On Tuesday, March 17, 2020, I was told the company where I had been working was closing indefinitely due to what would be come to be know as the COVID-19 pandemic, and therefore, I was laid off indefinitely. Within the same week, the two studios where I frequently went to draw from live models also closed indefinitely, as did the Barnes Foundation, where I had been training and taking classes to become a docent. I had developed the habit of leaving my home to draw, going to open-studios or classes, which normally was a good idea because it held me to a schedule and kept me accountable to keep working. But, with everything shutdown, I needed to find a project at home to keep me working on my craft.
On April 7th, for the first time, I created a still life arrangement in my bedroom and tried to light it dramatically as had been done at my classes at Studio Incamminati. Before the lockdown, I was learning and reading a great deal about Paul Cézanne and other artists from the same period who painted still life works using objects of great personal significance. I tried to do the same thing, instead of just drawing another pot or fruit arrangement. The first three things I found were a stuffed bear, which was given to me by my Aunt Rose when I was born (my first teddy bear), a silver cup with my name inscribed on it to commemorate my baptism, and a wood tambourine from Italy that was given to my grandmother long before I was born.
Beside the personal history of these subjects, I thought it would also be a good exercise to draw these three very different surfaces or textures – the hard wood of the tambourine, the smooth metal of the cup, and the soft wooly texture of the stuffed bear.
I left the project on my easel for about 3 months, working in small shifts whenever I could, finally calling it finished on July 4, 2020. Overall, I was happy with the piece, despite my inability to get the round top of the tambourine precisely the way I wanted it. I did enjoy having the freedom to leave a piece untouched on the easel to work on whenever I wanted and for however long as I needed.
One last thing that I tried to employ from learning about Cézanne is the combined perspective; instead of drawing the wood platform from a front view, which would have shown less of the top surface area, I drew it more as an aerial view, which reveals more of the surface. But, I still drew the 3 subjects, arranged in a triangular composition, more from the front, with the exception of the top of the tambourine, which I also tilted forward visually.
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