My mother was an artist. She painted in oils and watercolors and also did pottery, ceramics and copper enameling. She was also an accomplished violinist. I never really thought I had any artistic talent, though when I was a kid she let me play around with her oil paints and I remember doing one painting of a turtle. I called it Turtle, what else, right?
In any event, last year I got it into my head that I should take a stab at painting. So my wife and I went to a local art gallery and store where they gave lessons. The owner, Audrey, suggested starting with pastels.
I asked for the supplies I needed and art lessons for Christmas. I got both: supplies from my wife and a gift certificate for lessons from my daughter. The lessons were three two and a half hour sessions in pastels which I took on consecutive Mondays from Feb. 10th to 24th. Audrey taught the classes.
There were only three or four of us in the class so we got a lot of personal attention. The other students were much more advanced than I was and I bought a book called Pastels for the Absolute Beginner by Rebecca de Mendonça. The author is an accomplished pastel painter from England. The lessons were quite interesting as pastel painting is a lot like impressionism.
I took a course in 19th Century art history during my last semester at the University of the Fraser Valley in 2022 before I got my degree that June, a Bachelor of Integrated Studies. I was 73 at the time. Maybe the oldest in my graduating class.
The course was an intensive one, conducted online. We used two comprehensive textbooks, Nineteenth Century Art: A Critical History edited by Stephen F. Eisenman and An Introduction to Nineteenth Century Art by Michelle Facos. I bought a physical copy of the former from Amazon and a pdf copy of the latter.
Unfortunately, everything has become politicized today, even art. So Eisenman’s “critical history” meant primarily a left-wing take on art history. Facos’ was a much more balanced approach. But both covered a wealth of information and were richly illustrated. The professor also had a Power Point presentation each week and her Power Points were detailed and vibrant and often covered areas not mentioned in the textbooks. We also had auxiliary journal essays to read.
The course covered 1850-1900 and included the major art movements including the Pre-Raphaelites, impressionism, pointillism, realism, symbolism and much more. All the major artists of the period were covered and there was even a fascinating look at the innovation of photography as well as a look at architecture and at William Morris and wallpaper design.
We had weekly short contributions to make to a class blog and two formal PowerPoint presentations, one on an artist of our choosing and one on a movement of our choosing (both from a supplied list). I choose a relatively unknown artist named Louise Breslin and the art movement known as the Pre-Raphaelites. For my final essay I wrote on The Modernization of Paris During the Second Empire as Chronicled by Artists. The course’s left-wing slant took issue with the so-called Haussmannization of Paris under Napoleon III, condemning its alleged excesses. But as a lover of Paris and all things Parisian, I wrote a very positive account of the period. I still got an A in the course.
In any event, I loved learning about the impressionists and pointillists and the science behind this approach to art. Because it is, in fact, a very scientific approach. The impressionists and pointillists made a point of understanding how the interplay of color and shadow created a 3D image and how splashes of different colors were melded by the mind’s eye into a coherent image. The color wheel was invented which shows how different colors relate to each other and how different pigments can be blended to form new colors. (e.g. red and yellow make orange.)
This is what Audrey taught us as well. Pastels aren’t meant for exact photo-realistic painting but for creating impressions. And while I like and admire artists who are able to create photo-realistic art, there is much to be said for impressionism.
Audrey taught us how to layer different colors to create a certain sense or feel to a painting, how to use light and shadow to give a painting depth and so on. We did rudimentary exercises and over the course I did three pictures, one of which, Prairie Sunset, heads up this essay. It’s based on a photograph I took near Regina, Saskatchewan. The original photo is below.
As you can see, I didn’t quite get the vibrant oranges of the photo. But I’m still fairly pleased with the result. Audrey encouraged us to work from memory but I found that too difficult so I worked from photographs.
Below is another pastel drawing I did of tulip fields in Abbotsford, BC.
Not great but, I hope, showing promise.
Audrey and I chatted a while after my last lesson and I bemoaned the fact that I couldn’t draw worth a darn. My drawings tended to the childlike. So she recommended a remarkable book, Betty Edwards’ Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. That book deals a lot with the neurophysiology of the eye and the mind, how we see things, how the left brain and the right brain are very distinctive in what they do and how they interpret reality. The left hemisphere is the the verbal, analytical, logical side of the brain. The right side is more visual, perceptive and intuitive.
“These two cognitive twins, however, are not equal,” Edwards writes. (xxvii)
Language is extremely powerful, and the left hemisphere does not easily share its dominance with its silent partner. The left hemisphere deals with an explicit world, where things are named and counted, where time is kept, and step-by-step plans remove uncertainty from the future. The right hemisphere exists in the moment, in a timeless implicit world, where things are buried in context, and complicated outlooks are constantly changing.
When she first wrote the book in 1979 as a guide to learning how to draw, Edwards was informed by the theories of Dr. Roger W. Sperry, a neurobiologist and later the winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine in 1981 for his split-brain research. The two hemispheres are different in their focus and in their function, as shown in the diagram below.
It has gone through several revisions and I have the 4th Edition (2012) which includes insights from the breakthroughs in neuroscience from the discovery of neuroplasticity, the ability of the brain to alter itself and the way it functions.
Audrey discussed this briefly in class, noting that Edwards’ methods included drawing things upside down. She gave us an interesting example. She put a wine glass on the table. What do you see, she asked. A wine glass I replied. Then she turned the wine glass upside down. Now what do you see she asked. I looked and looked at the glass for a minute or so and finally replied, an upside down wine glass.
Do you see and understand the difference? She explained that my answer to the first question was immediate. It was a left brain response. It was analytical and based on knowledge of wine glasses. My brain had a preconceived notion of what a wine glass is, a conceptual view. But when the glass was upside down, I had to think about it. It was something strange and different. The same thing, to be sure, but now I had to look at it more closely. I had to really see the wine glass.
I did a preliminary exercise in the book and put it aside as I was busy with reading and writing and had some tasks I wanted to attend to. But now I want to get through the book and do the exercises and see if it can actually fulfill its promise of teaching me to be a competent artist.
The preliminary exercise was to gather together the necessary supplies, and to do three drawings, a person drawn from memory, a self-portrait done while looking at a mirror, and a drawing of your hand. These were to be dated and put aside until the end of the book.
I’ve been busy with other things but want to put them aside for a while and work through the rest of Edwards’ book. So I am putting this blog on hiatus for a while, focusing on other things, including transitioning previous articles to my main blog.
When I started this blog I was gung-ho to work on my book, but other things have captured my imagination for the interim. Even with respect to the book, new readings have shifted my focus and my approach. I will get back to the book later after some of these new ideas have percolated through.
Thank you for reading this blog. If you are a subscriber (subscription is free), you’ll get an email when I have my next update. Before some links of interest, here is the third of the finished pastels I did for my course. It’s of a canola field near Regina, Saskatchewan and I gave it the whimsical name of Oh CAN-oh-LA, Our homegrown native grain
Links of Interest
The Destruction of Art and History - an essay looking at the glass art of Louis Comfort Tiffany and how much of his life’s work was destroyed through ignorance.
The Modernization of Paris During the Second Empire - a three part essay that was my final term paper for a course in art history. Lots of art work included with the story.
The Larger Than Life Art of Walter Peter Brenner - a look at the amazing sculptures of the Guatemalan artist.
Book Review: The Brain That Changes Itself by Norman Doidge - a two part essay looking at neuroplasticity
The Doors of Perception - a look at how perception can differ for different people under different circumstances and how our perceptions can be changed through neuroplasticity.