Excerpts from “Duma Key” by Stephen King interspersed with my own musings;
Start with what you know, then re-invent it. Art is magic, no argument there, but all art, no matter how strange, starts in the humble everyday. Just don’t be surprised when weird flowers sprout from common soil.
When I was young and first picked up crayons and pencils (I doubt they would’ve let a child have pens, little good can come of that) I was drawing. To hear my family tell it I was copying the comics I saw in newspapers, and doing it flawlessly. My grandparents on both sides still have some of the pictures from then, sort of surprised me, although my parent’s pictures that they’d kept are long since gone.
That was the winter she saw her family grow bored with her work – Big Meanies like Maria and Hannah first, then Tessie and Lo-Lo, then Daddy, then even Nan Melda. Did she understand that even genius palls, when taken in large doses? Perhaps, in some instinctive child’s way, she did.
Things pall, oh yes, no matter how great people consider you. I’ve had quite a bit of experience in that, unfortunately. It encourages people to nag you. Closeness breeds indifference, although that’s not quite how the phrase goes. Consistent awe brings contempt of a kind as well, but I’m not sure if that would surprise you, depending on which end you’re looking from. I got tired of proving to various children at the schoolyard, babysitters and adults wandering by that yes, I could indeed draw the various cartoons and pre-printed images that people volunteered. In retrospect, I do wonder why they never asked for a drawing of anything currently tangible, like their hands or the crockery on their countertops. People rarely ask for that, I’ve noticed. Anyway, it wasn’t so much people asking “can you do this” as an accusation that I really didn’t draw whatever I was working on, or took to school to color (they had free crayons, you see) when the people were new. I want to say that it got very old, very fast, except it was never a new thing. It happened on a pretty consistent basis since that was one of two activities I spent the majority of my childhood and adolescence doing. Adulthood has been pretty quiet on that front, I’m happy to report, since being in crowds of people with a sketchpad aren’t mandatory. Barring a few handfuls of friends and family expecting artwork since they nag until I cave, can’t forget those, Like A. of the whiny “Do you really need all that paint?”. Guy’s lucky I’m supplying my own brushes, especially considering the amount of work it’s going to take. Like, months at the very least. But, got off-track. People close to you, that interact on a regular basis or know you well, do get bored. And they’re crap at offering criticism of any kind, which I’ve asked for and expected for better than two decades. A’s the only one in memory that offered criticism, barring my father once or twice, and that was only very recently. Not even the art teachers helped for style or idea tips, for which I’m still a bit sore at in that regard. Constant praise does nothing if that is all that’s heard.
What came next, the outgrowth of their boredom, was a determination to make them see the wonder of what she saw by re-inventing it.
People get bored with comics and Disney animation, even Roger Rabbit’s Risque girlfriend, Jessica, children included. Moving the poses and changing the clothing and size only goes so far. Even the cartoons on television palled after a while. I started on animals around third grade, then went to people and after that, various knicknacks and inanimate objects and then plantlife, respectively, all in different types of pencil. They were all interesting, up to a point. Could really stand to brush up though, gotten complacent.
Start with a blank surface. It doesn’t have to be paper or canvas, but I feel it should be white. We call it white because we need a word, but its true name is nothing. Black is the absence of light, but white is the absence of memory, the color of can’t remember.
And then I became completely obsessed with color, and the lack of it. Speaking of, there’ll be a Dear Crayola post after this, with the letter hopefully going to the company once I remember to pick up postage stamps. ‘Flesh color” my ass. There’s much too wide a range of skincolor to call that pale color ‘flesh’. It’s a long held grudge of mine against crayons especially, because flesh is not a standard color. People are much more vibrant than that, and even crayon, the lowliest of the low next to charcoal, takes many layers of many colors, pink or blue or green or yellow (depends on the lighting, really) to get a reliable skin tone base. I’ve gotten sidetracked again, I’m sorry. My point, I suppose, is that I got bored, and the people around me got bored, too, or maybe that’s complacent, although I didn’t change my focus for them since they’re not the reason I normally drew or painted or etched in the first place. Don’t do much etching, though, it’s been a while. Was a brief fancy, I’m thinking of taking it up again.
Long story short, I wanted to find something ‘new’, something that would catch my own eye not in the beginning, but at the end, after I was done remaking it. I want to see what it could be, because I’ve already seen what it was. I’ve had a few pieces like that in the past decade or so, which is how long I’ve been looking for newness after instead of before the fact, but they haven’t come with any regularity and they’ve been snatched up pretty quick. The next one I’m keeping for myself, dammit. Would you believe my walls are bare? The irony, it burns.
Normally when drawing (my paintings tend to be quite a bit more surreal/eerie, though) all I get as a finished product is a visual duplicate of whatever I’m looking at, and that isn’t what I’ve been trying to do these past several years. It doesn’t help that I normally don’t plan hobby paintings except for the barest minimum of construction*, deciding what spaces will be empty and what’ll be filled. Sometimes not even that. Portraits, however, require a detailed sketch before paint. Planning to paint, I find, is much like planning to write. You’ve got the general idea or wish or feeling that you’re going in, but you often get lost among the bulrushes on the way and end up far from your hoped destination. With me, that means a lot of unfinished work lying around, abandoned, because it went lifeless. It also happens sometimes when I need to paint but that’s much less often. Sometimes it comes back for a painting, weeks or months later and I can finish it then, but that’s rare so I prefer to do those kinds all in a sitting, or over a few days at most. Except lately, where there’s damn near fifteen painting-ideas that’re clammering to be put down, they’re already finished in my head. I normally don’t have a completed mental-map, it’s a nice change.
Stay hungry. It worked for Michelangelo, it worked for Picasso, and it works for a hundred thousand artists who do it not for love (although that may play a part) but in order to put food on the table. If you want to translate the world, you need to use your appetites. Does this surprise you? It shouldn’t. There’s nothing as human as hunger. There’s no creation without talent, I’ll give you that, but talent is cheap. Talent goes begging. Hunger is the piston of art.
When King is talking about putting food on the table, he’s talking about needs.
He has a point there. Drawing or painting is often a need and not so much a hobby, whether it’s to put food on the table, pay your bills or get that nagging, dragging thought/feeling out of your mind that’s a constant distraction. Sometimes, it’s all of ‘em at once, and that’s a real bastard because if you make a mistake in your eyes, (the buyer can’t seem to tell, I find) or it’s going in a direction it’s not supposed to be headed in, it’s like the work turned on you in your hour of need and bit you on the ass, then pissed on you for good measure. Sometimes I even get a mite resentful.
But those times when it’s paint-or-die and not merely a hobby, those would be the times I forget to eat or drink. You won’t realize you’re thirsty until the work is completed, or possibly when you take a bathroom break and spot the tap. Even if I should glance at the soda to the side of my table, I more often than not won’t make the connection because it isn’t the watercolor tube or the brush I’m after.
And Talent, that nebulous thing. I’m of the opinion anyone can have talent, although that might be my ego talking, seeing as I try and teach people whenever they express the littliest interest in wishing to draw. (granted, few are born with it unearned, I will give you that. It doesn’t, however, stay unearned for long, though the effort expended is often considerably less) I find adults rarely want to work at it, though, most won’t even try. They’re content to believe that it’s out of their grasp, that art is to be gazed at from afar instead of worked with. Children are much easier to teach, they’ve got less expectations, I think, on what they are and are not capable of.
Now, why I need to draw and paint, I haven’t figured that out yet.
-Edited, I just remembered that I did receive one other criticism, when I did a self-portrait. The girl sitting behind me at indoor recess said she didn’t like it. Re-edited, because I’m not sure if I consider pastels painting, it’s an ongoing arguement.
* Actually, upon closer inspection it depends on the medium and what’s being painted. I could’ve sworn I had a system, but then when I tried to list the painting steps, I kept getting ‘except…’ Too many variables.
If you’ve seen these children or their father, please get in contact with the authorities at the numbers listed below. The kid’s and Eddie’s pictures are on Sylvia’s blog, I haven’t been able to figure out how to upload images on WordPress yet.
