By Danny Gregory

September 30, 2005

Blurbalicious

The cover of my new book has finally headed out to the printer. While I had drawn the illustration two years ago (of my friend Julie Dermansky's studio in upstate New York, just a weeks or two before it was destroyed by a tornado), there were many steps to climb before the cover reaches the window of every Barnes & Noble in the nation and the desks of the Pulitzer committee. If you can bear it, I'll go through them briskly.
Illusration: When I did the drawing, I was under the illusion that it would be good to work large; I forget why, maybe I was inspired by Julie's huge canvases. So I worked on a 14 x17 bristol pad pad, sitting on an upended compound bucket. When I was done, Julie brought out here Canon Rebel digital camera and we shot picture of the journals she made on her year on a grant to draw monumental European sculpture (many of the pages appear in the book) and it seemed an easy enough thing to throw the studio drawing on the camera stand too.
When I examined the images on my computer at home, the journal pix looked great, capturing the texture and warmth of the handmade journals. But the cover image needed to be a lot crisper and cleaner and the shots we'd made wouldn't do. Eventually this image will have lots of uses, being turned into posters, sweatshirts, and hot air balloons. It'll have to be blown up to a huge size to plaster on the outside of the Everyday Matters corporate 747 and for the ten-story billboard Disney'll be putting up in Times Square and on the Las Vegas strip. We'll need the highest quality art for the framed copy to hang in Hillary's Oval Office and for the opening credits of The Creative License TV show, not to mention the DVD boxes.
The big drawing didn't fit on my scanner and Hyperion started bugging for a cover comp for the catalog so I put the drawing on my paper cutter and neatly bisected it once then again. The quarters fit fine on the scanner and then I spent an hour reknitting them together in Photoshop.
My author photo was taken in San Francisco by the genius Andrea Scher. She took a lot of hilarious and (considering they were of me) beautiful pictures in the alley outside my pad, Balmy Casa, last summer.
Originally the book was to have what are called french flaps, just like the dust jacket of a hardcover back, but a few weeks ago, we discovered that to do so would be to add two dollars to the retail price of the book. I am committed to having this book be affordable ��it has two hundred pages of full color illustrations but it's full list price is only $16 � so I agreed that we should ditch them. All of the copy and pictures on the flap now had to go onto the back cover and all of the original content had to be scrapped.
Meanwhile, we were working on another critical part of any self-respecting book jacket: the blurbs, the puffed up quotes from reviewers, celebrities, authority figures, cool people, anyone who we can reach out for an opinion. I always knew that I wanted to have SARK's opinion of the book as I think she is the warmest, most encouraging of all the creative gurus I've read. She was very nice about the book and wrote:
"This book makes me want to run wildly to my art and writing supplies, and create great stuff. I encourage you to experience The Creative License, and do the same!"
"The Creative License is a leaping burst of enthusiam, the best kind of permission, and thoroughly inspiring. I give it my highest recommendation"
Yay! Slap it on the cover.
I also love the work of Sabrina Ward Harrison, a fellow journalista, and she was nice enough to say:
"This is the book I have needed for so long, full of real true 'how it really feels' permission, ideas, experience, connection. Danny writes into what we all feel as creative beings. In this time, we need voices like Danny's more than ever. This is a great book to have waiting in my studio every morning."
How nice. Finally, we asked Craig Thompson for his opinion. Craig is the most amazing graphic memoirist. His book, Blankets, is an epic story of his adolescence which won every award around. His Carnets de Voyage is a wonderful record of his rambling through North Africa and he is currently at work on a huge fictional book that will revolutionize the graphic novel world. His lovely site, dootdoot garden, is really worth visiting. Craig read CL and was enthusiastic and suucinct:
"The Creative License is insightful and inspiring, and helped salvage me from my own creative block."
Once all the blurbs were in and placed, I futzed around with the design a couple more times and then fired it back to Hyperion.
Roll the presses!

September 28, 2005

Proof

I just spent a lovely couple of hours on 67th Street going over the first round pf proofs of my new book with Anna, my wonderful Hyperion production person. There are hundreds and hundreds of drawings and watercolors and bits of calligraphy in this book and each one has to be scrutinized. Three quarters of the 200 pages looked great out of the gate but the rest needed tweaking to reproduce my original paintings.
All this art has had so many incarnations now. It started out as ink and paint on the pages of my journals. Then it was shipped off to SIngapore to be scanned and became RGB images on my computer screen, patterns of pure light behind glass. I lived ith them that way for almost a year of designing. Then they became printouts from various color copiers and inkjet printers. Now they are ink on paper, clusters of cyan, magenta, yellow and black dots. At each stage, they took on new intensity and balances, like family feaures handed down through generations.
I visit cemetries whenever possible and particularly intrigued by headstones that carry photos of the deceased. I think it's an Eastern European tradition. In Jerusalem, I saw gravestones with enameled metal cameos with vignetted portraits. In LA, I saw black polished granite slabs which were etched with photos and Scrabble-nightmare Polish and Russian names.
So many of the photos are snapshots, often crudely illuminated by flash cubes, the subjects sometimes caught in motion and unaware and poorly focussed. How strange that moment; the uncooperative grandmother caught red-eyed at a family gathering, a Thanksgiving moment made eternal.The deceased threw on an outfit, did or didn't do her hair, did or didn't smile or look intelligent or loving, and now that moment is encased forever in granite, the single iconic image of them, to be contemplated by loved ones and strangers forever more or until the cemetery goes under.
I feel somewhat similarly about many of these little journal drawings, a breakfast captured in sepia ink, a watercolor, my underwear, my dog squatting in the park. Tiny everyday moments, made into electrons and then ink dots and soon to be reproduced and put in the hands of (hopefully) thousands of strangers around the world, assuming an importance that so far transcends the original. What an odd business journaling can be.

September 26, 2005

Releaf

On Sunday, I took the first drawing class I've had since I was eleven. It was at the Open Center, a sort of granola-y place in Soho which offers many new Age classes on creativity, meditation, and other sorts of grooviness.
My particular class was called "Drawing as a way of being" but I'd not been lured so much by the title as by the teacher's teacher, Dr. Frederick Franck. I learned a lot about drawing from Franck's books, The Zen of Seeing; The Awakened Eye; A Passion for Seeing, etc and, now that he is ninety six, blind, and deaf, he has passed his workshop duties onto Joanne Finkel, a fiftyish woman with bright eyes, pigtails and well-furred calves.
Most of the other students identified themelves as undrawers, anxious about their inability, and armed with Venti Starbucks and Pearl Paint bagfuls of art supplies. My supplies were new too; I decided to abide by the class materials list and had a mechanical pencil loaded with .5 HB lead and a kneadable eraser. Under my arm, I clutched a huge virginal drawing pad.
We did a pleasant meditation exercise and then the teacher handed out leaves. I clicked my pencil a few times and got going on the blind contour exercise. It ws a little dicey at first as I just never draw with a pencil, but by the second pass, I was in the groove.
When we were given permission to look at the leaf as we drew, I got heavily into the details, mainlining the veins that branched off the stem, sinking deeper and deeper into the plant's very cells. The teacher came by to say, "Wow, you're really into those veins, huh?" As that was what the leaf seemed to be to all about, I was a tad puzzled. On her next pass, she suggested that I squint and only draw the major landmarks of the leaf. This seemed regressive but in the spirit of being a good student, I complied and felt like a half-walked dog. On the next circuit, she suggested I vary the intensity of my grip on the lead, making lines that exressed where the leaf seemed very clear and where it was 'less crispy'. It all looked pretty clear to me but dutifullyI rode my pencil up and down with fluctuating line weights, something I rarely do with my ink pen. Before long I recognized Frederick Franck's style expressed on my page. My drawings looked just like his, not much like mine.

It's interesting that what our teacher saw as a pure response to the subject, I perceived as an exercise in style. I was seeing the way she and Franck saw, but not really as I do. I tend to bore deep into things, and to treat every line and detail with similar emphasis. There is something more sensual but tentative (dare I say 'feminine") about the varying lines of this new style.
As we broke at lunch for an hour, the teacher dangled the opportunity to draw fruis and vegetables after we returned. I decided to forgo the salad and played hooky. Instead, I went out and bought myself a 1980 Honda motorcycle. In Dr Franck's honor, I spent the rest of the afternoon drawing the road with my tires, shifting from first to second to third gear, depending on how crispy the potholes looked.

September 24, 2005

Drawing fire

I wrote about Steve Mumford last year when his work was only available on Artnet. Now he has published a sumptuous book collecting all of the watercolors and observations he made during his visits to war-torn Iraq.
He told me that he drew almost exclusively with a dip pen while there and that he carried his art supplies in the pockets of his flak jacket, ready to sweep everything together and haul ass if there was any sort of trouble. Some of his paintings are of bombs blowing up under humvees or soldiers returning sniper fire and those sorts of pictures he admitted he had done from photos he took on the scene and then painted back at his hotel or even in his studio safely in New York.
He said that drawing gave him a sort of access he could never have gotten as a journalist. Many photographers were embedded with troops but the Iraqis were often suspicious when they saw a camera. Women in particular did not like to have their pictures taken and retreated behind their veils.
But when Steve sat down to draw, he was trusted. People could see what he was doing, and knew how they were being depicted. And they had the universal interest most people have to watching a work of art come to life, seeing how the lines emerge and take shape. Iraqis have a rich artistic tradition and enormous respect for artists. Steve was able to sit in meetings between the soldiers and the Iraqis, to capture everyday life as it was led in the streets of Baghdad, because people welcomed him.
Steve says he is a shy person and yet he drew crowds whenever he set up his little folding stool and began to draw. Imagine what it's like to sit on the sidewalk in a war-zone and sketch. Imagine being under the scrutiny of people who could be suicide bombers. Imagine being in tense situations like negotiations with local mullahs or driving down dusty roads in a US military convoy. I'm amazed he could relax enough to do such wonderful work.
Most people are enormously self-conscious the first time they draw in public. There is something very presumptuous in setting yourself up in public as 'an artist'. You are sure people are watching your every move (which they may well be doing) and then dismissing your feeble efforts and snickering behind your back at your ineptitude. All of these paranoid thoughts swirl in your mind as you draw, little yammering voices nipping at your pen, distracting you, judging every stroke you make.
Of course, like so many excuses we give ourselves for not taking risks or trying new things, your fears are hogwash. The only reactions people have when they see an artist at work is fascination, respect, and envy. Most people will watch from a distance but some will stand right near you. When I draw in Chinatown, the locals come right up and virtually lean on me as I draw; often the same people will stay glued to my side for a half an hour as I work. Occasionally people will gently ask a question about what I'm drawing or why I'm drawing it. If I wear headphones, they probably won't. I can stop and engage them and reap some quick admiration, or just carry on with my work. On extremely rare occasions, something a little more dramatic might happen. In Jerusalem, some boys try to rip my sketchbook out of my hands and run off with it. Every so often someone has realized I was drawing them and felt violated and insisted I stop (of course, I always do; I wouldn't make a good drawarazzi).
I urge you to get out with your journal and capture life in the streets. If you are unbearably nervous, sit with your back against a wall or draw the view through a caf� window. I think it's nice to share your work with the people you are drawing � though I don�t do it often enough. Last week, my pal Tom drew a fire station; the firemen saw him and loved the piece so much they gave him a t-shirt and asked to make a copy; they said they want to make it into a poster. I had a similar experience at a brothel in Nevada that Dan Price and I drew (long story, another time).
If you ever get horribly anxious as you ply your pen and pad out in public, think of Steve Mumford in his flak jacket surrounded by unfamiliar faces and the smell of smoke, and suck it up.

September 16, 2005

My perspective on perspective

School's back on and NYU students wander through my neighborhood, clutching new books and pencils. Quite often, I see some of them set up in the park, preparing to draw Washington Square arch. It's a beautiful landmark, and I've often tackled it myself.
I like the ones who slop around with paint and charcoal but I can't relate to those who show up with t-squares and turn out tight engineering schema, that look more like blueprints than any expression of soul. To me, drawing is about observation and sensuality more than perfection. That's my esthetic.
I draw a lot of architecture because they define the landscape we New Yorkers live in. While I'm no Brunelleschi, I understand the principles of perspective. I know generally how to locate a vanishing point and that knowledge can be useful if I'm really stuck. But I think of it as more like understanding the principle of the internal combustion engine; I get it but it doesn't enter my mind much when I'm driving down the road.
Here's how I'd go about drawing* the view down my street.

It's a fairly complex scene so I lay down some little marks first. I find the midpoints of my page (in green) using my pen as a rough ruler. I take the same sorts of measurements of the thing I'm drawing. I also uses my thumbs as rough rulers� so and so many thumb widths to this point, so and so many pen cap lengths to this point � that sort of thing. If I didn't measure things out like this, I'm sure I would have misjudged how wide the library's facade was in the foreground. The actual part of the scene that is of interest only occupies about 1/8 of the whole space.
I usually start drawing in the upper left hand corner and work my way across. I'll make little marks if need be to tell me where things intersect. When I just whip out a long diagonal line like the one in the upper left, it probably won't hit the mark unless I set a target point.
I'll also look for some sort of large and broken line somewhere to use as a reference point. In this case, the building on the right has a regular pattern of tiles down its length; I can use this like an in situ ruler to guide the other buildings' proportions. I count down three tiles and say, 'Okay, the roof of the ornate building in the center hits this height. Go down one more tile and that's the point at which the angle of the receding part of the roof hits. Down two more and that 's the roof of the building behind it...' and so on. If there's no guide in the landscape (as there wasn't horizontally here) I can also use my pen length to bifurcate the space and create a partial grid to set my reference points.
Remember to check your verticals. Unless you have birds' or worms' eyes, make sure your verticals are straight 90 degree angles to the ground. It's so easy to start leaning them over and soon all of your lines will be out of whack.
I measure other sorts of angles by holding up my pen horizontally and then rotating it to meet the angle. That action temporarily imprints the deviation of the angle from the horizon into my brain. When I go down to the paper, I just repeat the rotation and I can usually get it pretty dead on.
I like to do all these little measurements rather than ruling down the artificial lines of perspective and then erasing them because I am trying to record my own observations in my drawings. I find that all these little measurements bring me closer and closer to my subject and that's the goal of my work. I don't care if it's all accurate and perfect but that it reflects what and how I am seeing. The deeper I go the better. Somehow rulers and perspective lines make it all seem more mechanical and artificial and I just don't like it.
In any case, the results seem okay to me. In fact, I will often be a lot wilder and just draw lines and angles on the fly. I don't care that much of my buildings are misshapen and irregular, so long as they feel alive. Those T-square folks seem to make drawings that lie on the page like dead, academic fish.
Drawing buildings is just like drawing anything else. Be slow. Keep your eyes on the subject most of the time. Don't freak out if you make a 'mistake'. And do it as often as you can.
Drawing isn't a science. Don't reduce it to one.
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*Atypically, I drew this in Photshop on a tablet so I could use layers to demonstrate my methodology.

September 15, 2005

North Fork Artist of the week

Congratulations to my mum, the leafagist, for being selected for this honor. If you'd like to know more about how she came to art even after she'd become a grandmother, check out this profile.
--Later--
Sorry, there's a new artist of the week so don't click the above link. If you'd like to see more of my mum's work, visit her site.

September 07, 2005

On Cross Hatching

As you spend more and more time drawing, there usually comes a point when contour drawing isn't enough. You can set down lines that perfectly describe the shapes in front of you but you become interested in giving your work dimension and exploring the effects of light and shade. Several people have reached that point recently and written asking me to talk discuss the whys and wherefores of cross hatching. let me try.
Cross hatching is quite miraculous. How is it that black ink lines on white paper have the ability to create an infinite number of shades of grey, to evoke all the colors of the rainbow and to suggest textures and materials and varied as silk and stone, glass and schnauzer hair?

The first thing to do is to get in the groove. Practice drawing lines until you can lay them down in fairly predictable parallel strokes. Do it in boring practice sessions or just start working them into your drawings. Try greying gradations, filling boxes from pure white to solid black � space the lines far apart in the first box, then halve the distance in the second box, then halve it again in the third and so on until your final block is completely black. Next, try crossing your vertical lines with horizontal ones, weaving darker and darker gradations. Then lay a diagonal set of lines over the grid, upper left to lower right, then cross back upper right to lower left. Try keeping them as regular and even as you can, so you can create various sorts of grey with various sorts of combinations of lines. Don't make yourself nuts just experiment with lines at 45 and 90 degree angles.
The next things to consider: What do these shades of grey represent? The answer seems to fall into three main effects: Tone, color and texture. You can decide that darker greys mean things in shadow, or that different greys represent different surface colors, or that the lines represent different textures.

These drawings (by Guptill � see below*) are basically about light and dark. The lines tell you the volume and direction of the light on the object and that's about it.

These lines tell you a lot more about the materials the objects are made from; straw, wood, wicker, etc. all accomplished with crosshatching various sorts of lines.

In this drawings, my pal Tom Kane uses lines to suggest different colors in a girl's kerchief.

But here he uses the same sorts of lines to express the direction and shading of light on a girl's hair.
As you can see, once you start introducing these tones, you have a lot more decisions to make. You aren't just recoding shapes; you are expressing an opinion about what you found interesting in the scene.

Consider the differences that values and tones make in these three interpretations of a scene:the various choices evoke different temperatures, distances, moods and degrees of importance.

It's interesting to play around with line quality and stippling too: Consider the different feelings these drawings have because of the varying degree of regularity and the direction of the lines used in each identical composition.
My inclination is to avoid incredibly regular lines; they seem mechanical and inorganic to me. I lay down one value in the middle then go back and firth balancing areas with more or less crosshatching until I have described the effect I want. It';s all a matter of balance and crosshatching is pretty forgiving, If things feel off, just go back and hit your darker areas with a new layer of lines to get the emphasis right.
Like so many things in drawing, there aren't a lot of hard fast rules or rights and wrongs. Crosshatching is just another opportunity to record your observations, capture your feelings and have fun. And there's something about that hypnotic regularity of drawing parallel lines that is very soothing.

"Drawing is just an excuse to crosshatch"� R.Crumb
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* The greatest practitioners and teachers worked and published in the 19th century, when every day's paper was full of endless engraved examples of cross hatching. I have learned a lot from the publications of Watson Guptill, beginning with seminal works by Arthur L. Guptill himself, like Rendering in Pen and Ink and moving on to the less encyclopedic but crystalline Henry C. Pitz's Ink Drawing Techniques. I also love Paul Hogarth's Creative Ink Drawing. Many of these are still in print or can be picked up cheaply second-hand.

September 04, 2005

45 in 45 by 45

Jack and I did a fun exercise this morning. We drew 45 minute-long drawings in 45 minutes, pounding through reams of recycled paper.

Jack sat in our big red chair and I swiveled around at my desk. We drew through observation until Jack begged to be able to use his imagination as his model. Here are a few of the pages we filled. It was great fun and a great way to start of my 45th year.

My lovely niece, Morgan, suggested this to me in this morning's birthday call (her dad, Mike, also has his birthday today. Happy Birthday, MIke!).