Squint Your Eyes Frequently

Posted by Lucy Tobias on Jun 24th, 2005 | 2 comments

Everyone is so quiet you can almost hear brush strokes. Inside Linda Blondheim’s small studio, eight artists are squeezed in somehow, easels turned every which way. If we step back to give our mind a rest, we bump into another artist.

Our task at the moment – paint the trunk of a palm tree. This is a one-day palm tree workshop. Linda is a plein air painter and a pathfinder. She helps artists find their path.

As we work, we get quizzed.
“Why do you do what you do?” Linda asks, and goes around the room. Meaning, why are we artists? Answering, “I don’t know” is not an option. If you do try that, and I did, she will gently keep prodding, asking the question in different ways, making you think, stretch, articulate. It is not just about the brush, it is about attitude, and that colors your palette.

Elaine Trice holds her brush in mid-air and said: “I paint because I am driven every day to do something artistic.”

Driven. That’s a good word. We all nod. We understand. Also compelled. Called. Drawn. We’re here, aren’t we? We want to be better, don’t we?

It is pouring rain outside. Inside, on each easel is a line drawing of a palm tree trunk (there’s lots of pieces poking at different angles).
Our job is to fill it in. We have to figure out where the light is coming from, left, right, above, below? What colors to use, and how to mix them, how to establish light and shadow? So many problems in search of a solution. It isn’t easy.

Our palette is limited. French Ultramarine Blue, Payne’s Grey, Titanium White, Cad Red Light, Cad Yellow Lemon. Fancy names for the three primary colors plus an almost black and a white.

Some work in pastels, others use oils, or acrylics or watercolors. I was thinking of combining watercolor and pastel, but it is all I can do to keep up the pace with just watercolor. There is a piece of a palm tree trunk on a table. A still life. We could use that for reference (this is not a day to be outside). But everyone opts to go their own way. One trunk is green and red, another red and black, another shades of blues. Mine has a lot of browns and some yellows. Who knew trunks could be so diverse?

“Do you all know about colors or should I give a little lecture?” Linda asks. We all say, sure, we know about color. A little while later, she asks each one of us if we are a colorist and a tonalist. It gets mighty quiet. I, for one, haven’t a clue. But people speak up anyway. We know better than to say, “I don’t know”. I put myself down as a colorist. Turns out, I’m wrong.

“And you all said you know all about color” Linda chides us gently, and then she explains. A tonalist uses white and black to establish values. A colorist uses colors to lighten and darken.

Ah, I’m a tonalist. Until today, I didn’t know that.

While we’re working on another exercise – paint a palm tree using only highlights and shadows, no middle tones, Linda prints out “Ten Simple Steps for Plein Air Painting”. We all get them. I look at the list and think these are pretty good steps for life, not just plein air painting.
Here are seven out of the ten:
1.Keep your composition as simple as possible.
2.Omit fussy details.
3.Squint your eyes frequently to establish values.
4.Block in values early.
5.Create depth – Try not to put major elements on the same plane.
6.Work all over the painting.
7. Step back frequently and give your mind a rest.
After the morning session, Linda and her family feed us lunch at her home next to the small concrete block studio outside of Gainesville, Florida. We’re all in a swoon. The plates look paintable, quite attractive. We tucker in.

Morning was warm up exercises. Afternoon is the real deal. We find a photo that speaks to us and go to town, well, not literally. I start in watercolors but it doesn’t look like much. She suggests casein, a medium that has been around for oh, thousands of years. It is made from milk and is water based. Feels and acts like oil. I called it the “poor man’s oils”.

It was like being hit with a cattle prod. Casein changed everything. I liked it a lot. Later, Linda would say, “You didn’t know you’d come here today and find a new direction.”

That’s how it is with learning new things. Engaging. Life-changing. Painting palm trees is good excuse to be outdoors. That’s the meaning of Plein Air. Works for me. I love being outdoors.

I know I’m looking at palm trees a whole lot closer now. And I’m squinting my eyes frequently to establish values, not just for palm trees.

References:
www.lindablondheim.com
www.pleinairmagazine.com

Column updates:
Please join me in congratulating Cindy Bell of Ocala, Florida, who received an award for most raised funds by an individual in the Chapter of Beta Sigma Phi named Laureate Delta Sigma. Cindy raise $1280 for Relay for Life held at Trinity High School in April 2005. Her husband, a cancer survivor, was one of the people interviewed in a column called “Here for the Long Haul” posted on April 29, 2005.
Laureate Delta Sigma members raised $2800. The total amount raised for the 24-hour Relay for Life at Trinity was $62,000. It all goes for cancer research. Two thumbs up to Cindy and Chapter Laureate Delta Sigma.
Remember James? He’s the shelter dog profiled in a column called “These are Good Dogs” posted on March 4, 2005. I am pleased to report that James has been adopted and his new owners have agreed to keep up his training and attend classes. James is one lucky, and happy, dog.

You Don’t Know Me

Posted by Lucy Tobias on Jun 11th, 2005 | 2 comments

I went to work a few years back at a mid-size newspaper. Like most reporters, I’m a newspaper junkie, reading it every day. Have to, just to keep up. I noticed the editors, not the cop reporter, wrote up any late night murders or mayhem. Having been a cop reporter for four years, and then gave that up for environmental reporting, I wondered why.

Turns out the cop reporter refused to give his home phone to any editor. That was amazing to me. If I’d done that, I would have been fired. Night calls are part of the cop beat. But then, I’m a white woman, very low on the totem pole. He was African-American, very high on the diversity totem pole.

To this day I think letting that happened made us all smaller, every one of us, and our journalism profession. No one won that one. We all lost. The reporter lost integrity by not doing his job, even if he did go on to a better-paying job at a bigger paper. Management lost credibility by bending criteria to fit a diversity profile. The rest of us were reminded, quite forcibly, that the playing field is not level.

And you know what? We could have been dead wrong. There could have been good reasons why he didn’t give out his phone number.

I’d forgotten that incident, because life goes on and you don’t want to carry that kind of frustration around. It is too heavy. Then I went to see “Crash” recently.

Have you seen the movie “Crash”? It is relentless. One of the best films I’ve seen in a long time. Ebert gave it four stars and he NEVER gives four stars. Well, hardly ever.

“Crash” works as a title. Several different story lines crash into each other. Cars crash into each other too. There are wrecks everywhere. The common thread uniting the wrecks is prejudice. Lots of prejudice. The prejudices crash into each other and the fallout is spellbinding, scary and real.

It is not a movie. At least it doesn’t seem that way. It is real life. They are us. Their days are our days, like a black police detective whose mother uses drugs. He hides this fact from his white girlfriend. Or a white couple walking back after an evening out tries to get in their SUV and is thrown out. The car is stolen by two black youths.

The couple immediately wants the locks changed at home. Wouldn’t you?
A locksmith comes to do the deed in the middle of the night and the wife rails that she wants the locks changed again the next day because the locksmith has tattoos on his body and she thinks he’s a gang member. The locksmith puts the keys on the table and then goes home to his wife and little girl. The look he gives her on the way out speaks volumes.

There’s an invisibility cloak involved in the story too, but I won’t give that part away except to say there are times when an invisibility cloak would be wonderful. But so far, finding one has eluded me.

I walked out of the film stunned by the way each drop of prejudice was like a stone thrown into a pond. It had ripple effects that changed lives bigtime. And are we immune? Does it just happen on film? Heck no. “Crash” won’t let you off the hook. You know they are talking about things very close to home. Prejudice is like acid etching away solid metal – it is corrosive and we all have it, whether we learned it at home or find it along life’s way.

Prejudice happens because we don’t know each other, or even ourselves – our heritage, someone else’s heritage, and someone else’s dreams. If you don’t know yourself, or the persons around you, what’s to respect?

In that story about the cop reporter, I don’t know why he wouldn’t give out his phone number because I never asked. Maybe he had good reasons. I just seethed and assumed it was a race thing.

Prejudice grows by assumption. The word “assume” breaks down into making an “ass” out of “u” and “me”. And that’s how prejudice grows. We assume we know what the person next to us is going to do because of what? The clothes they wear, their hairstyle, tattoos, language? The words “you don’t know me” resonate here. Any teenager knows that to be true.

Finally, prejudice grows through silence. It is not enough to not laugh at a racial joke. Step up and say something. Silence condones agreement. It means the joke teller is a bully who can get away with belittling other people.

There’s a nifty little booklet called “101 Ways to Combat Prejudice” and it is free. You can download it at the Anti-Defamation League’s Web site. ADL and Barnes & Noble put together the pamphlet in 2000, following a rash of high school shootings. It is part of a campaign called “Close the book on hate”.In addition to ways to stop hate, there is an extensive reading list.

On the back page of the pamphlet is a pledge. It starts with these words:
“I pledge from this day onward to do my best to interrupt prejudice and to stop those who, because of hate, would hurt, harass or violate the civil right of anyone.”
Amen.

See “Crash” and sign the pledge. Dignity towards one another will save us. And we need saving. Prejudice is growing. We are deep troubled waters. We all know what water can do. It can turn into a tsunami.

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for further reference : www.adl.org has “101 Ways to Combat Prejudice.

Squint Your Eyes Frequently

You Don’t Know Me

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