Charcoal Drawings

Cari Amici (Dear Friends),

What a busy week! January 11 marks the ninth anniversary of my “taking the plunge” to be a full-time artist. Nine years! Scary, exciting, and still loving it.

I am still putting together my art newsletter about the savings on art this month to help me celebrate, but in the meantime I have been working to update my site, especially the 2-D section.

Thus far, I have organized the charcoal drawings that I have done over the last several years and added some new images, such as the one included here today. I do not think that I realized just how many I have drawn until I began to group them together. While I still want to improve my productivity, I guess I should not beat myself up so much about it.

Check it out:

http://www.borsheimarts.com/charcoaldrawings.htm

Thank you for being a part of it all!
Cheers,
Kelly

Erotic Art

Cari Amici (Dear Friends),

It is very frustrating, but sometimes my work is not permitted to be exhibited because of “rules” against nudity in art. This despite the fact that most people are extremely complimentary of the sensitivity in which I portray people in their most vulnerable state (or so they tell me).

So, if you cannot beat ‘em, . . . join ‘em.

And I actually feel a bit excited to be joining the ranks of many of my predecessors, including lots of the “Big Boys” such as Rembrandt, Leonardo da Vinci, Théodore Géricault, Rodin, Pablo Picasso, and my friend and mentor Vasily Fedorouk. Even Michelangelo painted quite a lascivious “Leda and the Swan” composition. I suspect that besides the Japanese, Egyptians, and the Greeks, every culture has birthed some form of erotic art.

While exploring various compositions, I was trying to think of a title to inspire me and keep me on track. I was seeking eroticism, not vulgarity. My ex-roommate Elena, from Italy, unknowingly named this pastel and charcoal drawing. She and I happened to be corresponding shortly after I began work on this piece. She often addresses me as “tesoro,” which is Italian for “treasure” and is a term of affection among the Italians.

Thus, I would be happy to introduce to you my first published work of intentionally erotic art.

”Tesoro!”
22” x 16”
Charcoal and Pastel Drawing
Roma-brand paper
$1800 (+ $20 shipping + applicable sales tax)
by Kelly Borsheim

And I wish you a sensuous and joyful 2010 full of passion and amore.

Anatomy and Line

Cari Amici (Dear Friends),

Although I have not spoken much about this, I am not trying to make a copy in marble of an actual human being. While I am thinking about anatomy and using real bodies for references, I am constantly looking for that beautiful line.

The depressing thing about doing art of a more representational style is that people judge the piece for what it is not more than what it is. I mean that the tighter a work gets towards recognizable, the more people critique it for the artist’s mistakes. If would not matter if someone creating an exact replica of a specific person that was 99% accurate (on a scientist’s terms I suppose). The viewer’s eye would immediately find that 1% inaccurate part and it would ruin the rest of the effort.


It was not until my first visit to the Benson Sculpture Garden in Loveland, Colorado, about a decade ago, that I realized that there was a limit to how far I wanted to depict reality in my own work. Too much reality bored me. Art is in the details, but the KIND of details makes a world of difference. In Italy, especially, I have been learning to understand the difference between art and copying.


So, anyway, these images that follow show you how I am inspired by Nature’s anatomy, but that I am seeking a line that flows beautifully. In the latter two images, I have drawn the line of the legs that are covered up by the hands. This not only helps me to shape the legs underneath the arms and hands, but also helps me know how close to carve the hands and how much more marble I must remove.

The most difficult thing to do in stone carving is to have two things touch without overlapping in a weird way or becoming too far apart.

Enjoy your New Year’s celebration.

Top Ten Artist Blog Post Award

Cari Amici (Dear Friends),

Well, I would first like to thank several of my readers for nominating various artworks of mine that were posted on this blog in 2009 for artist and author Katherine Tyrrell’s Making a Mark blog’s “Best of . . .” competition. Two of my drawings were chosen in the semi-finalist stage for the Figure Art category, but I was not so lucky on the shortlist. However, I do appreciate your support and interest. Thank you.

You can vote for one of the three finalists by clicking here before the 29th of December:
http://makingamark.blogspot.com/2009/12/vote-for-best-artwork-on-art-blog-in.html

Then to my surprise today, I found out that one of my blog posts won a listing on Casey Klahn’s “The Colorist” blog. It made me laugh to see which of my blog posts struck Casey as memorable and why. Perhaps you will enjoy his point of view as well. Check it out:

http://thecolorist.blogspot.com/2009/12/top-ten-posts-2009.html

Thanks, Casey Klahn, and thank you to you ,too!

Tabernacoli Fiorentini – Florence Tabernacles

Cari Amici (Dear Friends),

In my recently published art newsletter I wrote about the devotional art in Florence, Italy, specifically, the tabernacles. In Italian they are called tabernacoli fiorentini.

I have shared with you what I know of the history of these devotional windows, as well as many images I have taken of various tabernacles around the central part of the Renaissance City over the last few years.

Check it out:

http://www.borsheimarts.com/news/2009_12.htm

Merry Christmas!

Marble Hair

Cari Amici (Dear Friends),

I have not yet decided just how realistic I want to go with the stone carving “The Gymnast.” I know that my style tends towards realism, but I am not necessarily thinking strictly in those terms when I work. And I tend to use hair as a compositional device more than as a depiction of reality.

That said, I still find inspiration in Nature and models. In this case, I have been using my most available model. And I have a lot of hair. I put it up into a ponytail and moved my head about, looking in the mirror and touching my head to see how the hair fell. Often I see better with my fingertips.

Also, there is so much symmetry in this pike pose that I wanted the hair, along with the toes, to be obviously asymmetrical. You may see in the first image that I have redrawn the skull to a more proportionate size. I had left so much stone around the head because I had not yet decided on how I wanted the hair to fall. But it was time to reduce the size of the head so that I could continue to work the rest of the stone sculpture.


If I let something go for too long, my brain will start to make order out of the disproportion and I will no longer see my error as such. At this point, I am working the masses of the hair only from three sides, still allowing myself to change my mind as I go along. The trick is to shape the form as I reduce the mass of marble.

Happy Birthday, Mom!

Stone Expansion Art

Cari Amici (Dear Friends),

Often the view you would see the least is the one that gives the most useful information about the form in sculpture. Here I show you the bird’s eye view so that you may see just how large the skull really is in comparison to the rest of the figure, “The Gymnast.”


Although I am a bit cautious about cutting away too much stone, stone expansion -- a term I believe was coined by sculptor Scott Owens -- seems to come into play a lot. I find at some point, I have a difficult seeing the proper proportions of my figure because there is simply too much stone in the way.

I have been carving away at the marble feet, shaping as I go along. I realized that I could not sculpt the hands until I saw more clearly the size and position of the feet, because the ankles (among other things) helped me to define the size and positioning of the legs, upon which the hands are resting.

In the same way, I began to have a difficult time reducing the arms until I got the head carved smaller. Somehow small hands on a body with a large head messes with my mind and vision.


And this is why it is important to work the entire piece instead of focusing too much on the"Bath Tub Technique.” This is what I call it when one starts to work a piece from top and then moves lower and lower until reaching the bottom of the artwork, in the way that your body would be revealed as the water is slowly drained away in the tub (if you were sitting in the tub, of course).


In this final image, you may see my markings for the next cutting. I am refining the line of the trapezius at the shoulder and needing to remove material under the right arm along the drawn-in rib cage. And in a brown crayon, you may see the width of the skull, marked along the uncarved shoulder blades so I can keep my measurements for a while longer.

I wish the days were warmer and that I had some anti-vibration gloves.