Lightbulb moment...365 Days of Drawing

After a whirlwind trip to NYC, including a winter snow whiteout, I am home-sweet-home. Glad that I kept up my drawing, although mostly quick sketch. This is yesterday's drawing done at JFK waiting for the plane. How bored people look at airports! The second one is from the way out to JFK at 6 am.

I feel I learned so much at my 'seventh-year-in-a-row' Art Students' League of New York workshop with the great Mr. Everett Raymond Kinstler, N.A. The value of values. Value before color. Value before lunch. Value before anything really. Oh yes, and of course drawing. One could look around the workshop room and see very clearly where people were with their DRAWING. Who had it. Who didn't. You can't fudge drawing skills. You either got it or you ain't.

Proficiency in drawing is hard-earned for most people, including myself. I know it is an area I will always have to work on, painting coming so much easier to me.

Mr. K. did a demo on Saturday of a lady that was nothing short of breath-taking. I learned why I have been hating my OWN life-painting work so much recently. His edges swam, his sense of creating mystery with that brush. The penny dropped. The longed-for light bulb moment when the brain is ready to take on information it may have seen or heard before. That is why repetition in art is so important I think. To absorb yourself in one school of painting. Show up to that easel again and again, so that those moments of understanding and clarity can slowly come through.

I have travelled thousands of miles over the last seven years for these light bulb moments from this great man, thirstier than the desert for them and his teachings, stunned at his mastery quite frankly. It has been an incredible journey and one I will be eternally grateful for until my own personal light bulb gets turned off.

Thank you Mr. K.