Douglas Witmer

Friday, March 28, 2008

sktchbk : cage match

More of Juan looking over my shoulder...me looking over Juan's shoulder...

Labels: children, children's art, drawing, juan, sketchbooks

Thursday, March 13, 2008

new drawings

(click each to enlarge)

In 2006 I began to work with some old school-grade tablet paper someone gave me. It's a unique surface. Responsive, but very fragile. I have an understanding with it. Chris Ashley and I also have used this paper a lot for our collaborations. I currently have a new batch going. The images above comprise drawings made from 2006 through a few days ago. (Incidentally, this group also makes up my application to the 2008 Fleisher Challenge...wish me luck!)

Labels: drawing, my work, paper

Wednesday, March 12, 2008

artists : thomas muller

(I can't seem to make Blogger render the umlaut above the U in Muller's last name...sorry Thomas!) I first saw the work of the German artist Thomas Muller back in 2003 at the Chinati Foundation in Marfa, TX. Muller had a residency there. I've had his work in mind a lot recently.

Labels: artists, drawing

Friday, September 21, 2007

master and student

[click to enlarge each]

Juan (aka "kindergarten boy") was in the zone the other day. Of late he has been working more figuratively--people with faces, sunshines, houses, etc. But here's a group that seems to focus on line and color (note, too, that a few of these incorporate his name, a la Robert Ryman). Juan has a distinct skill compared to other children for keeping his color clear and relatively unmixed (could it be the brush washing lessons I give him?)

The question is, in regard to color, who is influencing whom?

Labels: children, children's art, drawing, juan, sketchbooks

Saturday, January 27, 2007

past figuration

As promised...here's another episode of "lost and found in the studio." I believe these are the most recent figure drawings I've made. From the dates they were completed exactly 8 years ago this week. The media are vine charcoal, conte crayon, graphite, acrylic, and I also think I used lithographer's tusche. [click each to enlarge] At the time I was in graduate school at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts teaching figure drawing to advanced placement high school seniors, all of whom were incredibly talented and serious. I loved it. In fact I still see a few of my students from that class around town.

Occasionally I would also draw with the class. The head teacher (my boss) was pretty suspect of my approach. I wasn't making figurative work at this time. Actually I was making square formatted abstract "pools" of color. But observation and gesturalism were at my core...still are, really.

I'm not sure if these drawings are "good" or not. But they all have activity in them that I like.

Labels: drawing

Tuesday, January 23, 2007

sktchbk : may 2002

I'm re-arranging and cleaning out the studio. As always, I have to open every box and go through every sketchbook, just by way of review. I don't "sketch" much anymore. But when I do, I generally go very quickly, filling up a book in a matter of a sitting or two. The image above is taken from one that has a few dates in May 2002.

For fun, I thought it would be interesting to see the whole book in a slideshow format. It turns out I can make that happen quite easily for you. Click here for a Quicktime slideshow of the whole sketchbook from beginning to end (it's 1MB...might take a minute to load...also, I tried to get some of my music in there, but to no avail this time).

Stay tuned for......figure drawings! What?

Labels: drawing, sketchbooks

Tuesday, January 16, 2007

juan's new work

Here you're up-to-the-minute with Juan's drawing. This one he describes as a rocket and the lines are holding it so it doesn't fall down. Whatever!...I describe it as effing amazing.

I've not been able to document Juan's recent drawing lately with everything else going on. But he's developing from all-over masses of color into these complicated linear activities. They move and intersect, and often more importantly DO NOT intersect. All of the logic is internal, automatic, unmitigated. It's thrilling to watch.

Labels: children, drawing, juan

Friday, January 05, 2007

across the borderline

[Update 05 January...Here's the official evite for Across the Borderline (designed by yours truly).]

Collaborative drawings by Chris Ashley and Douglas Witmer, mixed media on paper, 2006.

Chris Ashley and I have been collaborating for the last several months on a variety of drawing. I say a "variety of drawing" because it that feels more accurate than talking about the products, or the "drawings," even though that's what we're ultimately producing. We're scheduled to exhibit our collaborative work at the University of Dayton in January (see details below).

Were documenting the process here, at: www.acrosstheborderline.com
[Update: I should mention we're posting new images to this site frequently as we head into the exhibition.]

We're doing simple back-and-forth exchanges of work. We're working on a variety of non-precious surfaces...cheap papers particularly. We're doing different things with size, and format. We're both experimenting a lot, allowing ourselves to go outside the "boundaries" we have each set for our individual work. For me, the working mindset is close to child-like. That said, it's not easy. Opening yourself and your processes up like this can bring out exciting possibilities, but it also has a way of revealing your basic visual assumptions to yourself. This can represent a real challenge.

The gallery at the University of Dayton is on the small side, essentially a U shape, but with shorter walls on each end and a long wall in the middle. At this point we're envisioning exhibiting a selection of our individual works on each end with the larger wall being hung in a free-form way, likely a hundred or more pieces, to be determined collaboratively on-site.

Labels: collaborations, drawing, exhibitions, my work

Wednesday, November 02, 2005

the end of the family farm

Last week I attended the public sale of my family's greenhouse business in Lancaster, PA (image above is the forklifts being auctioned off). My great-great grandfather started the greenhouses in 1898 and passed it along to his son-in-law, my great grandfather, who in the 1920s or 30s moved the operation to its current and final location. I didn't grow up on a farm, but always joked that my family did "indoor farming." Below are some photos I took during the sale, interspersed with some writing I did about the greenhouses in 2001 as part of my master's thesis.

Just a memory that I hold dear; my first memory of drawing:
I am with Great-grandpa in the greenhouse. We're spending the day together. Maybe I'm just tagging along behind him. I am four or five years old. Great-grandpa lets me put a quarter into the honor box in the lunchroom refrigerator for a carton of Pensupreme iced tea. The lunchroom stairs lead down into the wholesale office. The wholesale office is just off greenhouse Number 4, one of the older houses the Great-grandpa built himself. It has cement growing beds that are raised off the floor.

It's a sunny day in springtime and the greenhouse is busy. Great-grandpa sets me up in Number 4 with a Sharpie marker and an old order-form pad. I look around and draw.

I don't think I tried to draw flowers. For all I know, I probably drew trucks since they were equally fascinating to me at the time. What I remember from that day is the color--the blocks of saturated colors made by large groups of pansies--the color so alive in daylight. I remember the warmth of the greenhouse; its damp smell, red rubber hoses coiled up at intervals under the beds. I remember the crisp shape of the house made up of a grid of hundreds of panes of glass: four straight walls and a plain pitched roof.

This memory reminds me that looking has always been my form of devotion. I remember it, especially in times of uncertainty, because it contains almost all of my visual interests. It's a way I connect myself with myself.

Labels: drawing, miscellany