Did I do that!

…Rick looked at Smoke Jordan’s black face shinning above a magnificent collection of white-skinned drums, and he saw how much the same he was. Same one that used to do the hot sweeping at Gandy’s, only that one wore yellow cords and this one wore a white tuxedo…His eyes were turned obliquely upward and he chewed his lower lip all the while he played; then he’d knock out a beauty and turn his eyes down, startled, as if he’d surprised even himself with that one…

The above passage is from Young Man with a Horn, Dorothy Baker’s 1930’s classic novel on the jazz age.

But whether it be jazz, poetry or theater, the creative feeling when things go well is the same. It is the feeling I get when I succeed in capturing the subtle beauty of the nude in watercolour. Did I do that!

My dad can draw better than that

Today's title is a quip that a boy made to his mate as they watched me make the sketch that illustrates today's post.

The sketch, along with fifty others in a similar style, illustrate my forthcoming book titled Townscapes. The book comprises of a collection of fifty street scenes and commentary that range from England, to France, to Portugal, to the Caribbean, and back again. I will tell you more about work in progress on this book in future posts.

In the meantime, my book Notes on the Nude is almost in print and hopefully by this time next week it will be available on Amazon and their associate outlets.

Unfinished Business

At the age of seventy-six I have by no means reached the stage of contentment in relation to my paintings and sculptures. Try as I may, I cannot bring myself to want to control the uncontrollable media of watercolour and to forsake the challenge of the nude figure.  

I have tried to revert back to the landscape, but from a different viewpoint to the tame and slick watercolours that you'll see if you Goggle "watercolour landscape paintings". Today's painting shows my most recent attempt. I leave it to you to sort out the wood from the trees.

Leonardo da Vinci: Notes to Painters

Like the subjects that I touch upon in these diary pages, Leonardo da Vinci’s copious writings are in no specific order, and his notes to painters are scattered at random among a host of other subjects. One of his notes came to mind this week as I cleaned behind a cabinet that holds samples of my hand-made paper. It reads as follows:

I shall not refrain from including among these precepts a new and speculative idea, which although it may seem trivial and almost laughable, is none the less of great value in quickening the spirit of invention. It is this: that you should look at certain walls stained with damp or at stones of an uneven colour…You will be able to see in these the likeness of divine landscapes…strange figures in violent action, expressive faces…

Some years ago, in the aftermath of termites devouring my collection of jazz records, I titled one of my posts Termites Have Taste. I can now add that termites have vision. Leonardo would have been as taken aback as I was at their creativity. Their masterly rendition, directly applied to a white plaster wall, measures 30” x 12”.

Perhaps these particular termites have been observing my modelling sessions for I can detect, both in colour and form, a group of my reclining nudes.