GO BIG!

Composition, repetition, Georgia O'Keefe, and gosh darn it, enough with this staying small sh*t!! Let’s take up some space.

Helllloooo my GUT friends.

Happy Mothers Day to all the mamas at the table. (Including my own. Everyone say hiiii CandyMac!) And if you’re not a mother, happy mom’s day to you, too - a mama made us all. And if you’re painfully missing your mom today (which means every day), or if you two have a hard or complicated relationship, or no relationship at all, or you’re someone who wanted to be a mom but that’s not in the cards in this lifetime, I’m sending your tender heart my biggest love. It’s a big feelings day all around. Oh, moms.❤️

From the look of the art share in the chat and all the comments on last week’s dispatch, doodling seems to have struck a chord. We’ll definitely return to the topic in the future. But this week we take a turn. Y’all knew what you were signing up for when you got in the car - the GUT is plot twists galore! And this week the road led here:

There are worse places to be. (Thank you generous hosts.)¹ One of the many blessings of the sweet little house I’m staying in is that it has no Wi-Fi. That means I’m stitching this week’s dispatch together using a phone and an iPad and sending it from a computer at another friend’s house. I hope this FrankenGUT makes it to you in one piece.

Took a day trip to Georgia O’Keefe’s beloved land. It did not disappoint.

I planned this solo drawing retreat as a rest, a reset and a chance to get back into my drawing body. For a little while now I’ve been talking about drawing more actually drawing. And when those scales tip, things get iffy for me. I start focusing on all the wrong things. So as hard as it is to step away from the churn, I made a big effort to do it. And here I am. And holy smokes… Access to quiet, dark skies and wide open spaces should be a human right. 

So this week I’m sharing a little mini-lesson on something I’ve been playing with while here, a look into what I’ve been drawing and what I’ve learned, and an invitation to try it yourself. No desert retreat required. 

Ready? Let’s do this. 

Compose yourself.

The lesson part.

Before I get started with the drawing adventure, let’s take do a super quick lesson on composition. It has a lot to do with what I’ve been drawing all week, and reviewing the basics of how pictures works (or don’t) is always helpful. 

Arthur Wesley Dow, “Composition: A Series of Exercises Seceted from a new system of art education”, 1914 (Dow was a big influence on Georgia O’Keefe)

What is composition?

Composition is how we arrange visual elements of a picture on the paper to achieve a desired impact. 

Simple enough. But that begs a couple questions:

1. What are you trying to say with your drawing?

2. And how can the arrangement of elements help achieve that?

These are two good questions to consider when you first sit down to make a drawing, even on a GUT level (ha.) I can’t help you answer the first question - that’s what makes your drawing YOURS. But I can offer you some considerations for the second.

A few basic elements of composition to consider:

1. Focal point. Where do you want the viewer looking first? Second? 

2. Balance. Do you want to create a feeling of balance and harmony? Or nah? Consider symmetry vs. asymmetry. Think about scale: bigger things are heavier. Smaller things are lighter. How do you balance them out? Or not!

3. Movement. Does your eye move around the page? Do the lines in the drawing pull you in a direction(s)? Or is it static? 

4. Interestingness. The three things above will help determine if the overall drawing is, well, interesting. Generally speaking, we like interesting.

There are also classical composition rules like the “rule of thirds”, “odd numbers” and “triangles” that we will come back to in future dispatches. But for right now, let’s just absorb those four things above. That’s PLENTY. 

Did you absorb them?? Great. Now you can forget about them. Let’s move on. 

The Story Part: Wendy draws a flower.

Most of the art supplies I brought to New Mexico fit in a ziplock bag: Pencils, pens, watercolors. Some loose leaf 9x12 multimedia paper.

In my experience, less art supplies = less fussing = more art making. 

When I first arrived I went for a walk to look at plants and trees. So different from the Bay Area. Arid. Cactus. Pine. A few tiny purple wildflowers scattered about. I plucked a stem of purple flowers and their companion greens from the ground, brought it back, and stuck it in glass of water. 

This little flower quickly became my companion. It’s the only thing I’ve drawn all week. I’ve made more than 20 drawings of it. Why?!

To see takes time. - Georgia O’Keefe. 

PART ONE.

Flower 1: I started drawing on the 9x12 paper. It’s the same size as my sketchbooks back home. Maybe because I’m away from the city I  wanted to draw with a natural material, so I selected a 2B pencil. (The fancy folks call it “graphite.”) 2B is pretty soft. A nice dark line.

Here’s the first drawing I did:

It’s pretty straight forward: little plant in the middle of a big piece of paper. Like a botanical drawing. One and done. 

It’s fine. And it’s boring. I thought, if all I’m going to do is replicate the plant on paper, I might as well have left it in the ground.

INSTRUCTIVE MOMENT: Stop for a minute. Look at that little drawing. Think about those four elements of composition, Now look back at the drawing. What is going on? What’s working and not working? Okay, carry on.

Flower 2: I tried making it bigger. I wanted to push the flower to the edges, so that made me be more deliberate about the composition, and also look more closely at the flower itself. When we draw something BIG, we are forced to pay more attention to the details of its form.

Okay, better. But still felt a little stiff. Not too interesting. So I did a third.

Pencil for scale.

I added some motion by curving across the page, then added the leafy bit to balance the weight of the flower. And painted it. Better. Again, it was fine. But it still felt boring to me. It looks like everything I’ve ever drawn. Nothing too INTERESTING.

My 9x12 paper is so small.

The sky here is so big. 

I wanted to go BIG. 

It looks rotten. I’m going to start all over again tomorrow. - Georgia O’Keefe

PART 2. 

The next morning I drove to the local art store and bought a 18x24 pad of drawing paper. I came back, sat on the floor and forced myself to draw that little flower BIG. And it was HARD.

Pencil for scale.

This drawing is FOUR TIMES the size of the previous drawings. It felt good to make. It pushed me to look even closer at the flower, find even more detail, and consider how i was going to arrange it on the paper. I had to consider negative space. Balance. I painted it, which on drawing paper is a thing, but it was fine. 

And still. It was just FINE.

It still felt boring to me. Why?

I had to create an equivalent for what I felt about what I was looking at- not copy it.

- Georgia O’Keefe

Because this was just an accounting. I’d picked the flower, looked at the flower, drawn the flower. It was lying dead, huge and dead, on the page. Why wasn’t the excitement of the flower coming through??

So I did what I tell you, GUT peeps, to do: I put on my art eyes. I made my mind into a finder and “looked at the flower one piece at a time.” I zoomed way in on this part, then on that part. I looked at the negative space. I looked at it all ANEW. And what did i see? Fluid organic shapes, little purple mouths, very much alive, exploding out from a pale green spine. I zoomed in closer. And closer… and closer…

And then I drew what i saw. 

PART 3.

well that’s different.

Whew. So different, right? More unexpected. To me, it looks and feels alive. The composition is more… interesting.

INSTRUCTIVE MOMENT: Take a look at this drawing and consider the four elements of compositions. What is working and not working? How does your eye move and where does it land? Okay, move on.

Since I’m used to drawing in a 9x12 sketchbook, drawing BIG for the first time in a couple years felt like drawing with my left hand or trying to speak a foreign language. My brain fought me. It was disorienting. Confusing. Even a little scary. Suddenly, I was afraid to make a “bad drawing.” So i gave myself permission to make a bad drawing. After all, I can just throw it away and nobody will ever see it!

I put on my art eyes and trusted my hands to see. I embraced the abstract forms emerging on the paper and kept drawing till it was done. 

And just like that, I was hooked.

I drew more and more big flowers. I deliberately aimed to feel awkward and push beyond my comfort zone. And it was a JOY.

Here’s one of the last ones i drew:

Now compare that first little drawing i did to this last large one.

There are two HUGE differences: 1. composition, and 2. the feeling.

To make the big drawings I have to use my whole arm to draw. I had to “Draw from the shoulder!” as my old art teachers used to say. I had sit on the floor and lean across the paper. I had to use more of my body. It takes up space, and the lines are more confident and loose. I was thinking less, and drawing more.

The small drawing? Someone was hiding in their head and playing it safe.

In life as in art.

INSTRUCTIVE MOMENT: What happens to our bodies when we draw big? What happens to our brains and hearts when we shift our perspective and see things totally new? And how does that affect the people who looking at it? 

So I said to myself - I'll paint what I see-what the flower is to me but I'll paint it big and they will be surprised into taking the time to look at it - I will make even busy New Yorkers take time to see what I see of flowers. - Georgia O’Keefe

Georgia O’Keefe

You’ve probably noticed I’ve sprinkled a bunch of O’Keefe quotes throughout this dispatch. 

I was a few days into drawing these big flowers when it dawned on me that I was on the land of the original big flower painter herself. Face palm. Ghosts work in mysterious ways… While most people know her for her giant, close up flowers, my favorite are drawings and watercolors. (Shocker.) In every medium she pushed form and composition to create an interesting and emotional effect. Here are a few of my favorites² for general inspiration, and for this week's assignment: