Three years into my apprenticeship, I've achieved a level of professionalism with my drawing skills that Jeff Hein will now teach me how to paint. Taking stock of this past year, I feel like a kid who moved from playing recreational soccer to a select league team. When I watched my then 10-year-old daughter do just that, her growth seemed exponential, given the increased dedication and skilled coaching she received. Well, Jeff Hein has honed my ability to see and draw so much that I feel like a different kind of artist now.
Before joining Jeff's atelier, I drew and painted in a sporadic, haphazard way. One month, I dragged my easel into the garden to try to paint my tomatoes in as many different ways as I could imagine. Some days, I'd just sit in front of the easel thinking about painting a mountain, with no idea what I wanted the final image to look like. On my own, I simply tried to progress by trying something different every day. As you can see by the images of my developmental paintings, I dabbled in a lot of different visual styles. None of them really resonated with me, and that's why I've been working with Jeff these past three years.
As Jeff often says, "I was trying to write poetry with a limited vocabulary." Here at the end of his drawing curriculum, I've learned, I hadn't really been looking at my subjects. Instead, I was creating images more from what I saw in my head than from my eyes. The amount of discipline it's taken me to stand and look, really look at objects, people, and landscapes astounds me. In the beginning of my training, my arm would fatigue after my first few hours at the easel. Now I can stand all day, waving my arm around in an attempt to draw what I see.
Just look at the difference between the self portrait I drew upon starting to work under Jeff's tutelage and the one I just did to culminate what I learned in his Drawing Curriculum. I was so darn proud of that first portrait. And yet, look at how much I've grown. Anyone who tells me I have talent in a dismissive, that's-easy-for-you way simply doesn't understand that I've developed a completely learnable skill. No one pops out of their mother's womb able to draw their own likeness. For me, learning to do that took hours and hours of dedication. So many, I thought I might not complete the curriculum in my lifetime, some dark days.
What I've come to understand about drawing is that I will never be done learning to perfect my technique. It took me three years to learn the basics, the foundational skills needed to turn a form, capture a likeness, and understand how light affects the way forms read on a 2D surface. But, I'm just beginning. The drawings I admire most are those drawn by such masters as Nicolai Fechin and John Singer Sargent near the end of their lives. Here are two I just love:
Nicolai Fechin, The Philosopher, ca. 1937, lithograph on paper, image: 15 x 10 5/8 in. (38.1 x 27.1 cm), Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase, 1979.
John Singer Sargent, Firelight, ca. 1875, graphite on off-white woven paper: image: 6 5/8 x 3 15/16 in., Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of Mrs. Francis Ormond, 1950.
Only in my most recent portraits have I been able to intentionally add the emotion and personality I saw in my subjects to my drawings. My drawing of my husband, Tom, gave me great joy because I was able to capture a particular expression he uses all the time.
And the portrait of little Lucia caught her vulnerability better than any of the photos I snapped of her.
I'm excited by my new skills, and eager to explore how to hone them as I start to use them with paint. Let's see where I can take them!
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