CC's Sketchbook - 2006

I wrote on the front cover a favorite quotation about art which has meant a great deal to me, long before I knew about Apelles of Cos, back when I was a budding artist of 5 years old. As a little child, I wanted to grow up to be an artist.  I had a grown cousin who was a professional artist, and his advice to his little cousin was "to be an artist, you have to practice drawing every day".  So writing the Latin inscription on the cover of my sketchbook was a reminder to sketch or work on finished drawings each and every day (at least while I was in this particular class).  The Latin quote from Apelles is: "Nulle dies sine linea" and it translates, "No day without a line."

"Tenacity" ink/brush (5.5x8.5 inches)

Apelles was a great Hellenistic Greek painter, said by some to be the "greatest painter of antiquity". He was court painter to Phillip ll and his son Alexander lll of Macedon during the 4th century BC. Legend says that no matter how busy his business day had been, he never let a day go by without drawing at least a line, usually an outline of some object.

Sketches and drawings are not meant to be finished works of art, although they certainly can be. They are private places to experiment with new techniques, brush up skills, and to record what we see at the moment, to take back to the studio to inspire more finished works of art. Daily use of a sketchbook soon becomes an unconscious habit, and the artist will feel naked without it.

"You can't go home again. The past is under lock and key. All that's left is what you remember, what you've heard about it, what you've read of it, what you imagine. You can't open the door and go back."
~J. R. Humphreys

 







Here are a couple of angel collages that didn't quite pan out.  This often happens in sketchbooks, and it's nothing to get hung about.  The idea is there, even though I was having great difficulty getting the angel face I liked. Maybe someday I'll come back and make a real painting or collage from this idea.