Planet of the Drapes!

This was one bad mama jama.  The hardest part for me was making a light, rough outline to break into planes.  First of all, even 2B charcoal pencils aren't too light, but that was okay since I was just going to come over them with the darker pencils, to push the line variation.  I actually had fun doing this one though because it didn't have to be a whole room, and I got to put my guitar in it!  Another challenge was making the background more interesting.  The composition I chose had nothing to show for the upper right corner of the picture plane except white wall.  I wasn't exactly sure of what to put there, but I ended up drawing some horizontal lines to serve as a wallpaper design.  I'm not sure I took care of that empty space so well but at least it's not naked.  The hardest part of all, though, was keeping the paper clean.  I found that I like drawing with charcoal pencils, except for the mess.  Not that long ago I couldn't stand to have any type of graphite or charcoal on me.  I'm not so OCD about it now except that charcoal smudges more easily than graphite and it got on my fingers and got smudged a bit by the ruler.  I don't like not being able to keep my paper clean.  Overall, the experience wasn't bad; I like breaking drapery into planes, plus it reminded me of a drapery homework assignment I once had in high school art.  It wasn't planar analysis, but I like drawing the curves and folds of drapery.

The Jackson Pollock Experiment

     Jackson Pollock, born in 1912, in Cody, Wyoming, had a short, rough life.  He grew up in California and Arizona in the 1920s.  Amazingly, he became one of the highest-regarded artists of the 20th century, even though he was troubled drunkard since he was eighteen.  Pollock is best known for pioneering gestural painting; he also occasionally used Indian symbolism in his paintings, inspired by his childhood explorations of Indian mounds with his brothers.  His success landed him a feature article in Time magazine in 1956, which named him "Jack the Dripper."  In his later years as an artist, Pollock preferred to use sticks, trowels, and knives in his later, mural-sized works as well as dripping paint onto the canvas.  He started painting these large pieces, laying canvas on the floor, in 1947 because he "felt closer to his work" and "declared that easel painting was a dying form."
     After dropping out of high school, Pollock joined his older brother Charles Cecil Pollock, at the Art Students League in New York.  There he briefly studied under Thomas Hart Benton, who had a lasting influence on Pollock's work.  Benton taught Pollock "theories of rhythmic balance, dynamic sequence, and 'muscular action painting.'  Benton believed that the act of creating the painting was more important than any finished work.  Pollock was also influenced by Mexican muralists Diego Rivera, Jose Orozco, and David Siquieros.  He also drew inspiration from non-traditional artistic movements such as Cubism, Abstract Expressionism, Surrealist automatism, and the "biomorphic forms of Joan Miro."  Eventually, he married the Russian Jewish artist, Lee Krasner, who became his best source of inspiration, influence, and encouragement in the mid-1940s.  Inspired by her theories, Pollock began using a technique of painting with "drips, smears, and giant circular motions over smaller geometric shapes."
     Although Jackson Pollock met his demise in a single-car accident in 1956, at the age of 44, his work continues to have a "monumental influence on American Art."  Ironically, the fatal auto-accident was a result of his long-standing addiction to alcohol.

Source:
"Biography from the Archives of AskART."  AskART: The Artists' Bluebook--Worldwide edition.  AskART, Inc. 2000-2010.  Web.  26 Feb. 2010.  
     Artnews.  May 1999.
     Baigell, Matthew.  Dictionary of American Art.
     Landau, Ellen.  Jackson Pollock.

Whew!  I had to test researching an artist for a blog.  I've always found Internet research annoying anyway because there are so many results to look through.  I wish I were a search wizard, but maybe I'll get better at it sooner or later.  I didn't want to post this blog without crediting the source first, so I attempted use of the MLA documentation style for the source listing.  Due to the structure of the website,  it was extremely annoying and time-consuming, and it's probably not even 100% correct.  But I gave the information that was available for the article I used.  I don't think I'll use AskART again; it doesn't seem to be student research-friendly.