Mama told me there'd be days like this
when I'd be struggling to draw a comic by candlelight**
Tonight’s post begins with me looking at the clock. Crap. It’s getting late and I haven’t started to work on a drawing, a comic, a touching reflection on life, love, loss… nada. And, tomorrow morning I have to be up early and on the move so I don’t want to stay up too late (I’m no spring chicken. I need my sleep. Or, at least, I need to put in my requisite number of hours in bed pretending that I’m just about to fall asleep… any second now…)
It would be so easy to say ‘sorry, sketchbook - not tonight - I have a headache…’ but I can’t. I think of all the nights Dad had dinner with us, checked in with the family after teaching art classes all day (or schlepping paintings from gallery to corporate office in search of a sale or commission…), and then excused himself to go and work.
He didn’t believe in ‘waiting for inspiration.’ He didn’t have the luxury. He had four kids to feed and my mother to keep happy (future posts, oh, so many future posts) so off he would go into his studio and settle in for a shift at the easel.
The next morning there would often be some freshly-varnished new work ready by the front door and my mother would comment that ‘Your father burned the midnight oil last night.’
All that made me think that not coming up with at least a quick sketch was wimpy - copping out. It wouldn’t take that long - not like I was burning the candle at both ends… Which is what gave me the idea of a candle. Except, I didn’t have a candle handy to actually look at, so I plunged in and started working from memory.
Once again, I soon realized I have never actually paid attention to anything I have ever seen in my life ever.
Questions and thoughts that arose during the execution of the above sketch:
Ah. A cylindrical form (see my post from a few days ago about basic forms).
How do you draw a candle holder? Who uses those anyway? Nobody? So, what does one use? A saucer? A lid from a jam jar? Oh, I know - a wine bottle. Remember those days in high school when your room was filled with wine bottle candle stands? It’s ok, your parents are both dead, they never need to know.
Hm. How far down into the neck of the bottle should the candle go? How do I draw that? A cylindrical form inside another hollow cylindrical form. Never mind, proceed to the neck of the bottle.
Why can’t I draw a symmetrical… anything? Bottle proving to be no exception. Also, I seem to have missed the lesson on wine bottle proportions.
Red wine… is red. But red wine bottles are often green. So… how on earth do you make that colour combination work using the three pencils I decided to use for this sketch?
Hm… using a bit of water from my water brush to blend the red and green and some random brown isn’t really doing the trick. It kind of looks like a water bottle. Ish. Except glass - not plastic. Such things exist, yes - but not so common. Would a plastic water bottle melt? Topple over? if used to support a burning candle? The water bottle musing is all irrelevant anyway as I’ve already started to draw the wine bottle label. I bet if I’d tried to draw a water bottle, it would have looked like a wine bottle.
The label. Completely panicked now and unable to come up with a suitably sexy name for a brand of red wine. Also, by this time I’m hearing my dad’s voice in my head saying, “Cheap red wine tastes as good as any.” Which makes him sound like a complete drunk, which he wasn’t - but he was careful with his pennies and like I said above, I am very short of time and can’t explain everything that seems to be coming up.
Apparently have never seen a cluster of grapes, either. Or grape leaves. Colours of the plant life —wrong. Shapes are wrong. I will take inspiration from the book spine across the room, The Impressionists. Those red/purple blobs are my impressions of grapes.
This is the least shadowy candlelit scene ever. The bottle is floating in a vast white space. Quick! Scribble some brown at the bottom. But it didn’t really help. It’s not a table. Not the end of my desk as the clock strikes midnight. The only thing that scribbly bit isn’t is white.
This brings me to the end of this most unsatisfactory post. Tomorrow, I trust, will produce something a little more… substantial? We can only hope.
**For those who like truth in memoir, my Mama never said anything remotely like that.
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As an author and creative writing teacher, I've been painting and drawing--a learning process for sure--for a few years now. I started in acrylics and then added water colors. The nonverbal activity has been enriching to my life no matter how much failure ( a lot ) has been involved. It's been so worth it. I may soon write about one of teachers ... who's amazing. Love what you're doing, Nikki.