Metalpoint

Drawing with metal is an ancient method of making marks. In Roman times, lead rods were used to write letters and keep records. In the Medieval period, lead and silver and other metals were used to write and to draw. Today, metalpoint drawing--usually with silver--is undergoing something of a rebirth. Silverpoint, in particular is being used more and more for drawing and for multimedia art.

Leonardo daVinci, "Warrior in a Helmet," silverpoint,ca. 1475

In my practice, metalpoint drawings have had a place for more than a decade. Because silver marks are darker and cooler I prefer silver to goldpoint, although gold makes beautiful, warm strokes. Silver marks age to a mellow color as the silver oxidizes, which appeals to me more. As is the case with other media, some of my past work was copying masters like daVinci and others. One of the attractions of the medium is the fine and delicate linework that can result. In daVinci's profile of a warrior in a helmet you can see the extremely fine lines and subtle hatching that have attracted artists for centuries.

Hoff, "Study of Tree Roots after Constable," silverpoint

Lately my metalpoint drawings have been landscapes, a subject that isn't common for the medium. Some, like the study of a tree were done to study the work of a particular artist (John Constable, right), or as personal exercises. The fine lines of silver seem well-suited to the sinuous grain of wood and offer opportunities to study line weight and thickness, methods of shading and hatching and other techniques. Constable's drawing was made in pencil in the 1830s.

Hoff, "Tree Out Back," silverpoint

Some of my landscapes were done on the spot, rather like doing plein air painting. The drawing at left was done after a big snowstorm which left the landscape very nearly monochromatic. I tried in this particular drawing to use variations in edges to set the scene, with the two trees in the foreground being in sharper focus.

Hoff, "Rosebud," silverpoint

Besides landscape I've also done quite a few still life drawings in silverpoint, in particular floral studies. Flowers and flower buds, especially rosebuds, offer great opportunities for the silverpoint artist owing to the delicacy of the petals and leaves. And while metalpoint is monochromatic, the absence of color seems to matter very little. Instead I find myself marveling at the structure of these evanescent beauties.

The medium of metalpoint forces deliberate and careful drawing, mostly owing to the difficulty with effacing any metal marks. Many sources claim that silverpoint is not erasable, but in actuality that depends on the heaviness of the marks and the support surface. If the support is solid and the priming thick enough you can erase metalpoint with very fine grit sandpaper, applied with a very light touch. Regardless, the best results are obtained without such maneuvers.






---
Related Posts
Metalpoint Drawing
Silverpoint and Metalpoint

Exotic Pets

The dreadful news that cheetahs from Africa are being poached and captured to serve as exotic pets for the internationally wealthy is the motive behind posting today. The cheetah is dwindling in numbers although not yet listed as endangered. These undeniably beautiful animals are being crowded out of habitat, poached and hunted, and captured to become rich peoples' pets. Shame on humanity.

This digital painting was done with a Wacom tablet and Sketchbook.

Painful Portraits

Edvard Munch, "The Sick Child," oil on canvas, 1885

Many family portraits are done for practice, as I mentioned in the previous post. Young artists from Degas to Dali did portraits of family when they were young aspiring artists. Of course, many were and are made not as formal portraits the way commissions are, but more as personal views of the individuals depicted. Such portraits seek something innate of the individual to suggest or depict. Many are celebratory. Some portraits, though, are made to work through feelings or ideas. Edvard Munch painted his beloved older sister when she was mortally ill with tuberculosis, for example. Some are grieving posthumous portraits like Claude Monet did ("Camille on her Deathbed"). Whatever the family circumstance, these are difficult paintings to see.

In my own archives are two family portraits that are painful but provide good examples of  work. They were done as meditations on each of the two family members, as ways of exploring feelings and triggering memories. Each of these remains in my own private collection. One is a sort of premonition and the other is posthumous. The first is an oil portrait of one of my brothers, who now has significant pulmonary disease. This portrait, painted from sketches and personal references, was done years before his disease progressed but after its ravages had already begun. He is pale and grey-pink--he had begun to fade away before our eyes, even then. Today he looks more like this portrait than ever and he lives on constant oxygen.

Hoff, "Portrait of the Artist's Brother," oil on panel, 12x16

The second portrait is actually a drawing rather than a painting. So far in my own practice I've only made a single posthumous work, the silverpoint drawing posted below. Although it is titled "The Dying Woman" and not called a portrait, the drawing is based on sketches of my mother's final weeks of suffering from metastatic lung cancer.

Hoff, "The Dying Woman," silverpoint, 8x6

Common to each of these, the cause of disease was cigarette smoking.

Portraits of Family

Durer (attrib), "The Artist's Father at 70,"oil on panel, 1497

Painters have always made images of their family members. We have examples of family portraits and family likenesses dating to at least the time of Albrecht Durer and certainly examples abound from before that. Many painters resorted to family members for sitters as a convenience, no others being available, perhaps. Some, like Lucian Freud, painted numerous family members.

Hoff, "Portrait of Kerry," digital

In my own case, family portraits have been an interesting part of my work. Over the years I've made portraits of family as gifts, as experiments, as personal studies, and sometimes as memories. A few weeks ago one of my brothers died suddenly, and during the first days afterward my initial instinct was to produce a drawing--a digitalium made on an iPad--based part in memory and part in a couple of reference photos. He was nearly seventy, usually in good humor and smiling, with a little gleam in his eye. This portrait is a memorial, and as such idealizes the subject somewhat because I wanted to show his general good humor and slightly cynical take on the world. This drawing, done only a few days after my brother's passing, may serve as fuel for an oil portrait. Time will tell. 

Hoff, "Portrait of Bill," oil on canvas.

Other portraits of my family date to several years ago, and all were done in oil paint using standard methods. In almost all cases, these images show family members and were gifted. One of my favorites is this portrait of my mother's husband, from about a decade ago. This oil on canvas was a gift to my mother and Bill not long after their late-life marriage. It is a relatively large work at 20x16, the largest portrait of this format in my portfolio.

Hoff, "Portrait of C.B." oil on panel.

A number of years earlier came this posthumous portrait of my sister, based on a high-school graduation photograph. Like the portrait of Bill, this one was a gift to her widower, and dates to more than a decade ago.

Neither of these would be acceptable as commissioned portraits, and instead represent either my personal vision of the individual or were done as mementos of a remembered life. Although artists of the past did family members from life sittings (certainly they did so before the mid-19th century), none of mine was done from life but instead from reference materials. Perhaps life sittings ought to be next.

White Rhino

Another in my endangered species series is "Rosie the Rhino," a sketch of a Northern white rhinoceros altered to show sadness at the impending demise of her species. It fascinates me how very tiny additions can provide substantial emotional content. The Northern white rhinoceros is down to two remaining females while the Southern white rhino is the most numerous of all rhinos.

Refractions and Reflections

Hoff, "Morning Light," oil on panel, 6x8, 2010

Still life in the studio during the colder months gives the chance to practice--in my work these last few days and weeks I've begun to re-explore an old interest--light, glass, and water.

Studying the way light is reflected and refracted by glass and water and what that alteration of light does to various objects is an endlessly engaging pursuit. Part of my previous sketch series of Windowsill Works involved in studying just that (right). The way light changes from morning to afternoon is particularly fascinating.

Hoff, "Two Bottles," oil on panel, 6x8

So here are a couple of small oil paintings done in a similar format to that long-ago series. These are part of increasing work in tangible materials rather than pixels. While digital drawing, and to a lesser extent, painting, provide great opportunities for quick and simple practice, there is simply nothing like working with real materials. These paintings in oil were done on small supports with a generally short time limit. The short time limit is to promote simplification, simple strokes, and an attitude of "place a stroke and leave it alone," which in turn promotes more calculating observation and mark-making. In these I've explored composition, trying to make brush strokes simple and varying edges to emphasize areas of interest. "Two Bottles," was the first of these re-examinations. I softened and blended edges, especially in the background, to make the green bottle stand out. Likewise the golden bottle has few hard edges.

Hoff, "Two Bottles Too," oil on panel, 6x8

Sometimes it's reflections that strike my interest, as in the windowsill painting of two bottles, one in shadow and one in bright light (below). In this painting, it was important to me to study the way light was reflected from various contrasting surfaces in the green bottle. The bottle on the left was in a beam of sunshine, and glowed brightly in contrast to the green one. Here again one of the goals was to work on edges.

Hoff, "Water Bottle," oil on panel, 6x8

One more bottle in this series is another translucent plastic water bottle (below). In this case my main effort was an accurate study of the water within, and how it reflected and bent the sunbeam streaming onto my studio table from the left. The drawing was less important than the light, but again edges were an important part of this work. In this case, too, I painted into a couch, an ultra-thin layer of linseed oil, which alters how paint handles.

As January proceeds, I'm hoping to do at least one small painting every day, although I'm already a bit behind. More to come.

Fearful Symmetry

Hoff, "Burning Bright," digital painting

The days are lengthening, more light and more warmth are coming and despite the cold we can feel the turn of the seasons edging forward. And the calendar shifts once more. It is the time of New Year for refocusing and reassessing, for squaring shoulders and redoubled determination. "Onward," in other words.

For me, this year will mean more painting in the real world while continuing to learn and make more digital works. The first digital work of this infant new year is this painting of an Amur tiger, the world's largest cat (males average more than 400 lb.). Formerly called the Siberian tiger, these animals are nearing extinction, sadly, with only a few hundred remaining individuals. These are utterly awesome creatures, beautiful and deadly.
One of my goals for this year is to do a series of digital paintings highlighting the beauty and tragedy of the dwindling animal world.

A Look Back - Part 2

Continuing remembrance and reassessment of 2019, Part 2. It is a good exercise for me and helps the work progress.

Hoff, "The Blue Spruce," oil on panel, 8x10

July The past summer was mostly highlighted by frequent trips outdoors to paint. The first tentative steps were (predictably for me) the environs of Druid Hill Creek, either from a deck outside the studio or on one or the other creek bank. Moving outdoors was eye-opening, particularly the opportunities for intense looking, observing deeply and minutely, spending more time on seeing than on painting. Sometimes even old dogs can learn new things.

Hoff, "The Discovery Garden, ISF," watercolor on paper, 5x9

August is the month of the famous Iowa State Fair, and as in the past several years I spent several days on the fairgrounds, looking and sketching. The daily forays provided many opportunities for watercolor sketching, and I filled pages in several sizes of sketchbooks. My new plein air easel arrived and was everything I hoped it would be, providing stability, portability, and ease of use. By the end of the month my reluctance and unfamiliarity with plein air painting faded, and outdoor work had become my primary way to make artwork.

Hoff, "Looking Northeast," oil on panel, 9x12

September in Iowa is still warm or even hot. Trees hold their leaves and the earth is sleepy but not ready to surrender to shorter days and cooler nights. That allows for more plein air sketching, so September continued to be a productive time. We spent about a third of the month visiting friends in Virginia, as we've done in years past, which gave me a lot of plein air opportunities in the Allegheny Mountains. The weather held during the end of the month, after our return to Iowa, and gave me some more outdoor painting time.

Hoff, Digital study after daVinci

While plein air work in oil and watercolor remained the focus of the summer, my daily digitalia habit blossomed into a blog of daily digital drawings. Increasingly my go-to sketch medium in the studio is a Wacom tablet and Sketchbook or ArtRage. These tools are quick, easy to use (after a significant amount of practice), and involve no cleanup, etc. You can draw faces, figures, anything really, in a very similar way to traditional media. And when switching back to traditional media the quality actually seems improved.

October became Inktober after I happened across a post about the history of that international event celebrating the now-uncommon medium of pen and ink drawing. Pen and ink was one of the mediums of the golden age of illustration over a century ago, and despite the popularity of ink-drawn comics by people like R Crumb the medium is considerably less popular. Inktober is an opportunity to draw something with ink every single day--a formidable challenge and one I took

Hoff, "Study of a Man (after Durer," ink on paper

up almost as a whim. The event has gained worldwide attention since being devised a decade ago. For those who can't find something to draw there is a suggestion of topics and there is an extensive archive on the site. The idea is to do the drawing and post it. I managed to do more than a drawing a day and posted them all here.* It was interesting to do both original drawings and copies of masters like Albrecht Durer (left).

"Tree roots (after Constable)," silverpoint

In all of that I also found some time to do metalpoint drawings and posted a couple. One of them was a copy of an old drawing by Constable of tree roots (right) that seemed suitable to the medium. (Although the date on the drawing says September I actually completed it some time during the first week of October.

"Early Snow," watercolor on paper, 9x5

November has been the month of Fall color here in Iowa during my entire time here, and this one was no exception. The trees began to change in the middle of the month and were brilliant for perhaps a week or so until a hard, killing frost came and finished everything. Luckily there was still time for some outdoor work with watercolor, and I managed a post about Fall on Druid Hill Creek. And digital dailies continued, although the most interesting of them were done from Roman sculpture busts--a form of realistic portraiture that was highly valued. There is much to learn from such work.

"Pompey" digital, from a Roman portrait bust

The remainder of the month was occupied with drawing and the beginnings of studio paintings.

December isn't over but it began with a bit of a retrospective posting of drawings in five separate media, a reminder of the diversity of this year's work. That reminder sent me through a review of the year, which is not quite over. One of the conclusions is I've done much drawing, less painting. The second is what painting I've done has been much watercolor, less oil. The plan, then, is to resume more oil painting over the winter, using natural light in the studio. Probably a lot more exploration of still life is yet to come.
---
*Inktober posts
Inktober Plan
Another Shot of Ink(tober)
More Inktober
Halfway Through Inktober
An Inktober Update

A Look Back - Part 1

As the end of the year and the decade approach it's time to look at this year's works and interests both for personal review and to spark new ideas.

Hoff, "Winter Snow," oil on panel, 4x6

January was when I began doing daily digital drawings, and posted the first few, although I had been exploring computer drawing programs and methods for a long while. We had a couple of deep snows that prompted tiny oil sketches (right).

During part of the month we were in France for an international circus competition. Throughout the trip I made watercolor postcards and mailed them home from Monaco, where we attended the circus. I posted several of them here during the month. I also kept a couple of small sketchbooks handy and made graphite or watercolor records, some of which I posted after we returned.

Hoff, "The Second Deep Snow," oil on panel, 6x8

February was a month of deep snow on Druid Hill Creek, and I posted watercolors showing snow at its coldest and deepest. Here is a previously unposted oil from the same period, "The Second Big Snow,"done from a studio window after the sticky stuff covered almost everything.

Hoff, "The Last Scraps," watercolor on paper, 5x9

March once again showed how the calendar turns when the month of the war god comes. The snows abated and by the end of the month the creek was showing signs of life and growth (below) although a scrap or two of snow persisted. In the studio most of my work was either digital drawing or watercolor sketches.

One post in March involved a discussion of drawing hands and featured several digitally-drawn copies of hands drawn by masters of the past. A lot my digital work has involved getting to know the interfaces but also digital work has allowed me to copy many of the masters' anatomic works. March is when I began doing digital dailies which led to a daily posting on a new blog since last July. After posting about drawing hands I added a post on drawing heads and included a few copies of masters done in various media including metalpoint.

April brought the longer days of springtime and also some diversity into the daily digital drawings I was making. I made a number of drawings of classic cars and worked on facial expressions too. The weather was

Hoff, "April on Druid Hill Creek," watercolor, 5x9

gentle, mostly, and gave me a chance to do some more studies of Druid Hill Creek as the undergrowth began to burst into leaf. Most of the bushes were honeysuckle, which runs riot along the creek bank. Although we had hints of green early in the month it really wasn't until the final two weeks that green filled the woods.

Hoff, "On the Hudson (Plum Point)," watercolor on paper 5x12

May was the month I'd looked forward to for a long while, mostly because of the opportunity to work with my friend Garin Baker a master oil painter who also teaches at the Art Students League in Manhattan. The workshop was a resounding success, and gave me the impetus to head outdoors to paint for the first time last summer. It also caused me to think about a new plein air setup, an Open Box M, which arrived later in the summer. In the meantime it was a revelation to spend time confronting the subject, reacting to the environment, "making the best of an emergency" as John Sargent used to say about plein air watercolor.

Hoff, "Downstream on Druid Hill Creek," oil on panel, 9x19

Besides that, I continued daily digital drawings, watercolor sketches, and a few other endeavors.

Hoff, "Morning, The Garden," oil on panel, 12x9

June was a month of exploration, finding likely sites for outdoor painting, sometimes just spending time looking. Not far from the studio is the Raccoon River, which joins the Des Moines River close by. The rivers make excellent spots for paintings, and I did some work there. But my first tentative steps outside were onto a shady deck where I painted a trio of houseplants that were at last returned to the outdoors. I also painted the garden terraces on the sloping creek bank outside the studio, in slating morning light. The mysterious effect of very solft edges in nearly every part of the painting was appealing.

Hoff, "Francoise Gilot," digital

Hoff, "The Dredge, Newburgh, oil on panel

June gave me an opportunity to continue working through more digital drawings, particularly of heads and expressions. And I finished a full-size studio oil of a Hudson River scene based on observations, reference pics, and an on the spot watercolor sketch.














The rest of year was heavy with outdoor painting, a new watercolor sketch group, and some work in other media as well. More in another post.

Christmas Quiet

The day before Christmas finds The Studio Journal as quiet as a mouse.

Have a safe and happy holiday.

Art that Speaks

"If you could say it in words there would be no reason to paint." So said Edward Hopper, the great American painter. Famously taciturn, Mr. Hopper was difficult to interview, the traditional goes, and was often unable or unwilling to explain much about his work or motivation. But regardless, his work speaks to me and to untold numbers, and I'm not always sure why that is. Regardless, a Hopper painting almost always evokes a complicated response. His "Early Sunday Morning," (above) dating from 1930, is a great example. We see a deserted street of storefronts and windows, morning light raking across. There is no one, not even a dog, on the street. The shops are dark and quiet. For me, this is an exquisite expression of loneliness at the break of day. It speaks to me.

As a painter, my goal is to move the viewer, evoke a response. The response doesn't have to be an emotional earthquake, a little thrill of recognition is enough. My hope is that one of my realist works will speak to a viewer as Hopper's painting speaks to me.

Hoff, "Poppy," oil on panel, 5x7

A few years ago, at a street festival where I was exhibiting work, the final day was winding down. At a street festival, especially a multi-day show, the final few hours are often fraught--a selling flurry, worry about striking the exhibit, packing up, the drive home, etc. Feeling a bit frazzled I was standing outside our booth when a man and a boy came walking up. The man inquired about a very small still life, about 5x7, and confirmed the price. When I told him how much, he turned to the boy and asked if he was sure he wanted the painting, and the boy nodded. "Well, give him your money then," the Father said. So the boy handed over the price in cash. He seemed very very happy. He had seen the painting, gone home and gotten the money from savings, and came back to buy it. He was seven years old. When I asked him why he wanted the picture, he said, "It spoke to me."

So far as I am concerned, the answer would have been payment enough. Here's the painting.

Rebuilding the Past

Reconstruction of faces is an important adjunct to various sorts of investigations these days. Beginning more than a century ago, methods of rebuilding human features from cranial remains have been refined until reconstructing accurate likenesses, even of historical figures, is now at an all-time level of accuracy. Part of the reason for that accuracy (and therefore likeness) in such reconstructions actually dates to the end of the nineteenth century when first attempts at rebuilding faces from crania, and the collection of reams of facial thickness data began. Today there are huge data bases that take into account all sorts of issues like gender, race, and so on.

Skull of Richard III and reconstruction based on it.

Although the most publicized facial reconstructions have been to identify unknown victims, facial reconstruction is also used in anthropology, archeology, and other sciences. Furthermore, the technique of rebuilding a face from the bones outward has evolved from using strips and lumps of clay applied to the actual skull or cranium to using three-dimensionally-printed copies of skulls or to fully computerized three dimensional reconstruction. Regardless, the accuracy and likenesses achieved in such work are striking.

Face of Shakespeare, from a death mask

Various historical figures have been subjected to study and reconstruction from cranial remains. For example, King Richard III of England was found some years ago buried under a parking lot. The remains were definitely those of the deposed monarch, based on DNA analysis, but his face was known from posthumous paintings. So a computerized reconstruction of his face was made based on scans of the skull, then the result reproduced in plastic. 

Hoff, "The Bard," digital

A decade or so ago a scientist in England reconstructed at face said to be Shakespeare (above) but instead of a skull used a death mask. (The mask may not be the author.) Taking the mask that was only discovered two hundred years after Shakespeare's death, the result does resemble our conception of what he may have looked like. The scientist responsible claims that the result, when compared with a portraits of the writer, is very close. Perhaps so, although there is considerable variation among the images available. Taking the mask image I used Sketchbook and a few period references for the hair and collar, to make a fuller rendering of the head. While it may or may not be William Shakespeare, the result was pleasing. 

The Archer, from The Mary Rose

An interesting group of reconstructed likenesses were made of crew of the Tudor-era English warship Mary Rose. The ship went down with the majority of the crew in a storm in the 16h century with nearly 500 crew. Although names aren't known, some of the crew could probably be recognized from their images. A particular favorite at the Mary Rose Museum in Portsmouth, U.K. is an archer (presumably) whose entire skeleton is also on view. It shows deformities consistent with archery as does one of the fingers of his right hand. 

Context 958

Probably the most fascinating of historical facial and skeletal reconstructions, though, has to be Context 958 which is the only name given for a 13th century man whose skeleton was recovered from a medieval cemetery in Cambridge, England. He seems to have died as a destitute man in a shelter and was buried in its large graveyard. Using the skull plus computer software, researchers generated a possible likeness. Based on his remains, he was likely a tradesman who worked hard and was reasonably well-fed, with perhaps two significant periods of illness or hunger during his childhood. He died in the medieval hospital that had occupied the site of a current school in Cambridge, of unknown causes. The grounds contained more than 400 sets of remains. In the case of this fellow, he looks as if he could be one of our neighbors.

Hoff, "Beachy Head Lady," digital

An interesting idea came to mind while looking at these and other historical faces. These make fascinating drawing material. With that in mind, besides the drawing of Shakespeare above I've done a few others because their stories were engaging and their place in history caught my attention.

One of them, named Beachy Head Lady because her skeleton was discovered  there in Sussex, England. The skeleton suggested she died young, was probably upper social status since there was no evidence of hard work, and was clearly from sub-Saharan Africa--that is, unimaginably far away. She had grown up in the area, however. Using radiocarbon dating the remains are from the third century; her face was reconstructed by a forensic expert. I used that image to make a drawing of her head (left). Although literally nothing was known about the skeleton discovered in a forgotten box labelled Beachy Head, based on extensive analysis she is theorized to have possibly been the wife of a Roman official and therefore lived a life of much reduced labor. Nonetheless, it is startling to think that the face we can see, however close it comes to reality, is the face of someone who lived nearly two thousand years ago. In my drawing I tried to give her an even livelier look.

Hoff, "Erika the Red," digital

In foraging through historical faces reconstructed by traditional means or by computer, I ran across another fascinating story and a distinctly different history of Vikings. The burial of a woman that was unearthed in Norway may have been that of a Viking warrior. Of course the traditional history of the people was that the men went off in long boats to pillage and conquer, leaving women children and elderly back in their homeland. However, this woman was buried with deadly weapons including arrows, a sword, and an axe. More important, she had suffered a head injury that looked like a sword wound that fractured her skull. The original discoverers knew the skeleton was female but somehow ignored the evidence of her grave goods that she was very likely a warrior. From the skull, her face was reconstructed using traditional methods. I made the sketch here based on the reconstructed image (right) and again tried to give her some real recognizable emotion. I assumed she would look fierce and forbidding, and gave her a healed scar instead of the unhealed wound depicted in the rebuilt face. I assumed a fair complexion and hair and medium-green eyes.

Using these kinds of references for drawings has been both fun and instructive. I'll probably do more.

Art?

During the past couple of weeks, a banana has occupied center stage in the continuing discussion regarding what art actually is. Art Basel Miami featured one fastened to a wall with grey duct tape and entitled "Comedian," by the Italian conceptual artist Maurizio Cattelan and priced at $120,000. It should probably surprise no one that the work in question sold. Alas for the buyer, another artist came along and cheekily ate the exceptionally expensive fruit.

Maurizio Cattelan, "Comedian," fruit, tape

The problem many have with this entire episode is the idea that something like "Comedian" could be considered art. After all, it's just a banana and ordinary tape. But that view is considerably more narrow than the view that accepts "Comedian" not as the tangible objects but as the concept behind it. That is, the entire work is the art--concept, fruit, tape, metaphor, hullabaloo, and even the unexpected devourer. The whole nexus of idea, work, events, etc. is the art, not the objects and the wall.

For me, "Comedian," has fascinating overtones. First, a comedian in baggy-pants comedy a century ago was the "top banana." For another, a banana peel is as ancient a comedic device as may exist. For a third, the whole idea when taken literally is absurd--taping a banana to a wall and calling it art. And that makes the title amusing, too. Finally, can there be any doubt that the auteur is pointing out the utter abject foolishness of the "art world" in pricing the absurdity at $120,000? The thing about comedian (for me) that makes it even more amusing is that so far three editions have been sold. Piero Manzoni would be proud. Mr. Cattelan has created an engaging piece that provokes thought, echoes through several layers of meaning, and provides not only smirks and chuckles but a poke in the eye for the art world.

If you think Mr. Cattelan sounds vaguely familiar, it is probably because he is also the artist who had functional, solid-gold toilet installed in the Guggenheim Museum a few years ago. The work, "America," was in its own small lockable room and could be employed as a traditional toilet. A few months ago it went on display at Blenheim Palace in the United Kingdom, only to be promptly stolen (and probably melted down), although the likely thieves have been arrested. Actually, the accidental extension of the metaphor--"America" being stolen--seems appropriate these days.

Oh, and the age-old question is, "is it art?" To which I answer yes. It was conceived, it seems, as an artful episode and statement. Mr. Cattelan was not making found-object art the was Picasso did, for example, out of bicycle parts. Instead he made a crude assemblage that became something different when he named it. And it became even more different--almost self-parody--when priced as it was. So yes, in my opinion, "Comedian" is a clever piece of concept art. I like it.

---

Today is Friday the 13th, so here is a digital offering in keeping with the legendary bad luck day. "Curiosity" is a black feline. What can I say? I'm a traditionalist.

More Animals

Practice drawing animals of all kinds is useful to the realist, and certainly to me. As I posted in September animal anatomy is important, but animals show many expressions, from joy to sorrow. And trying to capture those expressions is an interesting challenge.

Hoff, "Bonobo," digital

Of all animals, the great apes are closest to us genetically speaking. There are four groups of great apes--gorillas, orangutans, chimpanzees, and bonobos. The latter were often called pygmy chimps in earlier times but are a distinct species. Drawing these apes has been fascinating because of the astonishing similarity of their eyes to human eyes. In the drawing of the bonobo at left, I fancied I could detect real human emotion in those eyes. She seems to be wary, curious and ready to run at any moment. Bonobos are now endangered and may number less than 100,000 in the wild.

Hoff, "The Pitiless Eye," digital

Reptiles are primitive-looking, their scales and appearance probably dating back millions of years. Alligator eyes in particular, with vertical pupils and a nictitating membrane (which protects the eye underwater) give a particularly flinty and unblinking cruelty to their looks. It was that sharp predatory focus that interested me in this drawing of an American alligator. I emphasized the light on the upper edge of the orbit and around the triangular socket while deepening the pupillary darkness as much as possible. These animals are frightening simply because they're so utterly alien.

Hoff, "Motherhood," digital

Elephants are becoming more and more scarce. They're increasingly hunted by poachers for the ivory in their tusks. Their habitat is shrinking and the modern world making the remainder less and less inviting. Yet these huge gentle creatures continue to fascinate us and provide lessons as well. The image of a mother elephant helping her newborn to stand up for the first time struck me as a metaphor for all motherhood. Mostly I wanted to emphasize the connection between the mother and her baby, using the sinuousness of her trunk as it wrapped around the baby's belly. To me the mother's gaze is tenderness and love.

Although I'm mostly doing digital sketching these days, my plan is to return to traditional media--particularly graphite and charcoal--for a while, just to practice.

---
Related posts:
Animals
Animals for Fun and Practice