An Artistic Curiosity

Photo of a TV image: A man sketching a crime scene—from “The Naked City” (1948)

I was casually watching an old movie that I’d recorded from the Turner Classic Movies station when this two or three second scene caught my eye. 

The film is The Naked City from 1948, about a murder case in N Y C. It begins with an ugly scene of a beautiful young woman being subdued in her apartment by two thugs (with chloroform), then dumped into a full bathtub to drown. Now the cops have arrived to examine the place, interview the cleaning lady who found the body and otherwise investigate. They take photos, but also there’s a man sketching the layout. I believe there are things that can be made clear in a drawing or diagram that you might miss if you’re only looking at photos. Details that can augment what the camera catches. I’d say what this guy’s using is a 5 x 7 inch or so sketchbook and a plain old wooden pencil.

I backed the film up frame by frame to pause it and take this screen shot. I love that sketch! The way he’s laid it out on the page. The excellent proportions. The quiet clarity of it. It looks simple, but I’d be really satisfied to have drawn that image! The artist isn’t a character in the story, has no other part in the movie, gets no face shot, gets no line in the credits. I’m thinking: “Is he a cop? A real cop? Does he get paid extra for doing that? How much?”

I probably had a strong reaction to this little blip in the movie because what he’s got is about the general size of the sketchbooks that I favor. I like spiral-bound ones too—because you can easily lay them flat to work on. I’ve done many sketches of hotel rooms and cruise ship cabins that we’ve stayed in.

I got some of my old sketchbooks out of the flat file drawers where I keep them and opened them up for this shot:

Some of my sketchbooks from years past.

They’re record books for me now too, with photos or copies of other work I did at the time sharing the space in them with actual in-book sketches and paintings. A visual diary of what I like and what I like to work on, and yes—I’m proud to have used them and filled them!

Read Full Post »

The Chinese House Roof

13 1/2 x 10 1/2 inches. Watercolor on 300 lb. hot-press paper.

This is my latest completed watercolor painting. It’s based on a photo I took through one of the upstairs windows of the full-sized imported actual late 18th century upper-class Chinese house that’s part of the Peabody Museum in Salem, Massachusetts.

Took a bus trip to Salem with my friend Malu just before Halloween last year. We ended up in the museum because there were so many people in town that day that there was no chance of getting into a restaurant (or even a deli) in time to get some lunch—-but we had no trouble finding a bite to eat in the museum cafe.

The strangeness of those decorative roof cornices intrigued and impressed me. There are so many of them! The sheer massive weight of all the ceramic tiles must be stunning. The rest of the Chinese house is fascinating also: two floors of many mysterious tight little rooms surrounding an interior courtyard open to the sky, and even an exterior walled courtyard at the entry.

I did some “process shots” at different stages of this artwork, and arranged them into a collage in my photo editor. The black and white line drawing is the layout for the painting, done in felt tip markers on tracing paper, which I then traced through onto the watercolor paper using a light box:

Thanks for looking my friends!
George

Read Full Post »