Drawing with Sticks

Schedules are different these days.  We are all moving more slowly and I am finding it harder to concentrate on anything too detailed or complicated.  Thus I've been amusing myself with new painting techniques via U-tube.  With low or no expectations as to outcome I have thoroughly enjoyed playing and experimenting.  I am absolutely positive that each experiment is teaching me something new which will inform my future work.

I've followed Australian Debbie MacKinnon on Instagram (Draw with Debbie) and she recently started some short videos talking about some of her techniques. When she mentioned using sticks and other natural found objects as tools I was all ears.

So after a short walk about I gathered up some promising "brushes" and sat in my chair to play with mark making. I put a large sheet of watercolor paper on the ground beneath me and anchored it with rock.  Debbie uses a variety of inks, I brought out what I had and poured it into little cups so I could better get my "pens" and "brushes" dipped in.

I started out a bit too realistically for such an exercise...I could not abandon the landscape in front of me and initially got frustrated that the length of the sticks and their flexibility caused me to lose control. Repeat: lose control! duh! I think that was the point.

One of Debbie's suggestions is to take the paper back to the studio and put white gesso over spots that are not as "likable" as others. You can totally blot out lines or make them recede with less gesso.  This is pretty ugly at this stage but I'd seen her make some as ugly (or worse) so I kept the faith and carried on.

I even added some paint to the gesso to add a little color to the experiment. Here you see the ink I used with a little water...only because I had it on hand. So I head back out the next day to a new location and two sheets of paper, one scarred up and one pristine.  Gathered new tools and made the same set up determined to be free and easy.

I tried moss, I tried different kinds of sticks, I tried pulling as well as pushing the implement...I finally (with no drawable landscape in front of me) let myself play.

This is a piece of one of the sheets when I finally called it quits.  Isnt it interesting? The movement and flow were exciting and I learned not to fret when a big ole glob of ink dropped off the stick in some unplanned place.  Just drag a tool through the glob and watch the magic.

Now you have to love an artist who admits at the outset that these pieces are not intended to be masterpieces.  She wants to experiment with the rhythm of energy and clean space, the jagged line of a stick not tightly held and the random marks of a piece of moss.  However I equally love the fact that after the papers sit for a while and she thinks about them, the good and the bad, she feels perfectly free to tear them up and store in little ziplocks based on color or whatever....why? Cause these pieces just might be the perfect start to another piece.  She will collage them on to a paper and go from there.

Can it get any simpler?  No.

Look for Debbie on Instagram (draw with debbie) or go to u-tube and search Debbie Mackinnon to download her video.

Hope you have as much fun outdoors with paper and sticks as I did.

Cheers,

Cindy Michaud

www.cindymichaud.com

art@cindymichaud.com