Journal: An Online Notebook Updated By The Artist
Posts related to Creative Process
2010-07-13 10:23:16 | Writing: Part 1
The artist writing in his journal 10 July 2010. The pencil drawing is work in progress based on a postcard image of a painting by Caspar David Friedrich. ...Read More
2010-06-07 03:59:22 | Views of the World
Views of the World For many years I've kept framed prints by Andreus Cellarius hanging at either side of my studio window. The engravings from his 1660 Harmonia Microcosmica are not rare, probably modern reprints of plates adapted from the volume. The subjects fit well among the small group of astronomical charts hanging my studio and also bear a private significance. As I sit looking out my window, the Ptolemaic theory, placing the earth at the center of the universe hangs to my left; while the Copernican theory depicting a Sun-centered universe is to my right. I like being ensconced between these viewpoints; I believe my drawings are continually proposing options for viewing the world. The photograph above shows the current state of my drawing window. We recently decided to paint our house and the windows are first; most have never been properly prepared and coated. The project involves removing everything in the vicinity of the windows, including my favorite drawing table. I rarely do a thorough cleanup, so such a task is massive with piles and piles of materials, tools, letters, papers, and drawings to dig through. The buildup is largely due to my reluctance to throw things away, leaning on the hope that everything can be used someday. Yes, I'm resourceful and I do reuse lots of things, however I've collected far more material than I will ever be able to employ. I learned many years ago that cleanup is an important component in the creative process. The activity can be like paging through a journal where pieces of your life are reviewed, sorted, categorized, reclaimed or discarded. In my cleanup, I am rediscovering a thousand ideas left unrealized; in particular abandoned works-in-progress that deserve a second chance. I've found at least twenty sheet ...Read More
2010-04-13 04:07:00 | Drawing into Painting / Painting into Drawing
(Above) Photograph of drawing table with Landscape in Graphite II (work in progress) 5 x 12", graphite on Fabriano paper. This drawing has been executed in pencil and powdered graphite applied with brushesand water. On the table can be seen a dish of powdered graphite (top center), various weight pencils, a bit of cut plastic eraser and graphite stick (far right), and a dish of water with index card (upper right) on which to mix and test the graphite solution before applying it to the drawing. Drawing into Painting / Painting into Drawing Over the winter I've engaged graphite as a drawing medium, building tone with pencils of various weights from 9H to 9B. I usually start the compositions with very hard lead pencils and then move to darker, softer lead. Sometimes I move back and refine the areas of softer graphite using the harder leads, pressing the material into the surface of the paper. As I develop my image, I tend to smooth out tone with a bit of plastic eraser which evens the surface and cultivates an atmosphere that unifies the composition (Window with Dark Drawing and Open Journal was created in this method). In more recent experiments, I've set the eraser aside, and in doing so I've sensed a different kind of sparkle emerge from the drawing surface. Perhaps more of the white paper shines through on a microscopic level when I refrain from smearing the graphite. And certainly crisper edges and details are possible without smearing. In the end it's probably learning when to smear and when not to smear with the eraser that is the real lesson from employing such a technique. One key element I recognize is that graphite has provided me a springboard for returning to the study of value. In my early drawings black watercolor was my essential medium for investigating ...Read More
2010-02-09 11:36:13 | A Window on Philadelphia
Photograph of the artist at the window with his temporary painting table. A Window on Philadelphia The exhibition Prints by Gallery Artists is on view until 27 February at Gallery Joe in Philadelphia and three of my prints are included in the venue: Night II, and Water Tower and my accordion fold book, April 2008. I’ve just returned from seeing the exhibition and highly recommend it. As well as stepping back and seeing a few of my prints in a fresh context, I enjoyed studying the works of 16 other excellent artists hung in a salon style presentation: Astrid Bowlby, Emily Brown, Lynne Clibanoff, Christine Hiebert, Marilyn Holsing, Jeanne Jaffe, Mary Judge, Sharon Louden, Winifred Lutz, Rob Matthews, Linn Meyers, Kate Moran, Stephen Robin, Samantha Simpson, Mark Sheinkman, Martin Wilner. The installation is connected with the city-wide, season-long focus on contemporary printmaking titled Philografika. In order to make it to the Gallery Joe opening, my family and I drove on Friday from our home just north of Washington DC, ahead of a massive snowstorm. The light snow started just as the reception began and certainly didn’t dampen the opening crowd; at times I could hardly find a place to stand as the big crowd ebbed and flowed. Over the course of the evening I got to meet and talk to quite a number of artists and visitors (see below). After dinner, we retired to our hotel room as the snow and wind grew stronger and the blizzard began to roar into town. Originally we had intended to visit some of the Philadelphia museums and galleries over the weekend, hoping to see some of the other Philographika venues, but when we woke, it was clear, most everything was closed that day. So, I pulled my chair and table up to the small window of our hotel room three stories ...Read More
2009-10-31 06:15:03 | New Work / New York
Photograph of the artist’s journals, Book 123 through Book 132, 2004 – 2009. The foreground journal is open to a study for Self-Portrait with Night: Pieced Panels I with the drawing in progress visible in the background. New Work / New York BravinLee programs, located in Manhattan’s Chelsea district, has opened an exhibition of my works on paper that includes twenty-three drawings, two prints, and eight journals. Created within the last five years, this body of work in many ways summarizes ideas that have percolated through my recent oeuvre while endeavoring to push into new territories. Fourteen drawings in the show relate to my Pages series, a project that emerged around 2002. The images are executed on paper approximately the size my journal pages (4 x 6 inches) and are inscribed with notes that attend the drawing’s construction as well as dreams transposed from my journals (for an example, see Self-Portrait with Planets and Moon). Such texts spring from inner discourse that parallels my scrutiny of the visual world. Multiple layers of writing may be erased and overwritten before the final inscriptions are inked. Some observers might imagine these drawings are pages extracted from my notebooks and framed, however they are formed independently. A sustained dialogue between these works and my sketchbooks is critical to their development and is evident in the journal sketches that are on view in the show’s display cases. The Self-Portrait with Night series is represented with five works. These broad-format images are developed from a consistent viewpoint looking out of my studio window. Set at night or twilight, refection and transparency are evoked to compositionally merge interior and exterior spaces. While my own visage haunts these works, it is of ...Read More
2009-09-27 13:18:18 | Memory
Beach Walk, Part 1; Book 132 Pages 58 and 59. Beach Walk, Part 2; Book 132 Pages 60 and 61. During my summer retreat, I occasionally get up well before sunrise and walk down the beach with my journal. Carrying a pencil in my right hand, I hold the book in my left; the pages are spread open with clamps and a very small booklight is attached that I can turn on and off as needed. Occasionally I stop to make a rough outline of something of interest, letting the pages evolve intuitively; roughing out several potential compositions across the spread of pages before I move to the next. These spare graphite notes are occasionally augmented with written abbreviations: “y” for yellow, “r” for red, “b” for blue, etc. as a jog for my memory when I later fill in color and tone back in the studio. My most memorable walk this summer began at 4:15 am when I slipped barefoot down the street to a black ocean. It was low tide and the beach broad and I was completely alone. The moonless night heightened brilliance of the stars. I immediately recognized Orion and the attendant stretch of bright constellations that prefigure winter rising out of the water ahead of me. The brightest star among them, Sirius was low to the horizon. Just to the north, lights of the pier flickered in agitated water. I knew Hurricane Bill was offshore, but too far out to make much of a difference yet. As I meandered up the strand, in and out of the edge of the waves, I eventually escaped the lights of the pier and began to note the subtle variations of lighting from the unseen streetlamps as they cut across the mostly darkened beach houses far behind the dunes. Cumulus clouds swept the rooftops, low enough to catch and reflect a little light from the beach town below. As I looked toward th ...Read More
2009-05-14 02:08:57 | Dreams and Images
(above) Charles Ritchie, Astronomical Chart, Bowl, and Candles, (work in progress), watercolor and graphite on Fabriano paper, 4 x 6″ Dreams and Images I don’t have many recurring dreams, but one returned recently. I’m looking across the solar system and the planets are right there; little worlds that I can stretch out and grasp, even reach down and touch their surfaces. My eyes are telescopic; everything far is near and I see space warping around, bending the distant galaxies into my proximity. This dream has reappeared to me in various forms over the years and it’s always exhilarating to experience it. You might think I might want to try and draw my dreams, but I don’t. The results are always disappointing. I dream in black and white or very subtle color that is much the cast of my drawings, but my dreams are mostly vague, shifting, mental images that feel so different that what I manage to put on paper. Perhaps film would be a better medium in which to construct surrogates for dream experiences. But even so, I’m not sure that rendering my dreams in any medium would be as pungent an art experience as someone might think. Have you ever had someone tell you their dreams? Most are pretty dull to an outsider. I am absolutely content to write my dreams out each morning, and occasionally rewrite and rethink special ones on my drawings. I believe dreams are symbol-filled missives from the subconscious that will reveal a great deal about my psyche if I study them closely. But, my associative readings are probably opaque to most of those who would want to try and follow along. Regarding the image above, it’s a work-in-progress, a composition sketched out in pencil with various areas articulated in watercolor. The image is dominated by a 19th century ...Read More
2009-03-13 17:02:52 | A Mix
A Mix I will soon have to put away my landscape drawings. Tiny red, green, and white buds now cloud my window as bare winter topography fills in and a leafy view evolves toward a different set of drawing challenges for spring and summer. I am committed to making my art directly from my subjects; photographs and sketches just aren’t enough for me, so I follow the dictates of the season and have come to enjoy turning over drawings with the calendar. If I don’t finish these winter drawings, I will bring them back out again next November. Before I switch to the next batch of drawings in mid-April, I have my eye on finishing several pieces, but I won’t force closure. One way I do this is by rotating a mixture of drawings across the worktable, keeping many elements in flux so that I can‘t develop an attachment to a single work, nor get too involved with the inevitable stumbling blocks that arise within particular pieces. When I’m getting stuck, I move to the next work, not stopping to think much about my difficulties. Often, upon returning to that drawing, I find the blockage has evaporated, and I can see the image more clearly due to of the distance and experience I have placed between myself and the perceived entanglement. Regardless, I always ramp up the energy before disengaging at season’s end. One current drawing has been a particularly interesting challenge (image above). Created on the same paper that I use in my journals, a 90 pound hot press Arches watercolor paper, the support is thinner than the 140 pound Fabriano hot press paper that I commonly use for drawings outside my journals. On such lightweight paper, the heavily worked surface undulates, as if it were vellum or thin leather (this relief is probably best visible in the photograph at ...Read More
2009-02-22 07:16:38 | A Hunt in the Forest
A Hunt in the Forest A few years ago I sifted through family photographs, hoping to find a trove of snapshots of the many houses where I lived as a child. After much searching, I was deeply disappointed; if we had taken pictures, most of them had disappeared. Since that time, I’ve been actively collecting images that speak to me about my past, and continually surprised at how often I neglected to document key places. When every so often I uncover a snapshot as rich with connections as the one seen above, I’m thrilled. This photograph, recently pulled from a storage trunk by my wife Jenny, shows me seated at the worktable of my first real studio; the setting where my earliest successful drawings emerged. This photo is the only one I know showing the full setting; the worktable and windows, as well as many of the reproductions of other artist’s work that I rotated across my bulletin boards; a constantly changing wall of inspirations. The year is 1984 and the spot is a rented basement apartment in a Victorian home in upper northwest Washington, DC where I lived for several years. My space was beautiful, a bit cavernous, but full of windows on the east side, and the view was eye level to the flower beds, I could watch up close as plants grew and the seasons changed. A built-in table next to the windows served as a drawing station and the desk and bulletin board shone bright under makeshift lamps. Under the table, just to my right, I can make out a few of my artist monographs, a tiny collection that has since swelled into a large library. The place was a perfect little heaven as I remember it now (see, for example, Window with Moon and Star, 1983). It’s unclear why Jenny would have snapped the shutter while I unpacked a radio and fiddled with dials. But beyond ...Read More
2009-01-19 10:00:14 | Antares and an Old Moon
Charles Ritchie, Journal entries for 15-16 January, Book 131, featuring watercolor and graphite sketch of Antares rising, page size 4 x 6″. Antares and an Old Moon My first sighting of Antares this season was the early morning of 16th very low in the southeast sky shining out of the bare treetops above the white brick side of the house across the street (see on line journal entry for 23 February 2008). A harbinger of spring. Like looking in the yard and seeing the first snowdrop or the daffodils tips prick through. Antares will sweep slowly west through these winter mornings and when it reaches the center of my window among the budding trees it will disappear. The red heart of the Scorpion fades into spring foliage and reminds me my winter landscapes have to rest. On approximately the 15th of April I’ll put them away until next year. Antares itself is not the subject of a drawing, at least not right now. It’s more of a timepiece. One of the pieces that I am currently working on features an old moon coloring the twilight sky (see sketch at left below). A deep blue morning above sparks of window lamps. Saw the subject a month ago and I’m happy to see that same phase of the moon will come around again this week. I’ll study it closely, especially to see the color of the dark side away from the crescent, which is such a different tone than the blue of the twilight surround. So many pieces going now I’m getting confused but I want to stay open to all of them. I wake and write my dreams and then just look up and pick the one that hits me first. Don’t seem to work on the same one sequential nights; trading around so that everything stays fresh. I’m excited about all of them and each is testing me in a different way. I’ll just have to accept th ...Read More
2009-01-10 07:12:50 | Graphite
Photograph of drawing table on 10 January 2009 with Spring Twilight (above) and Night with Orion (below) two works in progress that are predominantly created with graphite. At left are various pencils and graphite sticks, a sanding block for sharpening pencils, and a dish for catching filings from sanding and sharpening. Graphite Subtracting watercolor often requires risky and aggressive operations like scrubbing in order to remove paint from the paper support (see two previous online journal entries). When the the watercolor is scrubbed away, rarely is the page returned to a pristine state. A residue of color almost always remains and the paper texture can pill up or show gouges. One gambles when the rewetting and repainting such an area. It may never be reintegrated into the fabric of the whole. When I began to experiment with graphite as a primary medium I had extraordinary feelings of freedom. Compared to the years I had spent carefully planning out watercolor compositions in order to avoid having to later scrub out painted missteps; I found erasing layers of graphite was beautiful, immediate gratification. I could apply graphite anywhere and then remove it easily without distressing my drawing surface. Such permission allowed me to think about building a composition using subtraction as a dominant force of creation, something watercolor is hardly inclined to do. For me, the practice of allowing eraser to dominate pencil actually emerged from years of figure drawing. As I began to jettison watercolor sketching of the figure, I found that a thick dark graphite stick (2B to 6B) was an interesting shift. Like watercolor, I could cover a lot of ground quickly with the fat stick of graphite, yet the graphite allowed me to manipulate and refine tone far more effec ...Read More
2008-12-21 12:06:43 | More Scrubbing
Charles Ritchie, (work in progress) Self-Portrait with Planets II [working title], watercolor and graphite on Fabriano paper, 4 x 6″. Note the scrubbed areas in lower foreground appearing as white patches at left and center on the of the dark desktop. More Scrubbing In my previous online journal entry I discussed scrubbing, a process I use to remove color from a watercolor. After further reviewing the corrected drawing, I realized I may not have gone far enough in subtracting from the image. I went back to my original sketchbook studies and found that elements in the foreground had been drawn in as an afterthought. These elements, two books (see image here), were flashes of brightness that kept the eye from resting in the horizontal band of light that runs through the lower part of the picture. Not that allowing a picture to grow differently than planned is a bad thing. I simply felt that these new elements were distracting from the whole. The books are now removed. I dipped a ½ inch acrylic flat brush in water and rubbed the books out (see above), one at lower center and the one on the left. Although I really liked my drawing of these elements, I realized I couldn’t allow myself to be precious with them, so I gave them up to support the whole of the composition. I once heard a story about the great American painter, Thomas Eakins. Perhaps the tale is apocryphal; I haven’t been able to find the reference in recent years. The story goes that when Eakins’ wife Susan saw a portrait that Thomas was working on, she marveled at one of the hands he had painted, exclaiming, “I believe this is the most beautiful hand you have done.” Eakins walked over and scrubbed the oil paint away, removing the hand completely. The painter then explained that the rest of t ...Read More
2008-12-13 11:58:31 | Scrubbing
Photograph of Charles Ritchie working by Matthew Gay. Scrubbing It intrigues me that viewers assume that making small images is equal to scribing a paragraph on the head of a pin. Photographs like the one above showing me drawing with a magnifying glass would seem to attest to a hold-your-breath-stiffness when I paint. However, I find the process of executing miniatures far more varied. To me, drawing in any size or format is much like the weather; sunny clarity transitioning to storms; delicacy alternating with destruction. An upheaval has been growing in the work seen below. I’ve felt the need to recover luminosity; the drawing has grown too dark and opaque so I’ve scrubbed out areas to reinvigorate them. The upper and side sections of the drawing on the right have been scrubbed; erased in a particular way. The idea may seem strange since my medium, watercolor tends to primarily be an additive medium; in which colors are built up in layers from light to dark and where areas of white are usually the paper itself that have been reserved. Subtracting watercolor to make the page lighter can be tricky since the color saturates the support; to remove it can imperil the paper. The subtraction is accomplished using a 1-inch wide flat head acrylic brush (see above).* The fine synthetic hair is just stiff enough to scrub the surface of the paper when damped. Watercolor can be released without digging too deep and destroying the integrity of the fibers. First I take fresh water and flood the areas that I am going to remove watercolor, then with a lightly dampened brush I rub those areas quickly and lightly. As I pull up color, I wipe the brush on a rag in my hand, frequently dipping the brush back into the fresh water bin to clean out the color. This is a delicate ...Read More
2008-11-28 17:07:35 | Passage
Charles Ritchie, Copy after The Large Enclosure by Caspar David Friedrich, watercolor and graphite on Arches paper in bound volume, page size: 4 x 6”. Passage When I copy the work of other artists in my journal, I meditate on their art in a systematic, physical way and by doing so often discover passages I might otherwise miss. The art of Caspar David Friedrich, the great German 19th century Romantic, has long been a favorite of mine. I find works such as The Large Enclosure spellbinding. This sublime landscape is dominated by an arc of clouds sweeping down towards an upwards bowing waterway. As a little boat approaches the center, it appears to be squeezed in a convergence of earth and sky. Sinuous networks of clouds and waterways enhance the sense of constriction. As I made my copy, I noted a little opening between the trees that is just the shape of the boat’s sail; like an empty space calling to the piece of a puzzle that fills it. But I sense The Large Enclosure represents passage on other levels as well. The dark trees in the middle ground block our view, creating hidden space relieved by tantalizing vistas that stretch into open landscape. While sketching, I noted a subtler passage at the far right, deeper in the distance (see the detail on the right page of the sketchbook spread below). I had never before observed this second tree line, one that offers a solitary opening into a further realm. Perhaps this passage was a symbolic crux of the picture for Friedrich, whose Christian faith would offer a single path out of our earthly enclosure. Several other thoughts occurred to me as I continued to sketch. The broad arcs that underpin the waterways and clouds in this work imply imaginary circles that stretch beyond the picture frame; evoking the curve of the ...Read More
2008-11-18 18:40:32 | One Place / Any Place
Charles Ritchie, Interior/Exterior, 1987-1989, watercolor, graphite, and pen and ink on Fabriano paper, sheet/image: 8 1/8” x 29 3/8”, collection of the artist. Note the oak tree just to the left of center in the middle ground and compare it with the same tree 20 years later seen in the image below. Charles Ritchie, Self-Portrait with Night: Side Panels I, 2006-2008, watercolor and graphite on Fabriano paper, sheet/image: 5 3/4 x 17 1/4″. Both of the works pictured above are in the exhibition From the Inside Looking Out: Charles Ritchie on view at Gallery Joe, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania through 20 December 2008. One Place / Any Place I sat down for the first time at my window nearly 25 years ago and looked out to the row of suburban houses. Since that time I’ve watched people move into those houses and transfer away. I’ve watched an oak grow from a modest sapling into a towering tree. I’ve seen the girths of three magnificent tulip poplar trees broaden. I’ve had dogwoods come and go; young redbuds block my view and then grow tall beyond my window frame. I’ve seen houses painted, screened porches become additions, and yards become forests, lawns manicured. Chimneys and roofs repaired. Leaves fill the yards and daffodils rise. Sunrise flood the neighborhood and sunset wash it red, winter noon burn out detail and summer diffuse it. I’ve watched my face grow older incrementally night after night, reflected in the window; superimposed over blackness, lamps, and nebulae. A favorite book of mine is The Enigma of Arrival by V.S. Naipaul in which the author illuminates minute and intermittent changes that underpin what appears to be a static universe. It is all a matter of attention. A friend of mine, writer Peter Turchi, has paralleled my enthusi ...Read More
2008-11-01 01:02:44 | Day Dreams
Self-Portrait with Planets II, state two, drawing in progress 7 August 2008, watercolor and graphite on Fabriano paper, 6 x 4″ Day Dreams I’ve become interested in daydreams; flares of imagination that punctuate waking hours. We all do it; drift a bit and the mind is somewhere else. A few days ago I was dozing and an image floated up in my mind, three people were sitting in a car with a woman who was pointing to holes in her bare feet. I blinked. There was such matter-of-fact quality to the image, no sense of pain or alarm. What could it mean? A few days later I was sitting talking to a friend at the table and as we moved our heads, I felt I was seeing front and side views of his head simultaneously; he seemed cross-eyed for a split second. Not exactly a daydream, but a phenomenon representative of the slips in reality I like to note. Perhaps my sustained recording and study of dreams has cultivated my awareness of such jags of the mind. Kin to dreams, I can’t help but scrutinize them in the same way, imagining some underlying truth about myself or my situation being revealed to me in their arcane symbols. In previous online entries I’ve talked about my method of recording my dreams as a means of self-scrutiny (see entry for 25 December 2007). I am convinced these daydream images are a similar nudge from my subconscious to look at myself from an alternate, previously unnoticed perspective. I have begun to note these moments in my journal and I’m particularly encouraged by the momentum my writing has gained from incorporating these observations. The annotations have also begun to embellish my series of drawings called Pages (three states of one of the Pages are used as example above and below). Executed on sheets of paper the size of leaves in my jou ...Read More
2008-10-22 00:57:58 | "April 2008" A New Print Project Part 8
The new print project is complete. We have a final proof that will be used as the model for printing the editions. Jim Stroud, printer and producer for the project, shifted to a bone black printing ink and found that much more detail could be coaxed from the printing plates without sacrificing any of the dark value and presence of the black ink. The images are now far more reflective of my articulations in the copper printing surface. The housing, designed by Janine Wong is fantastic. It has the look of my journals but leaps to a different level with the deep, indigo colored housing and the collapsible, accordion-fold design. Photograph of Janine Wong in her studio in Milton, Massachusetts as she refines the binding and the housing for the accordion print project now renamed April 2008. The book consists of 12 accordion fold pages that include 13 images with text extracted from my journal, Book 130. I’ve retitled the volume April 2008 to indicate the pages of my journal encompassed in the printed transcription. The images are a fresh reinvestigation of the way I draw in my books, restudying the compositions in a wide range of intaglio processes. I was pushed to the edge of my knowledge and abilities while making this volume. It stretched me into new territory. Janine’s design for the housing is very smart. It has a raw linen cover, like my journals do, but is protected by a linen covered indigo slip case. The accordion fold allows a variety of configurations in which the pages can be arranged and read. Note the Title Page and Colophon are inside the raw linen cover. The text of the Colophon reads: “This accordion fold volume is extracted from Book 130 of the artist’s journals. The copper plates were produced in whiteground and spitbite aquatint, mezzotin ...Read More
2008-10-07 10:25:03 | New Print Project Part 7
Trial Proofs for the Accordion Print Project, etching and aquatint on Hahnemühle paper, six sheets: each approximately 4 x 12″. These pages will eventually be linked horizontally. Upper left is Page 1, lower right is Page 12. New Print Project Part 7 Proofs for the Accordion Print Project have been returned to me from Center Street Studio. They look excellent. Selections from a few of the 12 pages are included below and an overview of the sheets is shown above. I wrote notes on those proofs indicating to printer Jim Stroud where ink should be wiped selectively from the plates to bring out highlights. Those proofs with notes, seen as details below, were returned to Jim. After another proofing session, Jim has refined the printing a sent me a set of proofs (above) that have been torn out and folded in the configurations that will eventually be linked to form the print. Janine Wong is constructing a case that will hold the assembled volume. That will be available soon for review. After looking at the proofs for a few days in the studio, I have decided that the plate work is complete. Our aim is to have an assembled set of final edition prints available for review at the fine art book fair that Jim will be traveling to in late October. (To be continued). Working Proof for Page 1 Working Proof for Page 2 Working Proof for Page 11 ...Read More
2008-09-14 01:03:40 | New Print Project Part 6
Photograph of studio table with plate 1 for the Accordion Print Project. Tools seen in the foreground include 1/2″ wide, and 1 1/2″ wide mezzotint rockers, scalpels, burnisher and dental tools. Image areas of the printing plate have been roughened and smoothed with these tools to hold varying amounts of ink when the plate is printed. Earlier impressions from the print project are visible (upper left) as is Book 130, the journal which contains the images that are being adapted. A mirror compensates for the reversal that occurs in the printing process. New Print Project Part 6 When I am in the midst of a project it sometimes takes time to find my next step. I try to pull back a bit, be patient, and listen to the work. Returning home in July after producing the printing plates for my Accordion Fold Print project at Center Street Studio, I hung the proofs on my studio walls and watched images out of the corner of my eye. I also kept the plates available on my tabletop for study. As time went on, I realized how much I liked the whiteground technique I had explored while working at the Center Street shop (see online journal entry for 23 July 2008). Without having much experience in the painting of whiteground, I had used it boldly, and while the effect I had achieved was a bit ragged and a little too loose at times, the overall feel was energetic and not far from the vigorous watercolor sketching that goes on in my journals. Finding a printmaking equivalent for my watercolor journal sketches seems like an intriguing goal. However, as I kept looking at the trial prints over time, I realized there were several things that were not sitting well with me. First, I would have wanted more detail in the images. I had tried to articulate elements that had not materialized with t ...Read More
2008-09-05 06:13:59 | Pictures at an Exhibition
Photograph of the installation of the exhibition From the Inside Looking Out: The Journals, Drawings and Prints of Charles Ritchie at the Gregg Musuem of Art & Design, North Carolina State University, Raleigh. Photograph by Matthew Gay. Pictures at an Exhibition Stepping into one’s solo exhibition can be revealing; especially if work that’s been out of mind for years is included. It’s strange enough seeing one’s art framed and under glass, or presented in display cases; a situation that denies the whole tactile experience of creating the work as well as displacing it from the studio in which it grew. The unfamiliar, freshly-painted white room, the rarefied lighting, and the uncluttered, surprising juxtaposition of works serves to make everything feel alien: what a great place for an artist to be. As I spent time going through my exhibition in at North Carolina State University, several things struck me. I enjoyed reviewing some early drawings that haven’t been shown before. The group includes Window with Moon and Star and Worktable with Open Book, drawings from 1983. Both works feature the same subject, the table and window of an earlier studio. The tight pen drawing of the former was made by thinning inks and building up layers of line with a very fine point pen. This very precise drawing process took months. Compared with Worktable with Open Book, a much larger piece created using large brushes in loose watercolor wash on a watercolor block; this drawing was executed in probably a half hour. I’m fascinated that I was working with such variant methods at the same time. I think the tension of swinging between loose and tight approaches has been one of the elements that has kept painting interesting for me. I still vascillate between these poles when I work ...Read More
2008-08-24 11:15:25 | Mezzotint: Part 1
Charles Ritchie, Daffodils with Astronomical Chart, 1996 working proof, mezzotint on Rives BFK paper, image: 11 1/2 x 12″. Working in mezzotint is the exact opposite of watercolor in the sense that I am starting with a completely black ground and creating the lighter areas. Watercolor, my favorite drawing medium, is worked from the white page to the darks. Mezzotint: Part 1 Daffodils with Astronomical Chart was created using a printmaking process called mezzotint. A mezzotint plate is pitted with microscopic depressions that can hold printing ink. Using an arced knife with a finely-serrated edge called a rocker; a copper plate’s surface is roughened uniformly so that if inked, it would print black (see image below). Keeping in mind that I am creating highlights on a dark ground, I smooth out the depressions to make grays and whites. The smoother the surface, the less ink it will catch, and the lighter it will print. A completely smooth area cannot hold ink and will print white. I use special tools to accomplish the smoothing; a scalpel can shave away layers of metal and a burnisher can press down the roughened surface and polish it. The plates are worked in the my studio, but at various times during the process, I may stop work and ship the plate to my collaborator, printer/publisher James Stroud of Center Street Studio in Milton, Massachusetts in order to see my progress. Stroud rubs ink into the plate, removes excess ink with a cloth, and places the plate on the printing press bed under a dampened sheet of paper. When pressed together, the ink transfers to the paper to produce a test print called a proof. The proof is returned to me for approval. When the work is determined to be complete, a limited group of like impressions called an edition is printed and made ...Read More
2008-08-17 10:40:47 | The Bend
The Bend, 1984, watercolor, graphite, and pen and ink on Fabriano paper, 3 5/8 x 14 7/8″. My journals are filled with watercolor studies that explore options for images I am creating outside of my books. For example, during the summer and fall of 1984, one of the independent works I developed was The Bend (above), an image of a road set in a long format composition. Books 30 and 31 (below) contain studies that establish compositional details as well as offer various solutions for the borders of that work. While a long rectangle with a gently arched top was selected for the final composition, the books show that other configurations were proposed; including a broad box shape with no arch. I was looking for a way to create visual interest by maximizing tension between the long, wavelike shape of the road and the arched top of the composition’s border. One of the wonderful things about keeping a journal is being able to go back and trace the development of an idea. Book 30, Summer 1984, sheet: 4 1/4 x 6″, watercolor graphite, and pen and ink on wove paper in bound red linen volume Book 31, Fall 1984, sheet: 4 1/4 x 6″, watercolor graphite, and pen and ink on wove paper in bound red linen volume The Bend and the two journals presented here are among the 65 works on view in the exhibition From the Inside Looking Out: The Journals, Drawings and Prints of Charles Ritchie, on view at The Gregg Museum of Art & Design, North Carolina State University, Raleigh from 21 August to 8 October 2008. ...Read More
2008-08-13 04:26:14 | Risk: Turning Pages, Part 2
Charles Ritchie, Interior with Stack of Journals, work in progress, second state, watercolor and graphite on Fabriano paper, 4 x 6″. Risk: Turning Pages, Part 2 When is a work of art complete? When is it overworked? When is the artist signing off prematurely; too easily satisfied? These are difficult questions that permeate the core of painting. My online journal entry on 1 June examined the abandoned watercolor, Interior with Stack of Journals and my plans to reinvestigate the image on another sheet. Through the summer I have continued work on the second attempt (see above), taking advantage of the period when the early evening light enters the west window of my studio. As the season comes to an end, and the specific lighting on my subject drifts away, I find myself pleased with the work. It has reached a plateau, as many drawings do; very close to way I had envisioned it, with some surprising details evolving; the mirror on the desk reflecting a bit of interior, for instance. However, the big improvement is that the brightness of the landscape has remained; far preferable to the overworked landscape in the previous version. A plateau can be dangerous, though. One might easily convince oneself the work is done. At any point along the creation of an image there are times of balance and imbalance. I consider the present manifestation of Interior with Stack of Journals (above) a balanced composition, but not yet finished. My major dissatisfaction is that I want the interior to be darker in very specific places; more like my most recent preparatory journal sketch (Book 130, 11 May 2008). To accomplish this I will apply wash; not too dark not too light. If done just right it will increase contrast with the light from the window while integrating details and further unif ...Read More
2008-07-30 04:03:38 | Painting Again
Charles Ritchie, two uncatalogued paintings, (left) Paper Whites, 1990-1992, 5 x 3 7/8″, (right) Roses, 1992, 5 3/8 x 3 7/8″, oil on gessoed mat board. Painting Again Previous experience can inform the new unexpectedly. While working at Center Street Studio print workshop, I was exploring a new medium, whiteground (see entry for 23 July 2008). At first I felt very comfortable using the material; it reminded me of working up paint with a brush and water as I do with watercolor. My collaborator, Jim Stroud had also eased me into the project by providing the whiteground in a small, porcelain dish like the ones I use with watercolor in my studio. However, the as I painted on the copper plate with the whiteground its unique handling properties emerged. Every brush stroke seemed to be amplified. Streaks and marks left by the brush were extremely hard to soften and blend. Part of the reason was the lack of friction on the very slick copper on which I was painting. Jim helped improve the adhesion properties by adding more soap to the painting medium. Still, it was very hard to get an even tone until I finally discovered that by building an evenly mixed puddle of paint and flooding it in a shallow layer, it would dry as an even tone. I also discovered that by putting such a mixture over previously applied textured areas could soften and unify the tones. As I was working I suddenly recalled a series of small paintings I did using white oil paint, linseed oil, and turpentine painted on a dark ground. (see Roses and Paper Whites, images above). I did practically the same thing, build are reservoir of color and flood it onto the ground to make the paint spread evenly. I must have drawn on this experience subconsciously during my attempts to solve this whiteground applica ...Read More
2008-07-23 02:59:03 | New Print Project: Part 5
Photograph of copper printing plate on table with images painted in whiteground. The black surround is a hardground block. The plate is seen before being placed in the acid bath. New Print Project: Part 5 Renewing work on my Accordion Fold Print project at Center Street Studio, I resolved to use whiteground etching (also called soapground) as a way of adding tone to my plates. It’s a process I’ve had very little experience using and I imagined it would be a challenge. With only five full working days ahead, I would have to learn quickly. I also imagined the frothy look of this medium would add a nice contrast to the line etchings I had made on the plates this past spring. Whiteground is painted on an aquatinted printing plate to protect it in an acid bath. The mixture consists of soap (Ivory flakes were used in this case), linseed oil, and water. I found that when mixed just right, applying the diluted paste with a brush in layers does feel a bit like watercolor, my favorite drawing medium. Areas of the plate that are left unpainted are corroded by the acid, which roughens the surface enough to catch ink and print black. Areas heavily covered with whiteground will not be affected by the acid and will print white. Thinner layers of whiteground are eaten away by the acid relative to the depth of the resist. They will print as grays. To begin, I painted loosely on test plates, to see how the whiteground handled. The first mixture of the medium beaded up slightly on the metal plate, making smooth application of the whiteground difficult. Jim Stroud, my printer and advisor, added a bit more soap to the mixture and this time the adherence was perfect. Feathering the paint resulted in brushstrokes that allowed the acid to slip through, cultivating rough, irregular areas ...Read More
2008-07-13 05:34:17 | Guitar Lessons
Charles Ritchie, Guitar, 1992-1994, watercolor, graphite and pen and ink on Fabriano paper, private collection Guitar Lessons For many years I have played guitar; it is a satisfying part of my creative practice. One step away from the drawing table and I’m in a completely different zone; working in patterns on a field of time; focusing on completely different visual, tactile, and aural sensations than working with watercolor and brush. Even a short session away with the guitar returns me to the drawing table with fingers, eyes, and mind realigned and re-sensitized. I’m a self taught rhythm guitar player, so I welcomed the opportunity to take some lessons from a professional; something I assumed would be instantly gratifying and quickly lift me into a different plane of playing. How wrong I was. I immediately discovered what a hole I had dug playing alone in the studio over the years. Sliding beats, fuzzed out notes; I had settled into a pattern of sloppy strumming and improvisation without accountability. It became clear by the end of the first session I was going to have to begin again. So, in response, rather than the busy strums I’ve packed into each measure I’m stripping down to a single chord per beat; playing only the downbeat. I check each note for clarity; how it sounds on its own, how it sounds in relation to the whole. When collaborating with my teacher I now listen beyond my playing; what is my partner doing? Where is he in the music? Where might he want to go? How is my part serving his part? The experience reminds me of making prints at Center Street Studio this past May. There, with my partner Jim, I found myself responding to what was happening with the printmaking process. When the photographic didn’t serve us properly, I drew the imag ...Read More
2008-06-29 09:53:47 | Works in Progress
Works in Progress As I keep so many projects going at one time, I thought it might be rewarding to lay out my current crop of drawings-in-progress and review them together. The photograph above juxtaposes two shots in order to encompass the nineteen works that were arranged on the tabletop. All are in various stages of execution. Some have been in process for many years. Others are recently begun. Some will take only months to finish while others will take years. Others may never be finished. Some may be erased and the pages resurrected as grounds for other images. In the foreground of the photographs are examples from my Pages series. These drawings are created in the format of pages from my journal, 4 by 6 inches, but are created as independent drawings. Most are temporarily adhered to mat board using double stick tape (3M #415). The mounting keeps the works flat while I lay multiple watercolor washes into the page. I remove the mounting after the work is completed. The tape on the back of the drawing can usually be peeled away from the drawing with a sharp knife, like an Xacto. Any residue from the double stick tape can be removed with a rubber cement pickup. This process works best for small drawings; substantially larger sheets tend to buckle and can’t be efficiently held down in this manner. At center left of the photograph on the right is one of my Self-Portrait with Night drawings in a fairly late stage of development. Two other works from the Self-Portrait with Night series in relatively early stages are at upper left in the left photograph. At center of the right photograph are two landscapes called Dream Panels; the left one is entitled Summer and the right one is Spring. There is not enough detail in the shots to show the bands of writ ...Read More
2008-06-23 10:33:57 | A Fragment
A Fragment I was digging through my boxes when I stumbled upon a bit of drawing; a rectangular scrap about three inches wide and one inch tall. I turned the small fragment over and rotated it in various directions. The image, although unrecognizable, was highly finished, well-worked with black watercolor and clearly a torn from another drawing. I turned it around again and suddenly recognized it as a section I tore from a small piece entitled Tomatoes; a work that left my studio several years ago. Looking through my journals of 1989, the period when Tomatoes was completed, studies show my attention telescoping towards the kitchen window as a subject (see the sequence of pen and watercolor sketchbook pages below). Eventually peripheral elements are discarded in favor of the tomatoes resting on the sill. At the same time, details of the landscape outside the window emerge as a counterbalancing feature of interest. But the elimination process was never completely worked out in sketches. The final composition did not arrive until I tore the upper inch of the drawing off; removing a bit of window and trees from the finished work. Above left I have replaced the fragment in the position it occupied before being torn away. Above right is the final drawing with the upper section removed. This is just one of the more dramatic ways a composition becomes resolved. This is also a reason I prefer working on a paper support to canvas or panel. Paper tears. It is versatile. It is immediate. I also like the element of risk; it is hard to return to the original composition after it is gone. Book 62 Book 63 Book 63 Note: The subject of Tomatoes is unusual for me; the image does not depict my home. For a period I had access to a Victorian house and I tried the new setting a ...Read More
2008-05-19 16:26:23 | New Print Project: Part 4
New Print Project: Part 4 Our first task when I arrived at Center Street Studio was to transfer my drawings with inscriptions photographically to film positives. Here Jim Stroud trims one of the films we created that will be used to transfer the images for our Accordion Print project to the printing plates. Subsequently these films were placed against the photo sensitive printing plate and exposed to bright light; the plates were placed in a bath and developed. The purple coating that hardens on the surface of the plate protects areas of the plate when immersed in the acid bath (image below). Anywhere bare copper is exposed to acid, recessions will be cut which to hold the ink during printing. In the photographic transfer process, we found that in order to make my original ink writing appear light enough, my graphite drawings (originally done in pencil) had almost disappeared. As a result I decided to incise each image by hand onto the plates. I used transfer paper to outline the compositions and then drew with a sharp stylus across the plates, cutting through the purple resist to expose copper (image above). The drawing process took a long time, but I liked the idea of hand-drawing the images. I had not tried line etching in many years. Rather than sketch quickly, I slowed down my line and enjoyed the feel of the stylus point across copper. Printmaking often takes you places you least expect to go and the dictates of the process can bring healthy new experience. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “every wall is a door.” When we printed the plates (above), I felt very happy with the result. I had constructed a clear linear armature that I would then augment with tone using aquatint when I return to Center Street Studio to finish the project later this summer. (abo ...Read More
2008-05-11 05:27:04 | New Print Project: Part 3
Photograph of project models for Accordion Fold Print; (top) Current journal book 130, open to one set of pages to be used as a motif for the print. (middle) Two horizontal rows of photocopied images from journal 130 that will serve as the image base for the accordion fold print. (bottom) The folded half-size maquette features the sequence of images sketched in watercolor on Arches paper. New Print Project: Part 3 An accident opened a path. I was cleaning the studio, making room for projects when a long strip of paper fell from beneath the cover of my drawing table. Two inches wide and forty inches long, it was a panoramic drawing on Arches paper I began in 1992. On the front were the bare outlines of a landscape I never completed. The back was unused white paper. Looking at the long format of the sheet, I instinctively knew that it would be my maquette for my accordion print. I had planned for the pages of the print to be the size and shape of my current journal pages: 4 inches high by 6 inches wide. By sheer coincidence, the paper I found was one half the height of my actual journal pages: 2 inches high. I began to fold the long strip of paper in the planned format. When I folded the whole 40-inch sheet, there were twelve panels and a half. The half page could be the title page for the project. I still had no subject. Rolling through the pages of my journal, I sought images, a place to start. The past month had been an intense one both emotionally and artistically. It dawned on me that I could revisit a section of my current journal. Counting the pages in the month of April there were seventeen. If I removed a few of the images, I could make the whole month of April fit on twelve pages. A majority of my written entries could also be included. After photoc ...Read More
2008-05-04 06:57:30 | Colors of Black
Study from Book 130, Self-Portrait with Planets and Gibbous Moon, 2008, watercolor, graphite, and pen and ink on Arches paper in bound volume, 4 x 6″. This watercolor study was executed using two colors; Indigo and Raw Umber Violet. Colors of Black Around 1980 I abandoned color. It wasn’t hard for me as I was no extravagant colorist. I grew up cultivating the practice of pen and black ink, keeping pen and fingertips in the medium to explore the topography of the page. The challenge of placing dark irrevocable marks against bright paper was for me; get it right the first time or else. Color seemed superfluous to my practice. Nevertheless, I pressed my comfort envelope by trying acrylic paint. I muddled along, hating the spring of stretched canvas and the distance the brushes kept me from my surface. No intimacy. And by the time a canvas was prepared, inspiration was lost. I shifted to acrylic paint on paper and felt more at home. But color confused me; too many choices. Slowly, I distilled my work to elemental black and white Living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania must have stirred some of my fascination with light and dark. I had traded a life in the suburban south for a stint in the urban north and bumped against a different universe. Pittsburgh had a mini-Manhattan setting; an island between rivers that stretched to steep hillsides. By day the topography was dark and rich, from steely to earthy warm; particularly in winter when the snows patterned the earth. But at night the city was transcendental; I felt I was driving through a box of stars, tracing the water’s edge, parking my car at intervals to make studies (see Pittsburgh Night image below). On clear nights the lights of buildings, bridges, and highways reflected off the water, earth, and sky it seemed. Blac ...Read More
2008-04-19 11:24:47 | Wallace Stevens Walking
Photograph of artist Charles Ritchie in front of the home where Wallace Stevens lived in Hartford, Connecticut. The house remains a private residence. Photographer: Samantha Ritchie, August 2004. Wallace Stevens Walking Poet Wallace Stevens has influenced my creative practice. In his early years, Stevens tried journalism and law in New York City but eventually settled in Connecticut to work for the Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company. Stevens was good at insurance; he spent thirty years in the company and rose to the position of vice-president. Stevens was also good at writing poetry. Wallace Stevens didn’t drive; he walked the two mile stretch to the office and two miles back each working day. On those walks he composed in his head some of the most powerful and significant poetry of our age; perhaps any age. Stevens once said,” It gives a man character as a poet to have this daily contact with a job”. I certainly feel that having a career interpenetrate my artist life has benefited me. I have had the good fortune to do curatorial work for a living. The position has fed my intellectual curiosity, provided high artistic models to follow, and offered financial security. I make the art I want to make; and keep the often-destructive pressure of selling my art for a living at bay. And I have flourished in the time constraints that accompany having two careers and have developed tools that complement the situation; I keep my journal with me at all times; I milk my early morning hours in the studio for all they are worth. And I have benefited from relationships with scores of interesting and wonderful people. Stevens got up early and read; he composed on the streets as he walked (and sometimes at lunch). And when he arrived at his job something about the con ...Read More
2008-04-12 04:30:22 | The Star Magnolia
Charles Ritchie, two Polaroid photographs of a star magnolia, (both images taken approximately 1:15 pm, 11 April 2000) The Star Magnolia As daffodils flooded the front yard, forsythia glowed, and the star magnolia exploded white across the street, I sat at my window dazed. We had just put our cat to sleep. Cancer took him; far too young. The day’s beauty heightened the sadness. April is the cruelest month. I gazed into the star magnolia and suddenly I realized my loss would always be tied to this flowering. Nothing new about this kind of association. A year after Lincoln died, Walt Whitman remembered his hero in a poem, When Lilacs Last in the Door-yard Bloom’d. Likewise for me, the significance of blossoms had changed. Looking down at my worktable, I saw my tiny drawing, Self-Portrait with Blossoming Star Magnolia; one of my problem children; a drawing that I had been working on for years. I’ve been trotting it out for the few weeks of peak blossoms and then putting it away, always dissatisfied; perennially hopeful for a recovery during next year’s session. I’ve worked and reworked the tiny sheet; erased it, scrubbed the paper with large flat, synthetic bristle brushes pulling out the watercolor (see images below). I’ve redrawn and repainted, and then scrubbed and erased again. I’m not sure what is so hard about this piece. Perhaps it is finding the right twilight atmosphere. Perhaps it is coaxing nuances of color that don’t overpower. Perhaps it is the composition. During the current session, I removed two subjects from the foreground of the drawing: a postcard and a dried orange. Scrubbed them away, and replaced them with an image of one of my own larger drawings; another of my trouble children: Night with Orion. This felt better. The new ...Read More
2008-04-06 07:11:15 | New Print Project: Part 2
Charles Ritchie, trial proof for Accordion Print, 2008, etching on wove paper, sheet size: 13 x 10 1/4″. A trial proof is a test printing that reveals the artist’s work on a printing plate. Part 2: Trial proof created from drawings on Mylar transfered to a printing plate I have just received a first proof that shows the results from the test I started a few weeks ago (see online journal entry for 24 March 2008) Printer Jim Stroud transferred the pen and ink writing/drawing I did on Mylar to a printing plate. The clear Mylar was placed face down on photo sensitized plates and a bright light exposed the plates. The areas not blocked by my writing/drawing were changed, hardened so that acid cannot eat away at them. The other areas remained open and when the plates were placed in a bath of acid the open areas allowed acid to eat into the copper printing plate. When the plates are removed from the acid and cleaned, these recessions are the areas that hold printing ink. Two plates were prepared, one showed the drawing and the other the writing. Jim inked these plates and juxtaposed them on the press bed. He placed a sheet of dampened paper over the plates and ran them through the printing press (see image above). The writing transferred very well with very precise detail in the script. Jim used a graphite ink to print; a dark silvery-gray, echoing the pencil writing that often accompanies many of my drawings. While we will probably want to incorporate some of this graphite ink, most of my inscriptions will probably be in black, in the fashion of most of my notebook/journals, thus in the next proof we will probably want to use a black ink. Another more challenging obstacle is that there are very fine scratches all through the handwritten areas. These are slig ...Read More
2008-03-30 06:18:28 | Night with Orion
(above) Charles Ritchie, Night with Orion (work in progress, 27 March 2008), 11 1/4 x 15″, graphite and pen and ink on Fabriano paper My passion for the constellations of the night sky began as a young child. I learned names and tried to orient myself by their locations very early. Orion was one of the first constellations I grasped and it remains an annual benchmark for me; Orion rising again: it must be winter. Orion setting again; it must be spring. I remember a very cold, starry night in high school walking over to my friend’s house and thinking to myself, I’ll be looking at that same constellation as an old man. Funny, how I think of that almost every time I spy Orion again. It reminds me of the poem Anecdote of the Jar by Wallace Stevens. I buried a symbolic jar walking down the road that night, and from that moment on Orion takes dominion everywhere: I’ve always wanted to engage Orion as a subject in my art, but have had a hard time finding the right context. One evening several years ago, about this time of year when the trees are just about to fill with leaves; I stepped out on my deck and looked up to see Orion hanging in tree branches. I moved from study in my journal to a graphite drawing of the subject whose composition expanded to include the familiar panorama of houses on my street (see Night with Orion, first state, 12 December 2007). The subject is the same as my drawing Blue Twilight, but seen in late winter rather than summer. I’ve been working three years now, building up layers of graphite on my Night with Orion drawing. Just this winter I added another layer to the image; a full winter’s dreams inscribed in tight horizontal bands across the image with pen and ink (see images above and below). This layer of writing added depth and valu ...Read More
2008-03-24 06:21:36 | New Print Project: Part 1
(above) Photograph of the artist’s drawing and writing on clear Mylar featuring a pen and ink study after Self-Portrait with Night: Side Panels I (above, at left), and handwritten texts in Rapidograph ink (above, at right) and in sumi ink (lower, at right). The drawings on Mylar will be photographically transfered to a printing plate to begin the print. Part 1: Drawing test on Mylar Jim Stroud of Center Street Studio, printer and publisher, has invited me to work on a new print project. Jim’s wife, artist Janine Wong suggested that I make a variation on my accordion journal/drawings. These are folded drawings that I created in 1986 and 1987. See image below. I’m envisioning my new print will evolve as series of studies based around the drawings that I am currently creating. The print will be printed and then folded, accordion-style at the end of the project. Each panel of the accordion-fold will be 4 x 6 inches, the page size of my current journals. First we will do some tests to find an effective way to transfer my drawing/writing to the printing plate. I will work on clear Mylar that accepts pen and ink and send it to Jim. Jim will place the Mylar face down on a photographically-sensitized printing plate, expose the plate to a strong light, and then develop the plate. Hopefully the writing will be transferred to the plate in clear, precise detail. Because the Mylar was reversed, the writing will re-reverse when printed and read correctly. Using my 4x0 Rapidograph pen on the Mylar, the ink seemed too thin. I doubt that it would be dark enough block the light which is the key to a solid transfer to the printing plate. I found some sumi ink that is much darker and flows beautifully from the tiny point of my dip pen; but the sumi is not waterproof. The slightest ...Read More
2008-03-16 10:55:50 | Write Like a Painter/Paint Like a Writer
(above) Charles Ritchie, Two Journals, 2005, watercolor, graphite, and pen and ink on Arches paper in bound volumes, page size: 4 x 6″. Between 1952 to 1954 writer Jack Kerouac kept little notebooks in his shirt pockets vowing to jot the streets down like a painter would paint them. In 1957 he transcribed the notes from these fifteen pads into his Book of Sketches a volume that has rarely strayed from my bedside since it was published in 2006. I love the raw energy of Kerouac’s writing of this period. His economy of means and the vivid intensity of his descriptions are the product of a man on fire with the energy of everything he is seeing. The visual acuity of Kerouac’s work has been a model for the way I want to put things into my book. Not so much his content, but his urgency and sense of discovery. This means for both my writing and painting. Kerouac has an intuitive sense of using just the right elements to make his descriptions pop; no excess. I can imagine having his book with him at the moment the inspiration struck. For me, that’s the magic of carrying a journal and working in watercolor. No need to set up. Just waiting for the fire. An excellent review of Book of Sketches with examples of Kerouac’s writing is here. ...Read More
2008-03-09 06:48:56 | Making Prints
Printmaking techniques deliver results you can get no other way. My favorite example is my aquatint, Sky from the portfolio Five Days/Five Nights. I have been trying to achieve soft-edged clouds like these in watercolor for years, but the task of dissolving many complex watercolor edges at once is impossible because the paper dries too quickly. An intricate field of graduated tones as seen in Sky is easily achieved in aquatint. To make an aquatint, very fine particles are sprinkled across the printing plate and attached by heating the plate. Acid mixed with Karo syrup is used to paint selectively on the plate; diluting the acid cuts it to the proper potency while keeping it from simply beading up on the metal plate. The mixture burns into the printing plate wherever it is applied cutting microscopic channels around the tiny particles adhered to the plate. These recessions hold the printing ink. To create the clouds in Sky, the aquatinted plate was first painted in selected areas with clear Karo syrup containing no acid. These points are the areas where I wanted white clouds to appear, so acid is gently blocked at these points. I then painted on top with acid mixed with brown Karo. Unprotected areas of the copper printing plate were eaten into while slowly breaking down the edges of the clear blocking Karo syrup which created the soft gradations of tone. The impetus for the Sky image came to me while working at Center Street Studio print workshop in Boston. After a particularly grueling and unsuccessful day in the shop we went to printer/publisher Jim Stroud’s rooftop. The cumulus clouds that rushed by us were nothing but pure inspiration. The next morning I dove into a small aquatinted plate with the Karo syrup/acid mixture, working without sketches. The advent ...Read More
2008-02-23 15:26:42 | Antares Rising: Drawing Seasons
Self-Portrait with Night XI: Graphite, first state of drawing as it looked on 26 March 2007.Graphite on Fabriano paper, sheet size: 5 5/8 x 12″ My studio hours begin well before sunrise. While sitting at my window in late winter, I can see Antares, the brightest star in the constellation Scorpius, rise ahead of the sun. Deep red in color, its procession toward the zenith means that spring is coming. When Antares becomes centered in my morning window and finally obscured by foliage I put away my current group of drawings and I won’t pick them up again until the leafless landscape reappears in late November. Self-Portrait with Night XI: Graphite (link shows second state of drawing as it looked on 24 January 2008) is among my current investigations. The drawing was begun in December 2006, was put away for the summer of 2007 and returned to my focus last fall. The images seen above and below represent stages of the drawing almost a year apart. I’m content with slow growth. In this drawing I am learning how to use graphite as a tonal medium rather than as an outline for watercolor as I have used it in the past. Building graphite in layers using a eraser coated in graphite to smear and burnish is unlike anything I have done before. I may finish the work this season or I could put it away for another year. Drawing in cycles asks me to lose something and forget all of the things I was thinking about it. When I rediscover winter drawings after six months of summer I return with new experience. Seeing a drawing after an extended break is a real spark. Like the surprise of finding Antares in the window once again. Self-Portrait with Night XI: Graphite, third state of drawing as it looked on 22 February 2008. Graphite on Fabriano paper, sheet size: 5 5/8 x 12″ ...Read More
2008-02-17 06:37:07 | Mapping the Night
Figure 1. Digital photograph of the north wall of the artist’s studio displaying a Celestial Map plotted and drawn by David W. Teske in 1972. Note that the astronomical illustrations have been added to the sides of the map, echoing the panel arrangements in maps pictured in Vermeer paintings. Astronomical charts hang in my studio. They often appear in my drawings as dark rectangular fields; like windows into some parallel night. For example, the one at center of my drawing Self-Portrait with Long Night is a large star map with hand-plotted points marking stars of different sizes on a deep indigo field (Figure 1). What a labor of love for the cartographer who marked the heavens by hand with 5,172 dots of light, noting brightness and inscribing beside each a reference number. Another chart that is seen in my drawing Daffodils with Astronomical Chart, dates to the mid 19th century and was originally used to teach astronomy (Figure 2). In it, comets and other celestial phenomena are reduced to striking minimal shapes in black and white. The engraved images are arranged in a grid, much like my night drawings pervade the grid of the window. Author Peter Turchi first drew my attention to the phrase “private astronomy”, once used to describe jazz musician Bix Beiderbecke who was seen “gazing off into his private astronomy, blowing something pretty.” The phrase seemed on the mark to me; I do feel I am a private astronomer mapping my way through the night. Watching the lights move and grow and die through the seasons and years. The maps that surround me echo my search that starts locally and stretches out into the night as far as one imagines. Figure 2. Digital photograph of the west wall of the artist’s studio with two framed pages from the Atlas Designed to ...Read More
2008-02-10 06:40:12 | Journal as Lifeline
above, Book 2, 1978, undated entry with notes taken on a night bus ride.below, Book 129, Fall 2007 / Winter 2008, entries for 20-24 December 2007. There was a time I thought my art might be leaving me. After undergraduate school I took a job as a graphic artist doing paste up for all sorts of uninteresting advertising projects. It was one of the lowest points of my life, working sixty hour weeks, making junk for a world that needed less of it. I knew I had to find a way to get my art back. A book was the answer. It was small. I could carry it anywhere. Even if I didn’t have enough drawing time I could manage to sketch a note or write a little bit. My book became a repository for whatever I wanted when I needed it. I began by recording the events of my life in my legible handwriting, carefully dating each page (see previous entry illustrating Book 1 1977-1978, entries 16-17 July 1977); but that bored me quickly. As an experiment I determined that I would record whatever words came into my head scribbling my train of thought with no edits, often illegibly (see Book 2 above) page after page; no dating, no clarifications. That path too seemed to narrow. Eventually my handwriting developed into tiny, private notations. I began to date my entries again, and started to include dreams as a way of tracking my subconscious. From noting the occasional stray dream the entries evolved into streams of multiple dreams per night; too many to write down at times (see Book 129 above). My journal developed out of a need to hold on to something that was very important to me; my art. I’ve held fast to it like a lifeline, and now, looking back, the thread connects me to who I was at every stage; a lifeline of another sort. My books will continue to change with me. The arti ...Read More
2008-01-27 07:15:44 | Thursday Night Figure Drawing
Two Figures, 2007, graphite on wove paper in ring-bound sketchbook I’m usually tired by Thursday night but I go to figure drawing group anyway. It’s probably the same reason some people won’t miss a physical workout; I feel better after three hours of exercising eyes, hands, and brain. Part of the energy spills from the drawing games I play: no eraser allowed, get the complete figure down (including hands and feet) no matter the length of the pose, draw without my reading glasses, don’t look at the paper while drawing, draw the subject from memory after the pose is over. These are just a few of the ever-changing boundaries I set and reset as I dig with a 6B graphite stick into my sketchpad. But, as with all satisfying games, there’s a serious side. I am practicing my scales, training the eye and hand to synchronize, and developing my ability to structure and proportion intuitively. One of my favorite masters of the figure, Auguste Rodin, often preferred to draw his subject nude, then after selecting the pose, he redrew the subject clothed. He sought to understand the underpinnings before he attempted the mantle. The body is the world laid bare. And though the nude is foreign to my prints and drawings, I see it as a winter tree before my window that soon will be covered with summer leaves. ...Read More
2007-12-30 07:37:02 | Picturing the Place We Can't Reach
Blue Twilight, 1996-1997, graphite, watercolor, pastel, conté crayon, and litho crayon, 22 x 30″ Dreams are pure imagination. By transcribing them I attempt to give shape to what never really was. With painting I probe visual experience, uncertain and ephemeral. A favorite book, Le Grande Meaulnes by Henri Alain-Fournier recounts a young man’s search to return to a world he stumbled upon while lost in a wood. Deeply atmospheric passages follow his quest for the unattainable; for what might well have been a dream. This is what the chase of art feels like to me. I see a blue light and seek a path to it. But which blue light? What did I see? I conjure multiple observations; snippets of reality and imagination to link to a phantom past. Such is the setting of my drawing, Blue Twilight (above). My artistic practice is based on longing for a place I haven’t really known. Study for Blue Twilight, journal entry dated 1 July 1995, watercolor, graphite, and pen and ink on Arches paper in bound volume, page size: 6 x 4 inches. ...Read More