by Bob Martin | Jun 2, 2024 | Art, Artist, Creativity, Culture
Artist Eugene Grigsby,1918 – 2013, taught at Arizona State for 20 years and spent two decades teaching in Phoenix public schools.
- What are the ideas or points of view that you’ve wanted to communicate in your paintings? I don’t know what I am communicating really until the painting is done. While I am working I am concentrating on design and how to cover a white canvas or paper. Using themes or patterns that I’ve found in African Sculpture or fabrics I wait until I’m done to see what’s there in terms of a social nature.
- Is there any one of your paintings that you feel epitomizes your thinking about art? The “Family” it represents design as well as a family which is an integrated family and is pulled together with design of faces and figures influenced by the art
of the Kuba people of the Congo. This is a multiracial family, White mother, Black father and bi-racial children, a situation that was seen as illegal not long ago in this country. It is not lost on me that this portrays the family of some one who may become the President of the US.
- Is there anyone, who’s work you appreciate and that you feel is communicating along the same line?
Rip Woods and Samella Lewis, who has written several books on Black/African American Artist and was the founder of International Review of African American Art, which has been taken over by Hampton University.
- You’ve spent a long time teaching and training young artists. Do you feel that your ideas/methods, what and how you taught, are being carried forward by new instructors? I feel that my major contribution is that of teaching more so then in my art. Many of my students have gone on to teaching art and have been, I believe, influenced by my teaching and method of teaching.
- Tell me about your teaching method? I’ve worked with my students on all aspects of their creativity. Each of my students was a class, meaning if I had ten students in one room I approached this as if I was teaching ten classes, because each student could be doing something different and with a different ability level. Some students would be working with jewelry, fashion design or painting etc. They would create a work book, which was a plan on what they wanted to get accomplished in my class, the materials they would use and the steps they would take to have their goal completed. Students were responsible for grading themselves and evaluating their progress based on what they said they wanted vs. what they actually did. Home work for my classes was to have students observe something in their lives, memorize what they had seen and as part next days class to compose a painting of what they observed the day before. They had a goal of completing a painting each day, and seeing the progress in their work. I also encourage students to make contact with an artist they admired. One of the students was interested in fashion design and wrote to “Coco Chanel”. Not only did she receive a response but continued for a while to receive information, advice and feedback that supported her in her studies. Something else I did was to have students study artists and their method of working. Later on they would do a self portrait in the style of the artist they studied. This way of learning I believe provided the students with a deeper understanding of the artist. Over the years many of my students were able to accomplish wonderful results, some in the arts and others in different fields. Many of them have stayed in touch and recount how what they had learned had assisted them with their careers as historian, nurses, writers and teachers. My goal was always to recognize individual ability and to see if I could help maximize their results.
- Activism, do you think that art can change the world? Some of my heroes, great artist like Picasso and Goya created work that spoke about a time in the world’s history that needed to change.
They and others painted and wrote about an unvarnished truth that I feel may have helped to motivate people and governments to do something different. Art can free people up to think.
- Over the years, you have known many great artists, would they be surprised about the diversity in art today? I don’t think they would be surprised at all, they were all so different. Many of our African American painters and writers were forerunners to some of what we see now coming from our communities. No I don’t think they would be surprised, but they would be pleased.
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by Bob Martin | Jan 27, 2024 | Art, Creativity, Drawing, Education
(Originally posted 8/13/09)
This week I participated in another sketch class and struck up a conversation with a couple of the artists about how different artists have a philosophy about or an approach to life drawing, painting, music etc and that it is important, regardless of what artistic discipline you are involved with, that you find and be comfortable with your own “voice”. In many aspects of our daily lives, we compromise ourselves so that we can fit in at work, school and maybe even family, however being creative is about not fitting in. The term self expression is not meant to mean “our expression”.
Tony Ryder
Egon Schiele
So I’ve always cautioned artists (myself included) in avoiding mimicking or embeding
themselves totally in the philosophy of other artists. Here are some drawings from artists who’s work I admire – yet they are very different from each other and from my own drawings.
The keywords are “Self Expression”
Bob Martin
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by Bob Martin | Aug 6, 2023 | Art, Drawing
Sketching in general entails 4 distinct steps: line, tone, texture, and shape. In the special case of pencil portrait drawing we can refine the list of steps to six: shape, proportion, anatomy, texture, tone, and planes.
Sketching in general entails 4 distinct steps: line, tone, texture, and shape. In the special case of pencil portrait drawing we can refine the list of steps to six: shape, proportion, anatomy, texture, tone, and planes.
In this article we will give a detailed description of each of those pencil portrait drawing steps.
(1) Form Shape or Shape – The illusion of three-dimensionality in sketching and art in general has been central to Western art for centuries. The carving out of shape using line, structure, and tone was vital to almost all Renaissance art.
On the other hand, oriental and much contemporary art stress flatness of shape although this era in contemporary art is drawing to a close.
All shape in sketching can be reduced to 4 basic 3-dimensional solids: bricks, cones, cylinders, and spheres. The correct use of these shapes together with perspective and tone leads to the illusion of 3-dimensionality even though the drawing is, in reality, located on a two-dimensional sheet of sketching paper.
In portrait sketching, the arabesque of the skull, the square structure of the skull, and all elements within the skull (nose, eyes, etc.) are all two- and 3-dimensional shapes that contribute to the overall illusion of 3-dimensionality
(2) Proportion – encompasses all sizing and placements of shape. Proportion refers to the concept of relative length and angle size.
Proportion gives answers to these two questions:
1. Given a defined unit of length, how many units is a particular length?
2. How large is this particular angle?
Answering these 2 questions consistently accurately will yield a drawing with the right proportions and placements of all shapes.
(3) Anatomy – refers essentially to the underlying structures of bone and muscle of the skull.
It is essential to study as much as you can about anatomy. There are a lot of studies available on anatomy for artists. For a portrait artist it is particularly significant to understand the anatomy of the skull, neck, and shoulders.
Anatomy studies unfortunately include many Latin terms which makes it somewhat complicated to grasp. The idea is to study slowly and a little bit at a time because it can be quite frustrating.
(4) Texture – in portrait sketching expresses the degree of roughness or smoothness of the shapes. The texture of a concrete walk way, for instance, is quite different from that of a cloud.
There are quite a few techniques and tricks to assist you with the creation of the correct textures. Creating textures gives you the chance to be very creative and to use each possible type of mark you can make with a pencil. In portrait sketching textures occur in spots such as hair, clothing, and skin.
(5) Tone – refers to the degrees in light or dark of the pencil marks and cross-hatchings. Powerful portrait sketches employ the full range of contrasting lights and darks. Beginning artists many times fail to achieve this full “stretch” of tone, resulting in retiring, washed-out drawings.
(6) Planes – create the sculptural sensibility of a portrait. The skull has many planes each with a unique direction and therefore with a different tone.
The idea is to think of the surface of the skull as a collection of distinct planes with a certain direction relative to the light source. You should try to identify each of the planes and draw its correct form and tone.
The correct handling of planes contributes a lot to the likeness of your model as well as the illusion of 3-dimensionality.
(Originally posted Jan 2, 2021)
Do you want to learn the secrets of pencil portrait drawing? Download my brand new free pencil portrait drawing course here: portrait drawing tutorial.
Remi Engels is a pencil portrait artist and oil painter and expert drawing teacher. See his work at pencil portraits by Remi.
P.S. For the fancy art of the 21st century and video games – visit buy PlayStation 3 info blog.
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by Bob Martin | Jul 9, 2023 | Art, Artist, Creativity
I’m asked “Why did you give a certain name to a painting” and I don’t know. Sometimes it just shows up in my head. Nothing deep or heavy, it just sounds right.
This painting was done this morning, mostly with a pallet knife and some glazes. The edges reminded me of glass. That is about as close as I can get to “why” this name.
Originally posted July 18, 2008
Chipped Glass (c) B. Martin ’08
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by Bob Martin | Jan 5, 2023 | Art, Artist, Culture
It is not necessary that we come to an agreement about what is good works of art. It is important that we independently see value in the art that we like and appreciate. To have our own listening, our own sight, that we are not relying on what others think. We don’t need talking heads for everything.
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