Day 16. Eggs, Part 2 (Shapes!)

Yes, I realize we aren't actually drawing eggs. That joke landed kind of flat. Or should we say, it got SCRAMBLED. 🤪🙄

The egg-less series continues! Eggs three ways, day two!

For three days, we are paying close attention to one subject and drawing it using a different technique. We’ll see if/how it impacts what we see, and how we draw. And since we are only drawing for ten minutes, we’re taking perfection off the table. We are just getting these marks down on paper. We are going for “good enough.”

Yesterday we made our first free hand contour drawing. No more closed eyes, upside down training wheel tricks. You went for it drew the edges. And judging by the chat, many of you surprised yourselves! Flavie said, “I am truly amazed at this drawing. 15 days ago I NEVER would have been able to draw this… not sure how these lessons are working, but they are.” HUZZAH! Can I tell you the secret? I’m not really teaching you draw, per se. I’m using drawing to encourage you to pay attention, be brave, and embrace “good enough.” And you are rocking it.

Alright, let’s keep going.

Series, part 2

We spent a lot of the first two weeks looking at lines and shapes. The first drawing in our 3-part series was lines. So today? Yup. Shapes. We’re going to draw our subject using just shapes. But first, let’s look at two artists who were big drawers/painters, focused on the same subject for quite some time, and did it using shapes.

David Hockney

"I believe that the very process of looking can make a thing beautiful."

- David Hockney

I couldn’t agree more.

David Hockey is one of the most prolific artists working today, and also one of my most favorite artists, period. He paints landscapes, portraits, dogs, flowers, and… pools. Specifically, the pools of Los Angeles. (Sending so much love to our LA friends❤️)

Hockney is English. He was 27 when he moved to Los Angeles, California. It was 1964. Drawn to LA’s promise of warm weather and muscled men, Hockney’s love of pools started before his feet even hit the ground. He said, “As we flew in over Los Angeles I looked down to see blue swimming pools all over, and I realized that a swimming pool in England would have been a luxury, whereas here they are not, because of the climate.” Hockney started painting pools the year he got to LA.

Goes to show: Always sit in the window seat. And keep your art eyes open.

Here is his first pool painting:

DAVID HOCKNEY, PICTURE OF A HOLLYWOOD SWIMMING POOL, 1964.

He continued to paint pool after pool, from the outside to the inside. Just eight years after arriving in LA he painted one of his most famous works: Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures). The painting went on to sell for the MOST any painting has ever sold for at auction: $90,000,000.

Hockney, Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures), 1972

Good thing he got that window seat, eh?

Here are a few more:

Another one of Hockney’s most famous pool paintings: “A Bigger Splash” painted in 1967

He even explored the pool through his unique, quasi-cubist exploration of photography. And of course he did so swimmingly. (Sorrrrrrry.)

Hockney also painted the inside of pools - kind of like the reflection of the water you see when you’re swimming, no?

Hockney uses line, but in these works his lines create a larger, cohesive shapes. He is a master at SEEING and interpreting what he sees in fresh ways that always feel so friendly and familiar.

Giorgio Morandi

“Even in as simple a subject, a great painter can achieve a majesty of vision”

- Giorgio Morandi

Georgio Morandi (1890-1964) was a painter who spent most of his life painting simple, everyday objects. Namely bottles. His goal? To paint them in such a way that they became less of a functional object, and more of an abstract collection of shapes. Here are some examples, starting with one that should remind you of our Negative Space drawing lesson from Day 12.

Morandi, Still Life with Vases on a Table, 1931, etching

And the following might remind you a little of our shape and compositions lessons from day 6, 7, and 8. Imagine you are looking through your finder…

Giorgio Morandi, Still Life, 1948-49, Courtesy of Art News

Giorgio Morandi, Still Life, 1942, Courtesy of David Zwirner.

Morandi, Still Life, 1943, at the Metropolitan. Photo: Photograph by Edward Owen/Courtesy of the National Gallery of Art, Washington and the Metropolitan Museum of Art and © Giorgio Morandi by SIAE 2008

Spend some time looking closely at Morandi’s paintings and you can almost let go of the bottle-ness of them. You start to see them as forms made of light and color. As artists, we try to approach everything with what I call “art eyes” - letting go of our assumptions and seeing what is really in front of us, instead of just rushing past what we think and expect to see.

What is right in front of us? Usually it’s a collection of shapes that interact with each other in interesting ways. Honestly, so much of art is that: Shapes interacting in interesting ways. I guess you could say the same thing about people! :)

Today we are doing two draw part 2 of our series using SHAPES. You are going to need either paint or a fat marker for this. OR you can use the side of a pencil lead and cover a lot of paper. :)

We are taking up SHAPE with this one. And I hope you readers will pick up a pen or brush or pencil and give it a go!

Assignment