My art history is short. In high school, I copied caricatures mostly out of MAD magazine. And in my second year of university, I drew a large pornographic caricature of a woman’s genitalia end-on in the centre of round dining room table. I wrote “Eat Out Tonight” around it. Despite being tasteless, it was quite good. Forgive me, I was 18 and the last time I drew anything until COVID-19 arrived.
Drawing and some form of art has been in my future plans for many years. But I didn’t think I would pursue that until I had finished international travel, anticipated to happen around age 71 – and now projected to occur at 72. I plan on spending winters in my camper in Mexico and drawing was to become my major hobby.
At the end of 2020, after spending more time at home than in over a decade, I thought I would draw something.
I apologize for being completely unoriginal – I’m a plagiarist. I really know little about drawing and art and doubt that I would ever create much original art. But I have visited hundreds of art museums (1452 to be exact) in my travels. I have seen the world’s best. I like bits of most kinds of art but really only enjoy realism. My favourite artist used to be Dali but has more recently been replaced by M C Escher. His are the pictures I have been drawing.
I started out using graphite and then moved to black ink, graphite and pencil crayon. I hope to work on my technique, add charcoal and carbon and improve my blending with a goal to produce completely realistic drawings.
1. RAVEN TRANSFORMATION I
In November 2020, I was in a small art gallery in Ucluelet on the west coast of Vancouver Island. I really liked the indigenous artist Victor Michael West. I was most attracted to his bentwood boxes and a cedar wall carving entitled Raven Transformation (22 x 11”, $1500). I visited his web site and Facebook page collecting several images with elements I liked. After a friend request, we chatted for over an hour. I tried to show him the elements I liked and he sketched something but it was not really what I wanted. Victor had a large 30 x 15” piece of cedar for a plaque that he offered to do for $2500. I drew a small plaque on graft paper and sent the image to Victor. His comment was “Wow interesting layout way to think out of the box”. Raven mythology in West Coast Indian Art.
I decided I would draw it – and that is how I started drawing.
Adding the sun is not common and a moon is not normally in NW coast images. My interpretation is an egg (bottom right), chick (bottom left), child (centre) and teen (top). Raven images flank the sides. I am tempted to complete the circle of the sun outside the “frame”.
M. C. ESCHER PRINTS
Maurits Cornelis Escher (1898-1972) was a Dutch graphic artist who made mathematically inspired woodcuts, lithographs, and mezzotints. Despite wide popular interest, Escher was for long somewhat neglected in the art world, even in his native Netherlands. He was 70 before a retrospective exhibition was held. In the late twentieth century, he became more widely appreciated, and in the twenty-first century he has been celebrated in exhibitions across the world.
His work features mathematical objects and operations including impossible objects, explorations of infinity, reflection, symmetry, perspective, truncated and stellated polyhedra, hyperbolic geometry, and tessellations. Although Escher believed he had no mathematical ability, he conducted his own research into tessellation.
Early in his career, he drew inspiration from nature, making studies of insects, landscapes, and plants such as lichens, all of which he used as details in his artworks. He traveled in Italy and Spain, sketching buildings, townscapes, architecture and the tilings of the Alhambra and the Mezquita of Cordoba, and became steadily more interested in their mathematical structure. More on Escher.
2. BOND OF UNION
1956. Lithograph 26 x 34 cm
Two spirals merge and portray, on the left, the head of a woman and, on the right, that of a man. As an endless band, their foreheads intertwined, they form a double unity. The suggestion of space is magnified by spheres which float in front of,d within and behind the hollow images.
Graphite and Pencil Crayon on Stonehenge drawing paper.
3. NIGHT AND DAY
February 1938. #303
Woodcut in black and grey, printed from two blocks 39.1 x 67.7 cm (15 3/8 x 26 5/8”)
Long before I discovered in the Alhambra an affinity with the Moors in the regular division of the plane, I had recognized this interest in myself. At first I had no idea a tall of the possibility of systematically building up my figure. I did not know any “ground rules” and tried, almost without knowing what I was doing, to fit together congruent shapes tha tI attempted to give the form of animals…
My experience has taught me that the silhouettes of birds and fish are the most gratifying shapes of all for use in the game of dividing the plane. The silhouette of a flying bird has just the necessary angularity, while the bulges and indentations in the outline are neither too pronounced nor too subtle. In addition, it has a characteristic shape, form above and below from the front and the side.
This most fascinating aspect of the division of the plane… the dynamic equilibrium between the motifs.. has led to the creation to numerous prints. It is here that the representation of opposites of all kinds arises. For is not one led naturally to a subject such as Day and Night by the double function of the black and eh white motifs? It is night when the white, as an object, shows up against the black as a background, and day when the black figures show up against the white. M. C. E.
Black Ink and Pencil Crayon November 2020
4. STARS
Oct 1948. # 359
Wood engraving 32 x 26 cm
There are also copies coloured by hand in watercolour as well as a version in black, blue, yellow and pink, printed from four blocks. Of this version proofs exist printed from one or more blocks in various colours or colour combinations.
All kinds of single, double, and triple polyhedrons are floating like stars through the air. In the centre is a system of three regular octahedrons, a framework of beams. In this cage live two chameleons whose function is to add an element of life to this dead world. I chose them as inhabitants because their legs and tail are particularly well adapted to grasp the framework of their cage as it whirls through space.
There is no better opportunity of enjoying the starry sky in peace than on the pitch-black foredeck of a ship sailing through southern waters. In the balmy night you can stretch out on your back on a tarpaulin, and if you have a flashlight and a star map, you can quite leisurely fix the eternal figures of the constellations in your memory and identify them…
It has always irked me as improper that there are still so many people for whom the sky is no more than a mass of random points of light… It is quite possible for a layman in the field of astronomy like myself to enjoy recognizing all those noble, striking figures, which become all the more real as you get to know them better. M. C. E.
Black Ink and Pencil Crayon on Stonehenge drawing paper.
TRYPTIC Drawing Hands, Hand with Reflecting Sphere, Three Spheres II
5. DRAWING HANDS
January 1948 #355
Lithograph 28.2 x 33.2 cm (11 1/8 x 13 1/8”)
A sheet of paper is pinned upon a background with four drawing pins. A right hand, holding a pencil, sketches a shirt cuff on the paper. It is only a rough sketch, but a little farther to the right a detailed drawing of a left hand emerges from the sleeve, rises from the plane, and comes to life, In its turn this left hand is sketching the cuff from which the right hand emerges. Some time after I made this print I saw exactly the same idea of two hands drawing each other in a book by the famous American cartoonist Saul Steinberg.
It was with a great deal of interest that I read the article on “left-handedness in drawing”… I was particularly struck by the suggestion that left-handed people might be more inclined to draw than to paint; in other words, that shape might be more important to them than colour. As far as I’m concerned, this is perfectly true. I was exclusively left-handed from earliest childhood, (at primary school I found learning to write with my right hand extremely difficult. I should probably have managed far more easily ad naturally writing in mirror image with my let hand), and the fact that my feeling for shape is greater than that for colour may also have resulted in my becoming a graphic artist rather than a painter. … For a graphic artist who is always working with both an image and a mirror image, being ambidextrous is obviously a great advantage. M. C. E.
Conflict between the flat and the spatial. Our three-dimensional space is the only true reality that we know. The two-dimensional is every bit as fictitious as the four-dimensional; nothing is flat, not even the most finely polished mirror. And yet we stick to the convention that a wall or a piece of paper is flat and curiously enough, we still go on, as we have done since time immemorial producing illusions of space on just such plane surfaces as those. Surely it is a bit absurd to draw a few lines and then claim: “This is a house” is an odd statement and the theme of these pictures.
Black Ink and Pencil Crayon on Stonehenge Vellum Drawing Paper
Mirror Images – Sphere Reflections
6. HAND WITH REFLECTING GLOBE (SPHERE) (SELF-PORTRAIT N SPHERICAL MIRROR)
January 1935. #268
Lithograph. 31.8cm x 21.3 cm (12 ½ x 8 3/8”)
There are also copies in gold
The picture shows [a] spherical mirror, resting on a left hand. But as a print is the reverse of the original drawing on stone, it was my right hand that you see depicted. (Being left-handed, I needed my left hand to make the drawing.) Such a globe reflection collects almost one’s whole surroundings in one disk-shaped image. The whole room, four walls, the floor, and the ceiling, everything, albeit distorted, is compressed into that one small circle. Your own head, or more exactly the point between your eyes, is in the absolute centre. No matter how you turn or twist yourself, you can’t get out of that central point. You are immovable the focus, the unshakable core, of your world. M. C. E.
A child who looks into a mirror for the first time is surprised when he notices that the world behind the mirror, which looks so real, is actually “intangible”, however, he soon ceases to consider this false reality as being strange. In the course of time the surprise disappears, at least for most people. For them a mirror is merely a tool, used to help them to see themselves as others see them.
To Escher, however, the mirror image was no ordinary matter. He was particularly fascinated by the mixture of the one reality (the mirror itself and everything surrounding it) with the other reality (the reflection in the mirror)…
In the lithograph Hand with Reflecting Sphere of 1935, Escher is holding the sphere in his hand (which is itself reflected) so that he also has himself and his studio “in hand”. Bruno Ernst
The man in the picture looks much more like me than Escher, as in the original.
Black Ink and Pencil Crayon on Stonehenge Vellum Drawing Paper
7. THREE SPHERES II
1946
Lithograph. 26 x 47 cm
Three spheres, of equal size but different in aspect, are placed next to each other on a shiny table. The one on the left is made of glass and filled with water, so it is transparent but also reflects. It magnifies the structure of the table top on which it rests and at the same time mirrors a window. The right hand sphere, with its matt surface, presents a light side and a dark side more clearly than the other two. The attributes of the middle one are the same as those described in connection with no. 45 the whole of the surrounding area is reflected in it. Furthermore it achieves in two different ways, a triple unity, for not only does it reflect its companions to left and right, but all three of them are shown in the drawing on which the artist is working.
Black Ink and Pencil Crayon on Stonehenge Vellum Drawing Paper
8. RAVEN TRANSFORMATION II
I found an attractive picture and copied some of the faces, exchanged 2 faces for more interesting ones and added what I call the “egg” symbol in the lower right. Finally a raven completes the top. I added many more human and realistic things like nasal openings, reflections in the pupils, an investigation of more eye varieties. This was a lot of fun to do and on a new kind of paper.
The chief is at the top, but all the eyes are looking at the dark figure on the bottom, a very sinister dude to be feared, possibly a shaman.
Black ink, graphite and pencil crayon on Stonehenge 140 lb hot pressed watercolour paper
9. PRINT GALLERY
1945
Lithograph, 30 x 32cm
As a variation on the theme of the magnification towards the centre (see “Doric Columns”), this is an expansion that curves around the empty centre in a clockwise direction. We come in through a door on the lower right to an exhibition gallery where there are prints on stands and walls. First of all we pass a visitor with his hands behind his back, and then, in the lower left-hand corner, a young man who is already looking at the last print in a series on the wall and glancing at the details, the boat, the water and the houses in the background. Then his eye moves further on from left to right, to the ever expanding blocks of houses. A woman looks down through her open window on to the sloping roof which covers the exhibition gallery, and this brings us back to where we started our circuit. The boy sees all these things in two-dimensional details of the print that he is studying. If his eye explores the surface further, then he sees himself as part of the print. MCE
Another M. C. Escher print. This was not very interesting and quite tedious, a lot of drawing, redrawing and then outlining in black ink. I did not learn much with this picture.
Black Ink and Pencil Crayon on Stonehenge 140# hot press watercolour paper
10. KILLER WHALE at PENINSULA VALDEZ
March 2021
The Valdes Peninsula (Spanish: Península Valdés) is a peninsula into the Atlantic Ocean in north-east Chubut Province, Argentina. Around 3,625 km2 it is an important nature reserve which was listed as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1999.
The nearest large town is Puerto Madryn. The only town on the peninsula is the small settlement of Puerto Pirámides. There are also a number of estancias, where sheep are raised.
Most of the peninsula is barren land with some salt lakes. The largest of these lakes is 40 m below sea level. The inner part of the peninsula is inhabited by rheas, guanacos and maras and 181 bird species, 66 of which migratory.
The coastline is inhabited by marine mammals – sea lions, elephant seals and fur seals. Southern right whales, a baleen whatle, can be found between May and December in Golfo Nuevo and Golfo San José, protected bodies of water located between the peninsula and the Patagonian mainland. They mate and give birth here as the water in the gulf is quieter and warmer. Orcas can be found off the coast, in the open sea off the peninsula. They are known to beach themselves on shore to capture sea lions and elephant seals.
Peninsula Valdez is not as well known as other “wildlife meccas” but has some unique things. As stated above, killer whales use a few narrow, small beaches with the right slope to “snag” seals sitting on the beach. Orcas only do this in Patagonia and only a few females have perfected the high risk technique. They swim parallel to the coast to hide their dorsal fins, get close and use an incoming wave. Only about 10% of attempts are successful. As I write this, I am watching BBC Earth and this exact scene. There is a risk of being stranded. The videos show mothers teaching their calves.
Orcas are found around the coast of Patagonia all year round. The best time to spot them is in October and November at Caleta Valde on the east side where they hunt elephant seal pups. Again in March and April at Punte Norte (north), sea lions pups are on the shore.
High tide. Killer whale attacks are more likely to occur during high tide.
Graphite and pencil crayon on Stonehenge 140lb hot pressed watercolour paper.
It is challenging to do these in pencil crayon as the tooth and grain are always there – and it is hard to get even saturated colour. It is very important to keep strokes in constant direction.