Originally published on perpetual-lab.blogspot.com
After the suicide of my old camera, now is the short period of mourning before the arrival of a new one. Meanwhile, I borrowed 6 books on painting in pastel from the public library, not in order to “learn how to do it properly”, but to see if there were any essential techniques that would preempt the more foolish of my trials and errors. I got a teaspoonful of usefulness from a gallon of printer’s ink, but some points to brood on too.
The books assume you will first go to the art shop and buy the best materials – paper and crayons – that you can afford. I appreciate reading why this is better than that, but I need to experiment, and so far I have only used the cheapest scholastic quality, that some parents would think not good enough for their children. Since it’s the process and not the result that’s been my concern, the materials have not been relevant. You do what you can with what you’ve got. As in life. (when this was first written, my blog was called “As in Life”)
The books assume you will learn the craft by copying from photographs, but I cannot bring myself to do that. If a photo could capture the colour and form which inspire my ecstasies, why would I go through the agony of sketching? Yes, agony. Yesterday, shaded from the noonday sun, I started a picture of St Lawrence’s Church and the hill on which it sits. The Golden Ball was tiny from this distance. I was exhausted after an hour, though the resulting unfinished sketch was pleasing. So many emotions! Irritation, disappointment, confusion, frustration, despair. Underlying all these, a continuous ecstasy. I’m not made to live in peace, to grow fat in tranquillity. As Karleen, says in her Jamaican patois, I’m “dramatic”.
A photograph is flat. Would you want to experience the vibrant colours and sensational shapes of life through the cold eye of a fish?
When I go to the site with my bag of crayons and bottle of turpentine and supply of cotton buds and cheap pad I appreciate Vincent Van Gogh all the more. I know of only one painting in which he copied from a photo – a portrait of his mother. He could not go and visit her. He was in Arles, Provence, and she was in Holland, and he lived on pocket-money from his brother Theo. So he used the photo to refresh his memory and changed her formal expression to the sweeter one that he saw in his mind’s eye.
I noticed that when I sketch, after drawing an outline in pencil, I don’t look at the scene much. The struggle is not to copy what I see but to create a coherent world on the paper. I have to add shade to this tree here, and a feature to that house there, to make them look like a tree and a house. I’m improving on what I see. I edit what I see. Realising that an interesting feature would be out of frame – fall off the edge of the paper – I remove a section of the seen landscape to make it fit on. We create our own world. As in life.
a wayfarer’s notes 