for breakfast today!
“Like a rolling stone”
Like a rolling stone
New portrait is complete. I probably spent 30 or 40 hours on it, but that’s over the course of 4 weeks. I don’t know who the guy is, the original photo is by amazingly talented Christine Lebrasseur. I had Bob Dylan continuously sounding in my head while I was drawing, and therefor the title is “Like a rolling stone.” My fellow graphite artists from WetCanvas! Drawing & Sketching forum have helped me tremendously by giving constructive critique in the most gentle and useful way.
3H-6B pencils on Stonehenge paper, size 6.25″ square.
On the front cover!
It is official! Today we received an email from Palgrave Macmillan, a UK publishing house, that my husband’s book is going into production. It is a highly academic treatise called Empathy in the Context of Philosophy. This is very exciting for us both. But what is really important is that the image of my latest tapestry is going to grace the front cover. And the publishers emailed to discuss the details. The tapestry is called Dessuart:
Dessuart
The image on the cover will be a crop of the whole thing, probably the upper half, and will likely be too small to do it justice. But still I am very excited – I will have the credits in the book. You can read more about symbolism of Dessuart on Mostly Glass gallery site.
Café Ennui
From Café Ennui
But I was not at all bored. My friend Mike and I got together for coffee and sketching in this dear neighborhood joint. Not trendy or snazzy, it is more of a cheap student place, old-fashioned, a little dumpy and in need of fresh paint, but serving good coffee and free Internet.
From my street level window, looking up, I saw an abandoned patio, now empty and closed for the coming winter. The café is on a garden level, so I had to look up at chairs turned in and a convenience shop across the street. The day was gray and blustery, I was looking for shadows to draw, but there were none, because there was no sun. Winter is coming…
Mechanical pencil, micron pen, watercolor pencils in my Artist’s HandBook.
Chicago Cultural Center
Preston Bradley Hall, Chicago Cultural Center
Our Monday Sketch group met in Chicago Cultural Center today. Nobody can call us uncultured now! Us and about 90 Chicago seniors who happened to have some kind of event there. They looked about 80 and upward and were extremely frisky, running around like spring chickens, although some dragged their unused canes behind. I pray I would be that energetic when I get to be their age…
Chicago Cultural Center was built in 1897 at a cost of $2 million of that money. The firm of Shepley, Rutan and Collidge of Boston had the honor of doing it. These are the same guys who designed the Art Institute of Chicago.
We sketched in the Preston Bradley Hall on the third floor. Named in honor of an important Chicago theologian, the Hall is spectacular. The space is beautifully proportioned and exquisitely decorated: 38-foot tall Tiffany stained glass dome and Tiffany chandeliers, Carrara marble walls inlaid with mosaic of color stones, glass and mother-of-pearl, just to name a few things.
I was seduced by the curves of entryway arches and the ceiling and set out to sketch far too large of a view. You probably need to sit there for a week to do justice to the details. I had an hour and a half. Mechanical pencil and micron pen.
Sketching in Chicago
Artists-bloggers have been extremely kind to me. It deserves a separate post to express my gratitude. Pete Scully sent me a very useful tutorial and a title of a book that talks about sketching techniques. Christy DeKoning stopped by my blog and offered me useful advice and suggestions out of the kindness of her heart. Roz Stendahl answered my newbie questions. And finally Barbara Weeks of Drawing Breath, a fellow Chicagoan, a sketcher and a blogger, invited me to her sketch group. Thank you all!
On Monday I went to sketch with a new group. Chicago weather did not cooperate. It was blistering cold and windy, probably 20 degrees lower than it should have been this time of the year. But a group of women gathered to sketch in Mariano Park was undeterred. All 39-years-old and not a day more, we were sitting there – our noses red, pencils firmly clutched in our blue fingers – sketching, laughing and chatting. Barbara, it was a blast, even if it took several hours to regain my normal body temperature, – thank you so much!
This is what I produced on location.
Mariano Park 1
Well… When I showed it to my husband he asked which Chinese restaurant is this. I knew at that moment that I have to do the sketch again. The little building in my sketch is a coffee stand that was designed and built by Birch Burdette Long, a Frank Lloyd Wright student. I was blissfully ignorant of this fact until yesterday, when my fellow sketchers told me. Here’s my second attempt. I think this time it looks more Prairie School and less like a pagoda.
Mariano Park 2
Reading on it later I learned that Birch Long was the architect who brought Asian influences into Prairie style architecture, so my husband wasn’t that off the mark.
Gethsemane on Clark St.
Gethsemane on Clark St.
There is a giant pots sale in the Gethsemane Garden Center on Clark St. The pots are beautiful, they are tree size pots, substantial and heavy. Gethsemane is often on our trajectory as we walk in the neighborhood, we stop by and look at the flowers for sale, trees and bushes, and of course Christmas trees, depending on a season. “Pansies” gift shop there sparkles with beautiful and tempting curiosities from around the world, teapots, incense, porcelain, fabrics and art books. I warn you: it is wise to leave your wallet at home if you are planning to visit. Now that I think of it – they should pay me a percentage for all this advertisement I making for them in Blogosphere.
This sketch was giving me a run around, I attempted it 3 times. First I tried to do a true sketch with a quick gesture drawing. It was a complete failure. Note to self – need to practice gesture drawing. Then I tried to exercise more control, but it went nowhere as well, the shapes were not there, the line elegance and symmetry were lost. I didn’t want to give up this idea, so I doggedly set out to build my symmetries with a help of vertical center axis. Better. Perhaps I cannot call it a sketch anymore, but I got the image I had in mind on paper after all. Mechanical pencil, micron pen, watercolor pencils wash in my handbook.
Oh, my dad is sending me his watercolors, the true Russian ones, made in St. Petersburg. He says they have real “meat” in their colors, unlike anything else he tried. I am very excited to try real WC washes, although I will miss a variety of pre-made pigment mixes I have in WC pencils.
6337 N. Hermitage Street
For my walk today I went to the post office. The PO is 1.7 miles from the house, that makes it almost 3.5 miles there and back, not a bad exercise. I always drive there, and as a result of driving the only thing I see is traffic. And that is usually depressing in Chicago.
Walking you see a lot of interesting things. Squirrels were screeching like mad, street were being cleaned and repaired, kitty cats were looking out of the window, kids running in the parks. I enjoyed near empty streets and some wonderful houses in the neighborhood. Here’s one of them – 6337 N. Hermitage, with a lovely round front porch. Micron pen and watercolor pencils.
6337 N. Hermitage St.