Sunday, July 20, 2025

Morning glory advances and drawing, how long?

Friday's time on the deck was vintage. Perfect weather, low humidity, few biting insects. And I got my first clearwing hummingbird moth sighting of the year, working on the butterfly bush. Also a chickadee, a first this year. And a monarch butterfly. These are all less common than in earlier years, likewise fireflies, just the occasional one, but still welcome. 

Saturday's walk to the pond, cool and cloudy, great walking weather, is now no longer a stretch goal but routine. While I was there I pulled off a dead branch which was dragging a big bough down, and the bough sprang up gratefully, about fifteen feet up.

Already some leaves are falling, mostly wild cherry. You'll see beechnuts developing, and brambles growing in a planter, such temptation.  I expect birds and squirrels will see them off before they're ripe.




And back home I added in a couple of garden stakes to give the morning glories something to climb up. A couple of hours later, the tendrils are already establishing themselves. Warp speed.


I "pruned" the bird-planted butterfly bush by treating it rough. I'm not a careful snippity gardener, at least not with this guy. 



I just tore off lower branches full of dead foliage and tossed them into the trees on my walk.

When you consider the savage cutting and hacking and poisonous tools and materials used in suburban gardens, you wonder if many a murder has been averted by people rushing to take out their deadly aggression in the garden. All that slashing and dragging about. I do wonder.

Indoors the rescued orchid is getting near to flowering 



Anyway on to art.

Here's a little ink drawing from today 

And a bit tired, later I did a doodle while I listened to The Foundling, a favorite Georgette Heyer.


A couple of people have put a really good question about the drawings, not doodles,  I've been doing lately, viz., how long does it take. The answer is twofold, pour a cup of tea and sit a minute. 

One is that to an artist every piece of work, for better or worse, comes out of every mark they've ever made. That's because your eye sees based on all the years of practice it's had. Your drawing hand, too, has a lot of stored knowledge.  Your brain knows to permit the seeing without naming that's vital to drawing.  

Your experience tells you what tool or approach will work for this subject or idea -- you don't only draw stuff you can see, you may be drawing a concept, see Odilon Redon, early O'Keefe, and more. Here I drew my perception of what I was seeing, both object and idea.

The lightness and movement of the subject suggested fine-point ink, my pilot pen, the humbleness needed a small scale, here a page smaller than my hand. And the fineness of the line needed a bright white, slightly rough, paper for contrast.

So these little drawings took well over eighty years. And literally thousands of drawings and paintings and walking and looking and seeing and musing.

But what you probably really wanted to know was how long this particular one took as seen by an observer. In each case, a few minutes. 

The other thing that's not evident to an observer is that the focus needed is so total that, for me, one drawing is about it for the day. If I drew more, the focus would blur, the eye would flag, the drawing wouldn't be worth keeping, and certainly not worth showing you, and signing.

And I think you know I'm a true believer in drawing from life or memory, creating the composition there and then. I don't work from photos, even my own, where I created the composition. To me it feels dead on arrival.  The photo did it already.

I also work alla prima, meaning straight onto the blank page, no blocking or drafting or preliminary marks.  That takes place in the mind's eye. 

None of this is meant to pass judgment on different ways of drawing. It's just how I work.

More than you wanted to know, probably!  Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

Happy day everyone, it's happy somewhere for someone, if not everywhere for everyone.








41 comments:

  1. Your comments on drawing, and art in general, are inspiring. I might even have another go.
    Well done on the walking. You put me to shame.

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    1. Try it, caro! Even five minutes drawing is valuable for your spirits. Everyone walks their own way!

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  2. Imagine your TED Talks! The growing things look so happy. We had morning glory along the terrace of one of the rooms. I was amazed to find how quickly it grew and changed.

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    1. My drawing workshops pretty much amounted to TED talks, extended and with continuous student participation! This seems to be a good year for plants.

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  3. I have no art talent at all but drawing appeals to me most, especially traditional grey pencils to black and all the shades in between.

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    1. I love the grayscale too, made many monotypes in grayscale. Do the boys make art at all?

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  4. You're in fine, good spirits, busy with brain and eye as ever.

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    1. Things feel good right now. Deck time will do that.

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  5. I enjoyed your drawing and your TED talk about it, thanks!

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    1. I'm glad. My adult students used to get a lot of this poured over them. Mostly they felt encouraged. I think.

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  6. You have good vision and the ability to get it on paper.

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    1. It's always a bit incomplete. Never really satisfied.

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  7. Great TED talk about art...and you as an artist. Your orchid will soon be so full of blooms, mine only has 3!

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    1. This is a rescued orchid from someone who gave up on waiting for it to rebloom.

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  8. Thanks for explaining about your art work. I suppose that talent is interest plus time and effort. I remember when some of my children succeeded in long distance running. It took hours and hours and hours of running to get to the success they achieved.
    Your work is so lovely. I just love how you capture so much beauty and detail.

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    1. Thank you. I expect your children made it look easy when they became really good at distance running. Yeah, right!

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  9. I just read an article that said fireflies are becoming endangered and expected to become extinct. I remember the magic of them when I was a kid but haven't seen any in recent years.
    Your Ted talk was interesting - thank you for the insight into your drawing process. Really wish I had that talent but it jumped over me in the gene pool. My mother did lovely water colours when she was young and I wish I had inherited some of that ability. My media has to be fabric which is a lot more forgiving.

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    1. Your landscapes are your art. Do your sons make art -- is their food their art? It is an artform.

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    2. Both sons love to cook - oldest is a chef by trade and the younger just plain enjoys cooking for his family and friends. #1 son had aspirations to be a writer and was quite good, but life has a way of changing paths.

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  10. I am so impressed by your art and I loved your explanation. Maybe before I "discovered" you, you posted about this more but these recent posts are the first I've seen. And is there any better wish for a summer day than your words here: "Perfect weather, low humidity, few biting insects." Love it!

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    1. I think you arrived after I blended my art blog, Art the Beautiful Metaphor, with this one, so you missed a lot of TED talks! Just as well, maybe.

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  11. A butterfly bush won't mind a rough pruning! We cut ours way, way back every February and they're always huge by the end of summer.

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    1. Yes, they take it as a challenge. Even if you tear out branches, so rude!

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  12. Thank you for the explanation. I have morning glory taking over an entire flower bed. I wonder how many lives have been saved because I garden?

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    1. Certain politicians may have been spared.

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  13. Being new to your blog, I'd never seen your drawings before. Your TED talk made perfect sense. You've had decades of practice and sounds like you've taught art, also. Even when I was a kid I had no talent for drawing people, animals, or anything that moved--lol! But I would wait for the Sunday paper to come and lay on the floor to copy the Sunday funnies characters. To this day I need a photo to copy. More of a copier than an artist like you. But I still enjoy it. I'm better at mandalas and doodles than trying to actually capture the essence of a morning glory...even if it doesn't move--lol! ;) So nice to learn more about you!

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    1. I sometimes forget people are new, because they quickly become friends and I feel as if I've known you for years. So I expect you to know things you can't possibly know, sorry!
      The house of art has many rooms, and they include just plain copying because you like to, as a bit of fun. And doodling!

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  14. I like hearing how YOUR process works.

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    1. I'm glad it's interesting. Just one person's approach.

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  15. The morning glories that reseed every year aren't as aggressive this year. There is a blogger for Zentangle.com drawings you might like.

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    1. I'm looking forward to seeing how the morning glories do this year. They're blooming, better than the foliage I got in previous years. Thanks for the zentangle ref

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  16. I do wish that I had an artist's eye for drawing or a musicians ear for playing. I appreciate.

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    1. Remember that art and music need an audience to complete them. If you appreciate, you're taking part.

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  17. If only my art instructors had taken your approach...

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    1. I used to do quite a bit of repair work for adult students, to get them past the damage done by art teachers who weren't artists. Sigh. But you can always take another try if you're up for it.

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  18. Love the drawings and find the process interesting.

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    1. I'm glad. I think you can understand the art better if you know the process better.

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  19. I enjoyed the TED Talk. :) I always enjoy knowing more about people's creative processes. You explained yours so well.

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    1. You describe your own stitching approach well in your blog. I get insight's into a stitch form I don't do.

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  20. Maybe instead of art being an elective subject in schools every young person should be 'schooled' in finding a suitable (for them) expression of creativity - encouraging more souls to grow and know what it feels like.

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    1. That would be a good approach. We can dream.

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