Science and art (video)

 

(By Anna)

Your Mama Should've Named You Juice

Hej y'all,

So, yesterday. I want to thank you all for your presence, the creativity you share and the open-minded spirit floating in the air.
I brought a guest with me and today-for the lack of my own inspiration- I made him partly write this post.
I gave him a sheet of paper to write 3 nouns, 5 adjectives, 4 adverbs and 1 key word belonging to a grammatical subcategory of his choice. His words, his thoughts, his view. Then I added photos from yesterday, based on the words he wrote. WHat that means to me. Or sth. like that.
Here as follows:

3 nouns:
-colours

-juice

-people

5 adjectives:

-skilled

-creative

-dedicated

-passionate

-open

4 adverbs:

-randomly

-inspirationally

-precisely

-collaboratively 

Have a nice week!

Natasa

Frank promotes his new record How's Your Bird & The Worlds Greatest Sinner movie and then plays a bicycle

(By Deha)

Shadow theatre and Sand

Hello everybody,

I wanted to share some cool things I found with you and with a slight encouragement from Dov:), here it goes:

First is Shadow theatre, an amazing group:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4Fv98jttYA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0_dwb2x4qc

I like it so much because the work with negative space and they tell a story in a simple but striking way. No need for words or details.


Second is the artist Kseniya Simonova. She does sand art and is simply amazing.This is the link for her youtube videos:

https://www.youtube.com/user/SimonovaTV/videos


And some videos:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17MboedZYqo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxT9duegj8c

There's really a lot of videos of her work.


Till next time!

N.

Talking drawing

About the meetup in Parc Floral in March 2014. Here is an email Dov has sent me, with my response:


Hi Francois, 

I was wondering about yesterday, 
In fact, I felt it was not that great a meeting, we were not focused, a lot of people didn't show up, quite a few left in the middle, it was too chilly, and I had a hard time being with my son and the group at the same time. 
Since you wrote it was fun and relaxing, I wanted to have your real feedback, so I can have another point of view. 
Also - I forgot to tell you, I bought a great la-cost swetshirt I wanted to offer you, it was in my bag but I forgot, remind me next time. 
And last - last week I was in Vienna, and saw the Hunterwasser museum and building, and thought about you and how you use color: 
http://goo.gl/twiKyh
http://goo.gl/5NVMbf

------------------------------------------------

Hi Dov, 

- I understand your point of view about yesterday. I will tell you how that afternoon was for me. 

First, when I was arriving (around 2pm), I randomly met Sankar just in the street. That was funny because this is the second time that lucky thing happens to us. So we were talking together before the start of the meetup.  First about economy, but then about light and contrast. He said the light today was not good, because there was no intense light so the landscape has no contrasts.

Hence the bad weather turned into an interesting idea for me:

* How to draw low-contrasted things (a big challenge for me since I always do very contrasted drawings)

Then I was looking around to find a good drawing subject, that was difficult because nothing was really interesting, the statues or landscape were not good.

This was another good thing:

* I really liked what Hammed has done since he succeeded to choose a banal statue and a banal view to make two stunning drawings.

So I had to choose a drawing object... I was looking for a subject or for (rare) high contrasted things. And Aine was just there with her beautiful red hair and black jacket. There was light on her jacket and on her hair. I drew it (just a few details), then drew a low contrast background but with many more details.

I'm happy, she liked it and took a photo of it, next time we'll meet I'll give her the drawing. 

Then, I tried another challenge. I never know how to draw a tree, so I tried it... and while doing the roots, I had an idea to make it less obvious but a bit more fun and colored. and then I turned this grey sad tree into a funny thing...

I didn't know what to pick next in the landscape but than I remembered my son asked me several times to draw a rainbow for him. So I started it... I started to draw a crazy rainbow. You were playing the guitar, while I was drawing, that was so peaceful and I was thinking of my son. That was very "emotional". Usually kids do drawings for their parents, but this time I was doing one for him... and then you said we stop in 30 seconds... a quick unexpected challenge! so I had to do quickly empty squares and an eye in the dragon head at the bottom, I was happy about the result, otherwise the drawing would have been too heavy.

Another funny thing was when Ophelie called on your phone and I had to manage finding her in the parc. She knows only 3 words in french and that was a real challenge! This could only happen in a meetup! 

And on the other side of the coin:

I didn't have enough time to talk (or draw) with Nathalie, you, Deha or the other newcomers. I also had less time to share all these things... Maybe I should write an article in my blog (or in the group's blog) about them... it is difficult to do all these things during a single meetup. When I came with my son last time I could only focus on drawing with him, and almost didn't talk with people. It's difficult to do so many things during a single afternoon. 

And about people not showing up, I guess last minute cancellations are very common in all the meetups... and along with the time-shift and the grey clouds that did the rest.  It's just human nature, procrastination?  

An idea for next time:

First time I went to "petit palais" you started the meetup with a talk about drawing the void, maybe it could be interesting to add these kinds of themes:

- drawing in low-contrast

- drawing in high contrast

- drawing shadows

- drawing squares

Perhaps with some citation about it to excite the imagination, what do you think? 

Wow, I'm writing a lot, I hope you are not bored too much. thank you so much for the sweatshirt and thank you for the Hundertwasser, he seems to be a great artist, I will read about him, but the style looks really great ! 

If you want, we could have a beer to talk some more about all those thoughts this week, what do you think? 

A+

François

------------------------------------------------

Thanks a lot!

I'd publish my email and yours in the blog as is! such a great response!

I am truly proud to have met you, I learn a lot from you everytime we exchange :)

I truly think you are more adventurous than me, and would love to participate in a meetup that you organize!

About the emptiness session, it was indeed very strong, and I think it's also because of its uniqueness, and uniqueness is something that is hard to reproduce. (you can't cross the same river twice, etc.)

We may try searching koans - a koan may be a great subject because the rules are very strict, and this is the source of creativity, when you put hard limits, the creativity searches where to bloom from 

Would love to meet this week,

Dov.

Jetsam Flotsam

Some items found floating while attacking my pileofpaper in a cleaning frenzy...

A memory from Marie, or is it Adrian?

- Exercise was drawing a feeling - this one was (you guessed it) spring fever, and the paper was (chance has it) a monet calendar page

Spring fever bugs on a waterlily

A nice flotsam from the Matisse hall

A collage by Janet and me, inspired by a master's work

Echos of wall dancers

 From a session during a crazy night

Drawn by Katherine on a magazine page covered with white

My-Self portrait by keen eyes

Found floating in the Medici fountain

Watercolor bleeding on a napkin

I think they are a souvenir from the lovely Nina (though they are both lovely)

Watercolor colony on a napkin petri-dish

 Found right near it,

The outofocus is a fine accident

Let it bleed

 This one sure brings memories

From a Drawing-out-of-bounds session

Me making it up

Prabal holding the brush&paper

(or was it the otherway?)

2Mind bender

 Another napkin?

yup.

Another selfie done by Nina?

 Another one from Katherine

Me again...

 A double exposure from my favorite museum

The Orangerie

Top part: me drawing a girl and dad looking at Monet

Bottom: me and the girl restructuring Monet

Monet double-feature

 Matisse hall again

Francois in a typical pose

vs Nina in a drawing mode

Double exposure collage - Francois vs Nina

 Crazy evening leftover

A guitar player frozen in acrylic

Drawn with me own color-dripping fingers

Striking a major chord

 And a gift I got from Natasa

(they call her Natasha, and she looks nothing like Elsie)

Once I was looking at a black&white world
Now it is colored and scratched allover

See you next room cleaning.

Yer bear

Sometimes - A few things I’ve learnt with the group

Some weeks ago, I was attending to my first meetup “Free drawing in the capital P”. As Socrates said “I know that I know nothing”. This is so true,but I feel that the nothing I know today is much better than before those meetups. I want to share with you a few ideas I had while exchanging and looking at other people’s drawings.

Meetup #1 - Sunday papers at the Luxembourg garden
At the end of this meetup, as usual, we were exchanging about each people drawings. One of them was a statue of an actor done by Cris in the Luxembourg garden. Dov chose it among Cris’s drawings and showed it to us. My first thought was “this is not a drawing, this is not finished!”. But, then I looked at it better, I liked it a lot and I understood that:

Idea #1: With a simple single line, you can express a lot

Then I was imagining the character was watching me, that was great, and came this other idea:

Idea #2: It’s good to stimulate viewer’s imagination





Meetup #2 - Meditating at the Medici
Again at the Medici fountain with Nathalie and Dov, drawing people around... Before leaving, we were talking with Dov:
Dov: Have you learnt something today?
Me: I’ve learnt that it’s good to draw fast to catch the first impression
Dov: Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn’t.

idea#3: I shouldn't have dogma about drawing, and should add the word -sometimes- to the rules

Meetup #3 - Back to the crime seen (/strange weather)
That meetup in petit palais was amazing. It was about the void. That was my favorite meetup. Taking inspiration from Taoism, Dov asked us to draw empty spaces. I realized that it could be great to suggest things instead of drawing them. There was a lot of nice drawings that day. Here is one of them (by Marie), the one in the middle, there is a window, a part of the inside, but not the room around it...

Idea #4: Sometimes, it’s good not to draw everything

Meetup #4 - Drawing Red Harings

That meetup was another challenge. We were drawing Keith Haring statues. Those statues are subtle, but their shapes are simple.
My previous ideas were not so good to draw the statues, maybe because Keith Haring did already something similar:
- Idea #1: With a simple single line, you can express a lot”
- Idea #2: It’s good to stimulate viewer’s imagination
- Idea #4: Sometimes, it’s good not to draw everything.

So came another idea, that is the opposite of #4:

Idea #5: Sometimes it’s good to draw more than everything
And, Nathalie’s drawing is a beautiful illustration of it! with more colors and lines, I really like it.

Conclusion:

Here are the 5 ideas again:
- Idea #1: Sometimes with a simple single line, you can express a lot
- Idea #2: Sometimes it’s good to stimulate viewer’s imagination
- Idea #3: Sometimes we should have no dogma while drawing, and should add the word -sometimes- to the rules!
- Idea #4: Sometimes, it’s good not to draw everything
- idea #5: Sometimes it’s good to draw more than everything
There was two others meetups for me, and they were very interesting too, so this is an open list of ideas!

I hope you enjoyed reading this.

François