Red chalk

Thought I’d post something from last night’s class at the Honolulu Academy School, where I’m happily teaching figure work two nights a week.  Great group of people, and the activity is the perfect counter to all of the outdoor work I do, chiefly because I do need  to return to a stationary subject and focus on all that drawing and painting the figure requires me to focus on.

This is the first three hours of six I have to devote to the drawing. So far, this drawing reflects getting things into place, I’ll be slowly refining and simplifying from here on out.

While I’m not necessarily an big advocate of red chalk, I have somehow acquired a good supply, including some from Zecchi’s in Florence that my friend Mike Curry brought back from Italy for me years ago.  So, I’m experimenting with using it these days along with red Conte and some other things.  Like so many other things brought into our time from the past, it never seems to quite satisfy my ambitions. Of course, it’s not the materials that create this disparity I sense, it’s myself, and us. It’s the time and the place we are in. Our times and how we view life are different. We’re not  in that world, and  we’re infinitely better off in the one world we have today than the one Pontormo  and Annabale Carracci  ( two great red chalk men) worked in.  But there is a magic to their drawings, a sympathy and  intention that I simply admire and always will.