Art Camp

My island neighbor, dear friend, and author Nicole d’Entremont, has taken up drawing with a passion. She began creating what she called Trumpoons back in 2017 as expressions of satire fueled by outrage. This led to drawing more, taking sketchbooks on her travels to Vietnam and New York. She took her first drawing class this January with the legendary artist, Martha Miller, at Maine College of Art, and was transformed.

Nicole enrolled in a portraiture class with Martha in June but it was cancelled because of Covid-19. She approached me about teaching her, and I was honored yet unsure I could fill such big shoes.

I developed a simple course of drawing together outside, with weekly assignments and books to share. Hello, Art Camp!

We met in late June in my backyard, with a picnic table full of books and supplies. Nicole was ready to takes notes!

Nicole brought an old photo of her Aunt Miriam, from which we both drew to determine a likeness. I demonstrated an introduction to proportions of the face, using line and tone to suggest form.

The first book assigned was Design Language by Tim McCreight, full of succinct definitions of vocabulary in design, such as balance, economy, hue, and hierarchy, all terms necessary to understand the concepts of making art of any kind. I also asked her to do three self-portraits in different mediums before the next session.

We met on Thursday afternoons from 2 to 3:30, sometimes 4 PM. And she worked hard between our sessions!

She brought in her self-portraits done in ink, charcoal, and cut paper, pinned to cardboard that was great for a review of the overall progress and choices made with each one. Fantastic efforts!

We drew each other, using pastel sticks on gray textured paper, using the middle tones to contrast with dark marks and warm highlights.

We spent about 15 minutes on each drawing, making quick observations.

The next Thursday Nicole brought in her assignment: three portraits of her neighbor, Eleanor Morse, drawn from life, using charcoal. We talked about her tendency to elongate faces, with a reminder about proportions of the features in relation to the rest of the head. We discussed Portraits from My Father’s Chair by Martha Miller.

We talked about color theory, and made quick revelations with Color Aid about the relationship of color perception to context using exercises based upon the teachings of the pioneering Bauhaus professor, Josef Albers.

I shared a portfolio of color exercises from a 2D design course I once taught to foundation students at Maine College of Art, which reflected my own lessons learned in art school.

Then to the fun part: color mixing with gouache!

I loaned Nicole Maira Kalman’s Various Illuminations of a Crazy World as a dive into inspired color portraiture, and asked her to draw three subjects using color pastel.

She returned with several, including a powerful portrait of her father, in which blue marks frame his angled features.

During this session my daughter Daisy modeled for us. Nicole used pastel on sanded paper to capture the contrasts of the face.

I loaned her Drawn In, along with a blank sketchbook, and asked her to do three more drawings in color. Developing a sketchbook practice is incredibly useful. It’s a fact that the more you draw, the more you see.

The following week threatened rain, so we met under the shelter of the porch at the Fifth Maine Museum, a much better view than my backyard!

Nicole brought three remarkable pieces, each one a leap forward in color and bold marks. The first was a reaction to the recent passing of American statesman, John Lewis.

This is a detail of another larger piece, of a woman in the Lower East Side of NYC, in which Nicole had worked hard to create skin tones and expression.

This was her favorite, and clearly possesses a confident energy with strong lines and color juxtapositions.

We were ambivalent about drawing each other or the view. As Nicole looked through the next book assignment, Van Gogh Face to Face: The Portraits she found a painting that intrigued her. We drew from Portrait of Trabuc’s Wife and became completely absorbed.

We skipped the next Thursday (my family went on a trip) and Nicole found inspiration in the Van Gogh book for our next session, drawing upon portraits of various characters.

Our plans for a live model fell through, so Nicole suggested we draw an artist she admired, Raphael Soyer.

I loaned her The Savage Mirror: The Art of Contemporary Caricature, and asked her to develop one portrait from sketches in her sketchbook for our final session.

Nicole brought a bottle of pinot grigio to celebrate the culmination of Art Camp, as well as her homework. That gets her an A+!

I asked, what was helpful and what was challenging?

Nicole said the weekly sessions were “grounding” at a time of such uncertainty. She was challenged by the task of capturing human expression. “If I can focus on a face, it gives me energy to sort out where we are now.” She had abandoned writing on a current book project to concentrate on the pursuit of drawing, realizing that this fed her understanding of her central character, a female artist.

Nicole showed me a card she has carried with her since the 1960’s when she marched on Selma.

As a veteran of the Civil Rights Movement and other social justice actions, Nicole was very moved by John Lewis’ funeral. It triggered her final drawing that included a message.

She struggled with the carriage perspective and placement of lettering, and worked on more versions, this one in pastel, which had a stronger rendering of the head and hat of the carriage driver. She vowed to keep improving her composition.

This concluded our seven sessions of exploring portraiture, mixed media, and drawing from photographs, art, and life. But it’s just the beginning for Nicole’s artistic pursuits. She sent me another sketch last week, determined to improve the composition and get her visual where she was happy with it.

Thank you, Nicole, for being an ardent student, enthusiastic about drawing as well as reading about drawing. Here’s to keeping your eyes and pencils sharp!