The secret to still life is to lie
Hi everyone! How’s it going? I’ve got a bit of a shorter newsletter today. I’ve been doing lots of game designing, which is great! Unfortunately, my notes are not very interesting to look at. I hope these pelicans circling are an acceptable replacement.
Lately I’ve been thinking about my love/fear relationship with still life painting, and drawing from life in general. Most Western artists will tell you that the best practice tool is to draw from life, or draw what’s right in front of you. When you don’t have to worry about things moving, you can focus on light, shadow, shapes, proportions, etc.
Most of the still life paintings you’ll see in an art museum are generally what I call “playing it straight,” or trying to emulate the flowers, fruit, or whatever as true to how our eyes see them as possible. While technically impressive, a lot of these paintings leave me going, “Um… that’s a vase. I see those all the time. What’s the big deal?”
But there’s something even worse. If I draw something boring, doesn’t that make ME boring?
Well, anyway, you may have noticed that I have a little trouble playing it straight. I prefer things a little more…
Eye-searing?
Four-dimensional?
Liquefying?
(Amy, this is that Batman ice cream van I was telling you about a while ago.)
SO WHAT DO I DO?!
If you’ve been reading along with me recently, you probably could’ve guessed my remedy to this fear of boredom long before I did.
Lie! Mwahahahahahahahahahah! Compared to lots of drawings I’ve done, this one is, at first glance, playing it pretty “straight.” Sure, I have lots of room for improvement when compared to more photorealistically competent draftspeople. But what I really love about this drawing is that I’ve taken our apartment’s kitchen, which is fairly mundane, and taken it to a delightfully crackling place of unreality. Here’s a picture for comparison.
Could I have taken it even farther into the lands of the weird? Of course! But, I am trying to at least pretend that I’m practicing my life drawing skills.
Actually, while writing this I’m getting excited again about pushing into surrealism even more than I usually do. I love this stuff, and I hope it comes across!
Doing this study of Hal Foster’s character Prince Valiant made me see the issue a little more clearly. It comes from Dave Sim’s The Strange Death of Alex Raymond, which is an interesting history of “realistic” comic art. But when you look long enough, even at Hal Foster’s “most realistic” of the realistic comic styles, I reminded myself that even an image that gives the impression of realism is, at the end of the day, a bunch of squiggles on a paper. I can do squiggles! I like squiggles!
Okay that’s it. Sorry about the lack of bonus manga this week. After a short delay we will return to our regular schedule. Have a great weekend!
