Roz Wound Up

Masterpiece's "Great Expectations" and "The Mystery of Edwin Drood"

Left: Failed sketch of an actor in the new PBS version of "Great Expectations." Click on the image to view an enlargement. (Pencil and gouache on Nideggen.)

Not every sketch works, just like not every dramatization of a literary masterpiece works.

Here I was trying to do something with the blues and the shadows. The great thing about this is that I can immediately go on to the next sketch.

When you don't get it right in a dramatization the audience has to suffer through or leave the room! 

Recently, like probably millions of others I tuned in to watch "Great Expectations" on PBS.

The first week I thought I was going to pass out from joy. They started with a one hour episode covering Pip's childhood up to the meeting with Miss Havisham.

(Look if you don't know what I'm talking about READ A BOOK!)

Here's something that EVERY casting agent on the planet should have tattooed on to his or her forearm (for easy reading when they have a moment of hesitation and doubt):

There are two roles in Western Literature that cannot survive half-hearted, mediocre, or mis-directed acting: Pip (from GE) and Ralph (from Lord of the Flies).

Seriously, you don't know what I'm writing about? READ A BOOK.

Supporting actors of excellence can pretty much fill holes in anything else. They can act around poor casting choices in most other roles, but not these two essential creatures. If you don't have the right Pip (or the right Ralph) nothing else works. NOTHING. Because we couldn't careless.

Imagine then my complete dismay when young Pip morphed into "older Pip" and I realized I'd have to spend 2 more hours with "older Pip." 

Don't get me wrong—Douglas Booth is probably a fine actor (this is the first time I've seen him). Give him a hearty breakfast of oatmeal and pinch him and he'd make an excellent Steerforth. (Seriously? David Cooperfield.)

But he is not Pip. Nope, no way. And the entire production sags because of this essential fact. Part of this is a fault of the screenwriting—what to leave in, what to leave out when you have the vast amount of detail Dickens provides. Those choices do limit the actors. But Booth just doesn't make me care. Neither, for that matter does Vanessa Kirby as Estella. I kept wondering about her wardrobe and how it didn't seem to fit her.

If you haven't watched this version of GE go ahead and watch the first hour, because Ray Winstone gives an utterly raw performance of Magwitch that will grab you by the throat. And Shaun Dooley is very fine as Joe. Harry Lloyd does a lovely bit as Herbert Pocket in the 2-hour finale but then you have to live minute to minute waiting for his character, or Joe, or Magwitch to appear. (Strangely Lloyd was "Young Steerforth" in an adaptation of David Copperfield with Maggie Smith that I have not seen—I'll look for that, as well as other productions including him.) I'm still absorbing Gillian Anderson's performance as Miss Havisham.

When it came time to view "The Mystery of Edwin Drood," my expectations weren't great. I have trouble with how most writers "finish" the unfinished work. And we have so little of the book it's hard to like many of the characters yet.

Dickens kept notebooks on his novels and when you compare the notebooks to the number of pages generated of finished work there is consistency that allows us to extrapolate how long Drood would have been. It's been a long time since I read studies about this but I seem to recall that we barely have a quarter of what probably would have been written.

My problem with this production of "Drood" was the "cramped" nature. The approach the screenwriter took was plausible enough (within Dickensian plausibility) but it needed plumping. It has been so long since I've read this book that I would have to reread it to know if I'm liking adaptation or sheer innovation, but Rory Kinnear does a lovely bit as Reverend Septimus Crisparkle (nothing about it seems familiar—hence my need to re-read the book). Basically Ron Cook walks away with the whole thing as Durdles. Since that's a minor role, again we have the issue of the main actors not making me care about them.

With movies of great books (that are complete) we often go to the performance and superimpose our impressions and memories of the book onto the adaptation. The adaptation should stand alone. Since we don't have anything from Dickens after the early stages to impose on the story of Drood, however, it seems a little truncated (the issue of cramping Dickens into a small space) and it also seems a little hollow.

There are plenty of bad adaptations out there in which the actors make me care about their characters even though the writing is poor.

So here's hoping casting agents get a clue. 

Still Don't Think Gouache Is Fun?

Left: A segment of a recent gouache sketch in my in-studio Fabriano Venezia journal ( 9 x 12 inch page size). Click on the image to view an enlargement. Read below for more details.

Everyone knows I'm on a campaign to get more people (OK everyone) to use gouache. 

I can't help myself. It's just so much fun to paint and sketch with gouache. It's freeing, you can let yourself go, but you can always come back. 

In the swatch at the side you can see that you can also paint over the very heavy ink lines that the Pentel Pocket Brush Pen deposits. (Or not, your choice.)

You can layer light wet washes (especially if you use great gouache like M. Graham or Schmincke brands) and then you can go back in with heavier applications of paint. 

When working on paper which has a little bit of texture and when you are working with a dry brush, you can get lovely bits of paper or previous layers of paint peeking through. (See the top magenta lines showing the paper, and the lavendar strokes on top of which some French Ultramarine blue has been stroked.)

Of course you can also go back into your painting with white, either mixed with another color or just white that you blend or don't blend with whatever is underneath.

How incredibly fun is all this?

Look at the long blue stroke at the bottom of this segment. See how you can even see some of the brush stroke there. I love it. It makes me happy.

And with all this fun, even if it is late and well past bedtime, you can clean up with water lickety split! 

So whether you want to correct your sketch lines by painting over them and hiding them, or you want to layer and play with color for reasons totally your own, gouache has so much to recommend it.

Sometimes I get so happy playing with gouache that I break my own rules. As you can see in the full page spread that is presented below, I actually used BLACK PAINT on the face on the recto page! 

So pick up a selection of brushes that you enjoy working with (or which you want to try out). You can read about the brushes that I like to use (and what I like to use them for) here.

If you are new to gouache I highly recommend that you pick up at least one filbert in the Silver Bristlon line. You'll thank me later. It will help you push the paint around in the most amazingly delicious ways.

Don't worry what the end result is, just have fun. Learn something in the process. Below I learned that it's OK to use black paint upon ocassion.

Journaling Superstitions #18: You Can't Cover Up Work You Aren't Happy With

Above: quick sketches from TV all made because the people had interesting hairstyles. Pentel Pocket brush pen in the in-studio journal which is a Fabriano Venezia, 9 x 12 inches. Verso page contains some sketches on coquille paper glued over other "failed" sketches. Click on the image to view an enlargement.

I believe strongly that you should not tear pages out of a visual journal—those actions are usually done in haste when you really haven't had a quiet moment to assess your latest, non-Turner non-masterpiece. Let it breathe, give it a moment. 

I encourage people to keep such pages as well as not cover up "failed" drawings with collaged sheets of paper or other paintings, because I believe those sketches hold gems of insight and understanding in the development of our observational skills.

That said, I think you're all grown ups (according to my blog stats 99.9 percent of you are), and you need to do what works for you.

So while I would prefer that you institute a moritorium on covering up work that today offends you, if after awhile you find that it is best for you and your constant production if you do cover up something, well please do so. 

To make good on my sincere encouragement I'm showing you a page from my in-studio journal where I did something very rare—I covered up a less than mediocre sketch on the verso page, with sketches on different paper which for other reasons I preferred to keep. Now the top sketches, done on coquille paper are stunning either, but to me they capture a little something of the evening and allow me to fit the evening on one page spread and that was important to me. It just seemed right.

Just as it seemed right to paint over the two faces at the top of the recto page. (What I really like about this page spread is that man with the COOL hair do. I have been fascinated by hair laterly and that's actually what I started to write about until I realized that I had something totally different to say.)sometimes a journal page is like that too. So go for it.

New journal keepers are most prone to make the mistake of tearing out or covering up "offending" pages. But even experience journal keepers might be quick to do this if they think they have to "present" a certain level of "quality" to the world. Forget that. Remember that the journal is first and foremost for you. I call it a "mistake" to tear out or cover up pages because I think that to a certain extent you have to retain these pages until you have a chance to learn something from them about your process that can be useful.

Just do me one favor—before you cover up a page of work, let a couple hours at least pass. Look at the page with fresh eyes to see if you can mine that page for information about your skill, your need to work on something, your day, your progress, your process, your lack of focus, your insane need to be private (that's simple don't show people your journal). 

The same impulse that also leads people to tear or cut pages out of their journals might be leading you to cover a page. If you look, with a fresh eye, at your work, after taking a deep breath you might see that action isn't the one you need to take.

If however, after looking, you decide it makes more sense to cover the page with collage or paint, than do so. Just make more pages.

Why Don't You Carry a Journal?

Left: A page from the 8 x 8 inch (approx.) handmade journal I made containing Saunders Waterford 90 lb. High White Hot Press watercolor paper. Staedtler Pigment Liner. Click on the image to view an enlargement. (Page tab at the gutter, left, is from cutting out a blank page before I started working in the book—this makes room for collage material while still maintaining a tight spine.)

A couple weeks ago I was part of a conversation with a couple artists. They were talking about things they saw when they were out and about: things that caught their attention; things that they wished they could capture because their attention had been caught.

"Why don't you carry a journal?" I asked, since carrying a journal, which is what I do, seemed the obvious remedy—and the obvious remedy is, well, usually that.

There was much hemming and hawing, and "Well it's better for my memory if I try to remember," types of comments. But there was no definitive answer as to why, when both artists carry such commodious bags, they both couldn't carry small sketchbooks, if not journals.

Here's the thing, even when the subject is right in front of me, if I'm working quickly I can't always get exactly what I see. I have to fiddle around with it and take a couple goes at it (see the woman with the bun—variations running along the page top).

The wonderful thing about making little "note sketches" like this, however, is that while all of them are crap, I can remember, by looking at them what it was that attracted my attention to the woman in the first place. And I can set up to do a painting capturing that should I decide I want to do that. I have these sketches to jog my memory.

When the first subject (with the up-do) disappeared to go about her work I fiddled with sketching the pen holder (fake roses on the pens) for a bit. Then a woman came in and stood at the desk for a couple minutes and I was able to sketch her. And she was someone I really wanted to remember because there was something wonderful about her cap of hair and the odd little curl on the right, emerging out of her quilted down jacket hood; and there was something wonderfully puffy, substantial and yet ethereal about that same jacket. 

Because I'd already warmed up on the other woman and the rose, I was ble to finish a sketch which totally captures this woman, her hair, her jacket, the neat little puckers on the jacket, and the bulkiness of the hood—all the things that caught my attention.

It doesn't hurt my memory one bit to have picked up my pen on this day and sketched for 10 minutes (which is the time I had for all of them). In fact I believe (and no one can convince me otherwise) that BECAUSE I spent the time looking, really looking, and trying to capture what I saw on the journal page I saw more clearly and put the items more firmly in my memory.

If the world about you always presents you with visuals that make you stop on a dime and wish you could capture them, isn't it time you stopped hemming and hawing, and instead started carrying a visual journal?

That's a rhetorical question.

Journaling Superstitions #16: You May Only Use Archival Materials in Your Visual Journal

Above: Pentel Pocket Brush Pen on a page spread in my handbound journal made of Strathmore 500 Series Mixed Media Paper which is now available in sheets (and is archival). (The journal is approx. 7 x 9-3/8 inches.) I used left over Schmincke gouache from my palette and just kept with mixing purple magenta and yellow and orange. Decorative, non-archival Japanese Masking Tapes were used for decoration. Some journaling text obscured for privacy. Click on the image to view an enlargement.

(Note: I think I've got some mis-numbered superstitions on my blog, but for now as I bring back this series we'll go with 16.)

Every workshop or class that I do someone always asks this refrain throughout the class as each item or medium or paper or material is introduced: Is that archival?

I don't mind that student's ask whether or not a medium or material is archival. I think you need to know the qualities of all the materials you work with as an artist. And frankly if they would wait 5 seconds they'd hear it from me during class, because I always tell people the qualities of things I introduce them to, so that they can use them with appropriate knowledge and the appropriate techniques.

What gives me pause is that often the question is prompted by a desire on the student's part to only use archival materials.

Why? Are you world famous? Does everything you do have to last for hundreds of years? (My friend Greg asked me that once and it still makes me laugh.) Do you really think that your grandchildren are going to slavishly read through your journals? Well they might, but can't they really do that just as easily if the pages have delaminating tape and seeping acidic newsprint? You might argue that they can't, and in some ways you'd be right, but the pages would sure be more interesting with the patina. 

If that's not appealing to you—the thought that your artwork is going to disintegrate—then you do need to use archival materials.

But before you go that route ask yourself a couple more questions:

1. For whom am I keeping this journal? I hope you're keeping it for yourself, but that's my preference, it will be a whole lot more interesting to any of your descendents if you keep it for yourself and don't try to write and sketch what you think might be important to them, which frankly you have no hope of doing and they'll notice the fakeness of it and wonder where the hell grandma really was in her mind when she did all this stuff—think about this, every piece of art you make is a bit of information you leave about yourself. Why not tell people what you're really thinking, no holding back?

2. Will I be more likely to create something right now if I just grab things off the desk top and have at it, regardless of whether or not the tape I grab is archival?

If the answer to question 2 is "Yes, I'll get some pages done right now," then I urge you to go for it. If you are concerned, scan your pages afterwards and put them in some sort of digital archive (which of course has problems of its own, but it is a back up).

If you wait until you can run out to the store and get archival artist's tape or a certain kind of medium the moment of creation will pass. You'll be stuck on Saturday afternoon with a 2 hour block of time set aside for journaling and "catching up" (don't even get me started on that) and nothing will feel fresh to you, or you won't remember what you wanted to say, or you won't be able to read your notes, or something else really important will be happening right in front of you which you really need to address and there's no time to journal anyway.

You get the idea. Don't tie your hands behind your back. Use what you have at hand when the moment of inspiration strikes. Let yourself have some fun. Use inexpensive and even crappy materials with abandon just for the sheer fun and play of it. Maybe that's just what you need today. 

Instead of Casual Friday have Non-Archival Tuesday.

Use what you've got, right now.

Charles Dickens Bicentennial

Left: Sketch of Charles Dickens in an oddly shaped journal I made in 2000 and used in 2009. (The paper is the old Folio and is no longer available.) The pages are about 3.5 x 7 inches. Click on the image to view an enlargement.

Unless you don't get out much and you never read the paper or watch any news of any sort, you'll already know that today is the Bicentennial of Charles Dickens' birth.

This might not matter much to you. You might have really important things to which you need to attend. You might not be "a great reader" (how sad for you). Maybe you got out of bed on the wrong side today?

If so, go read some Dickens. Read him aloud, so that you can hear his voice, hear the vowels, hear the consonants. It doesn't matter that you don't have an English accent, but if you happen to know someone who does, have him read a couple pages to you. (Then have that person call me and read a couple pages to me as well. Thank you in advance.)

Here's all you need to know about me and Charles Dickens. I started reading Dickens when I was eight years old. I've been re-reading him ever since. Dickens saved my life.

OK, there's one more thing you need to know about Charles Dickens and me: he solidified my relationship with my high school mentor. If Thom were alive today we would be together right now, reading Dickens aloud; laughing, crying, and talking about life.

Dickens isn't about "sweetness," and "Christmas" (though he did pretty much invent a sort of Christmas, but not the one practiced today). He's about the interactions between people and the circumstances of life which are greater than people, but which can be seen clearly through the crisp deliniation of the individual. He's about frustration. He's about progress. He's about telling a story of life that is vast and almost overwhelming, yet detailed and specific and containable. He's about contradictions.

He's sarcastic, witty, sentimental, and coldly clear-headed. He wants answers to the big questions in life but he can take pleasure in the small niceties that make life bearable.

His work defines productivity. His life exudes creativity. He was a hungry and curious mind. He was the consumate profiler—and by that I mean he looked around and noticed everything, and could understand what he saw.

I don't have Thom any more, but I do have Charles Dickens. Funny, Dickens is still saving my life, every day.

I suggest you let Dickens do a little magic in your own life.

Google "Charles Dickens" and read some of the interesting stuff being written about him at his bicentennial. I don't agree with it all, but then neither should you. Read his books and then make your own decision about whether or not you agree with what's being written about his work.

My friend Pat sent me these two interesting links that can start you off: "Six Things Dickens Gave the World," and a link to an article about two new biographies on Dickens.

p.s. my computer guru Bob wrote to me this morning and told me to check out the Google illustration for today, Feb. 7, 2012. Be sure to do that.

Yep, More on Strathmore 500 Series Mixed Media Paper in Sheets

Above: Pentel Pocket Brush Pen sketches while I was watching TV, with some gouache (Schmincke and M. Graham). Apologies to Illeana Douglas whose name I couldn't recall how to spell. Click on the image to view an enlargement.

Everyone who reads my blog knows I love gouache. I LOVE GOUACHE. One of the great characteristics of gouache is its great coverage. On the day I was sketching faces on the above spread I really liked the right-hand page, but didn't care for the sketch on the left-hand page. I don't like to totally cover up mistakes, however. I like to learn from them. But something in me later that night also didn't want to move to a new spread to write about astronaut Lovell. Instead I wrote about Lovell's list over my failed pen sketch.

Busy? Confused? Yes, and Yes. I could have solved all that simply by laying in one wash of solid color and then doing my writing with the #10 round, but I didn't. I like seeing the face that failed peeking through.

If you're curious about what I wrote and can't make it out, I wrote the following as a response to hearing about the sale of Lovell's checklist on the radio. We never know the whole personal story of anything (though by now we know NASA's feelings on all this) but nevertheless we all have a viseral reaction to things and what you might not know is I have a fondness for explorers in the pre-GPS days. No, it's much more than that. I have a fondness for explorers who bring their men home. Even the greatest of men, the greatest of leaders cannot always do this. But there have been 3 times when extraordinary men did their job extraordinarily well in extreme conditions most of us will never experience. Achievements like this help focus things clearly when you have a hang-nail, a bad day, or your shoes are too tight. (And I don't mean to leave anyone off this list, but these are the 3 that strike me always in my mind; and my preference is due in part to the fact that I bought into space as "the final frontier.") (The truncated writing is me trying to fit everything in paint on a page, and not go to that next page I wanted to avoid in the first place.)

Lovell recently auctioned his Apollo 13 checklist. Found it on shelf after other papers sent to collections. HOW could you not want to keep that of your father's or anyone's? Even I COVET IT! It's one of the 3 artifacts of exploration—Bligh's compass or sextant or whatever he used for the open boat navigation, something from Shackleton's ill-fated antarctic trip, and Lovell's list with is notes and calculations.

Some belongings stand for much more than what they are in and of themselves. To me items like these are beyond value. But then my mom always tells me I'm a material girl.

Take some time to play with gouache and explore its possibilities!

For more about this paper read my blog posts from January 23, 2012 to the present beginning with "Great Paper News." I yammer on and on about this paper which I'm enjoying in a book I bound out of it.

Holiday Breakfast of Champions

Above: Two chocolate chip cookie ice cream sandwiches (one is open, the other is closed and ready to eat). We bake the cookies to just the right chewy consistency for this application; and we use vanilla Häagen-Daz ice cream. Click on the image to view an enlargement.

The other day I received a note from someone who said she read my blog. She wanted feedback on a weight loss and exercise app she was making.

I receive hundreds of "off-topic" emails like this one. She might very well have been a reader of the blog and even if she isn't I wish her well in her endeavor. But I had nothing to write to her. I couldn't be sure an answer on my part might not lead to additional emails about a project in which I have no interest.

You see I believe in exercising because it's fun, and as we learned the other day, because I'm addicted to endorphins.

Also, I don't diet. I certainly should eat less sugar.

The above photo is my Monday, January 2 breakfast. It was a holiday. But even so, I'm not embarrassed in the least (though you can see there is a reason I ride 20 miles a day on my bike when the weather is fair). 

DIck came into the kitchen while I was making my meal. Again, I wasn't embarrassed at all, I don't hide my consumption of anything. I would, however, rather he not be there, just as my mother has always made a point to insist that my father not enter the bathroom when she is occupying it—"To keep some mystery."  

While Dick is perfectly welcome in the bathroom anytime at all, I'd rather he not know what fuels Roz. (Best to keep him guessing.) We had a great laugh about that. I may want that, but the veil was lifted long ago.

The first time he took me out to dinner we went for prime rib (funny, that is a common thread in all my dinner dates and yet I don't remember ever asking for prime rib on a first date—yet I always got it; distance runners must just look hungry). When Dick reached over to my plate with his fork to claim a taste of my prime rib he nearly lost a hand. He has observed proper distance from my plate and my cutlery ever since.

Dick learned this leasson without the assistance of an app.

This Doesn't Sound Appealing To Me At All!

EEK. I found this when I was looking up movie listings on the internet. I want to go to a movie to see the movie. There are enough people standing up and walking, dancing, shouting, and singing at the "regular" movies as it is. We shouldn't be encouraging this. I'll pop some pop-corn and re-watch "Arsenic and Old Lace." People behaving crazy on screen, within an artistic framework. 

Don't get me wrong, I think there are times for people to act up at certain movies—"Rocky Horror Picture Show" comes to mind. And I know people going to "sensory friendly films" arrive with the expectation that there will be acting out, so it's all on the menu (and thanks for the warning by the way), but I like to know what the filmmaker had in mind when he/she made the film. I like to absorb and process that, without the distractions of others, unless it is their sobbing and laughter. I certainly don't want the audience dancing into my view and sneezing all over me! I don't want to hear their sarcastic take on the melodrama or the fashions, or whatever—that's for the post-movie discussion. Frankly most people aren't as funny on an impromptu basis as they believe themselves to be. (I was spoiled as a child, my brother is extremely funny in his impromptu observations of movies, delivered in the privacy of our own home.)  

I don't even have a desire to go once and see what all the fuss is about. Set in my ways, yep. I'm going to go queue up some Anthony Mann westerns right now. I recommend the same to you. Or a Peter Greenaway marathon might be nice.

Just a head's up to you if you ever attend a movie with me—once the the trailers begin all conversation ends. If you hear any noise other than sobbing or laughter from me during the movie it means I'm choking on my Raisinettes—please take appropriate action.

Oh, and yes, I sit through ALL the credits. 

_____________
UPDATE NOTE: In the Comments BJ has written in with more detailed information about the Sensory Friendly Films from AMC. They are targeted for families with autistic children. I'm sure this is a good thing for that viewer group (since AMC has partnered with the Autism Society), however, now that I know who the target audience is I'm even more puzzled that the AMC definition I found on their site doesn't clearly state this? I would have been very confused to attend one of these films without this key bit of information. Thanks BJ for this information. 

Since there are no "absolutely no talking" movie sessions on offer I'll have to be content to eat my Raisinettes mostly at home. I'm sad that a "normal" movie session isn't automatically considered such.

An Interview with Roz Stendahl on "Create Mixed Media"

Several months ago my friend Ricë Freeman-Zachery who posts over at Create Mixed Media on creativity and the creative process asked me to fill out a questionnaire-interview for future posting on that site. She wasn't sure when it would go up. Just the other day a correspondent sent me word that she had seen it posted on November 8, 2011.

I draw your attention to the "Artist Profile: Roz Stendahl" now because some of the questions are ones I'm asked all the time and you might also be interested in the answers. Alternately some of the questions are those I'm rarely asked (such as my favorite color, place, time of day, or material thing). In the course of the interview you'll also find out my favorite writers and artists and you'll see the mess that the studio was in during February 2011! You'll also see a list of books I was reading at that time, and reasons for my interest in them. (You might even find some of them interesting!)

I deliberately didn't duplicate any of the information I wrote for this interview on "Roz Wound Up" in 2011 because I wanted people reading the interview to have unique information when it first posted.

I want to thank Ricë and the folks at "Create Mixed Media" for the opportunity to be featured. I think it will help me get the word out about my views on art, visual journaling, and the practice of using the visual journal as a tool to observe one's world. 

Artist Profiles on Create Mixed Media is a regular feature of the website. If you click on this link you'll reach a list of introductory blurbs from which you can select other artist profiles as well.