This is the portrait I made using the Chuck Close gridding up method. It’s 16″x20″, pencil on paper.
The paper is actually bleed-proof large presentation paper we had at the office for whiteboard kind of stuff, but the very white white of it really changed the way this ended up looking in the end. The photographer who took the picture is artist Don Barrie. The subject is… yours truly.–DK
This is fantastic! In combination with the John Coltrane I am thoroughly impressed by your talent.
I’ve done grid work myself years ago when I was a kid…it’s an interesting and somewhat less threatening way to do a photo. A bit of a metaphor for a way to tackle anything that is challenging in life - just a small bit at a time. The only thing is that your portrait doesn’t truly capture how lovely you are.
Would this method help at all with figure drawing if there was some way to wrap your brain around what you see without dividing it up on paper first? I suppose I’m asking myself that at the same time….
Thanks for the comment, Mimi!
You know, this is weird, but right around the time you were writing this post I was talking about grids!!
I was at Cafe Vita drawing images from my head of an imaginary metropolis on toothy brown paper in a red ‘opaquing marker.’ Something every once in a while I get an urge to do.
“James” notices and tells me his whole artistic history. Including a side story on how Michaelangelo used a grid to draw figures! He’d get someone to hold a glass pane with a grid on it between him and his models, sketching a quick grid on his page in wax crayon.
I wonder where we can get 12′ x 12′ plexiglass panels lined with nice squares.
I love the portrait, Dipika! Except for you’re a lot prettier than that.
This doesn’t have anything to do with grids, but I was at Seattle Center the other day and they have this video game thing that is kind of like a cross between a rapid-fire carnival caricature artist and neoprint. It takes your picture and then “draws” portrait of you. It’s cheesy - it’s pretty much just the photoshop charcoal pencil filter on a digital snapshot - but the results are pretty good looking. You end up with a 5×7 print out that looks kind of like your drawing (except for without any actually artistry to it), which is what made me think of it.
John,
I’ve been reading a bit about what constitutes artistry, since art today [and conceptual art especially] can sometimes be… well, confounding. So, what makes something “art”, or better, what makes it “good”?
I asked professor Jenny Lynn McNutt this question when I was taking drawing and painting at Pratt Institute, and she said it’s having “clarity of intent.” Almost ten years later I still consider that when I’m beginning a new composition. Of course, improvising is also fun, but you almost always have some kind of subconscious linerunner to go parallel to. Know what I mean?
I also think something that’s really good invokes an emotional response–the more singular and instantaneous, the better. Artists who can make people feel something are getting it right.
And thanks for the compliment, too…