From Real To Un – I Draw In Church

by Marty Coleman | Feb 20, 2019 | I Draw in Church, Marty Coleman, Series, Sketchbook History Tour | 0 comments

Drawing in church (or anywhere) is not restricted to drawing something or someone I am looking at.  Here are 5 examples of the range, from starting with a real person but adding a made-up background to doing something abstract that has no connection to a world outside itself.

The drawing is of a real person…sorta. She is the violinist in church that I draw frequently. But I am not being hired to draw her portrait so I am not particularly concerned about it looking exactly like her. I have certain parts that I hope I get right and I work at that, but just like an author will tell you, sometimes the character takes on a life of their own. In the artist’s case, the lines made and the colors chosen have reasons, some known some unknown, that go beyond a likeness to the individual and into an idea, feeling or mood.

The background obviously isn’t from church. I created it to build on the idea of her looking off in the distance and hoping for help. After I drew the background I came up with what she might be thinking. I penned that in and was going to leave the last word off but then thought it would be interesting to finish the quote with a visual instead of a word.

Here is another example of starting with a person, in this case a choir member. This time it looks like I went even further away from a standard portrait but it didn’t start that way. 

That happened later, when I was in my studio studying the drawing. That is when I started to see the facets in her face and thought about defining them.  I have done that many times before over the decades and it’s always a fun exercise to work on.

But what made it special this time was realizing that building those up could turn her into a stained glass window. It seems like a perfect thing to do. 

The only thing remotely connected to a real person here is a general shape of the face, but even that is exaggerated. It was just a shape I saw and remembered as I passed someone in the hall of the church. 

The rest of the drawing I wasn’t looking at anybody or thinking about anyone in particular. The initial line drawing of the shape gave me a melancholy feeling so I drew the rest of the portrait to match that.

I chose the blue and yellow stripes of the hair first. The shirt was a solid at that point but I felt one solid block of color would be too heavy at the bottom. I liked the idea of something bridging the two sides of her so I added stripes to the shirt. It also allowed me to create a sense of volume to her body.

Sometimes a situation arises that causes you to make a decision you otherwise would not make. I started filling in the pink background on the left and slowly realized the marker was running out of ink. In most cases I would just refill but I didn’t have any refill ink. So, I had to consider what could I do on the opposite side if I wasn’t going to use the same color. I liked the idea of using a cool color to break up the symmetry of the image and to cast a different mood to the two different sides so I went with a pale green.

At the very end I did not like the big blank space between her eyes and her mouth so I decided to add her blushing. It seemed just the right finishing touch to the image and her melancholy.

Sometimes the distance between what you start with and what you end with is light years away. I ended with a couple of goofy aliens landing on earth. But what I started with was a breast.

I had this idea, yes while in church, of a nude woman floating in the air. So, I drew a breast to start. I realize two things at this point. One, I made the breast too big to make my idea of a whole person floating feasible and two, church might not be the best place to draw this image even if it did fit.

So, what to do? I contemplated what I had and saw a possible space ship. One shaped like a flying breast it’s true but I figured I could make that not so apparent. 

And of course a space ship has to have aliens so I decided to make them look like bumbling boobs, just for fun.

Sometimes I am completely in my head at church, not looking at anything.  This is the case with this drawing of spirals, one of a series I have been doing lately.

While it is completely abstract (meaning no reference to anything beyond itself) that does not mean I am not considering the possible ideas that might come from the drawing.

In this case I was very deliberate about having the four quadrants be mirror images of the diagonal quadrant and to have the colors be the same. At this point my thoughts are about how the colors are reflecting groups of people and how they interact – tribes, colonies, and yes churches.

That doesn’t mean I expect someone looking at this drawing to see that, or to see anything at all. It’s just where my mind meanders as I am creating these sorts of images.

The great thing about art, and in particular abstract art, is that everyone is right in their opinion. There is no absolute truth in art.  What you want it to mean, it means.

Drawing and commentary © 2019 Marty Coleman | napkindad.com