The Difficulties of Line

Line does not exists in nature. It is a human invention, a guide for those who want to penetrate the formlessness which everywhere surrounds us... Line is the thread of Ariadne, which leads us through the labyrinth of millions of natural objects... Without line we should be lost. We should never find our way back.
- George Grosz

This difference in how line may function in painting is a common source of difficulty for the beginner trying to confront nature objectively. He sorely misses the precision so easily achieved with the pen or pencil; he is distressed to find that a concentration on contours doesn't begin to meet the problems of form-building or designing in painting. Then, too, he finds the board, pliant brushes and the various fluid or viscous painting materials hard to manage.
- Nathan Goldstein, Painting: Visual and Technical Fundamentals (6)

I'm very different from the beginner that Nathan Goldstein describes. I enjoy "drawing" with paint precisely because of its imprecision; there is more space for a drawing to be corrected before it becomes simply wrong. I relax more when laying out a prelimary drawing on the canvas with thinned yellow ochre than in sketching with pencil. I understand that the yellow ochre outline is no a finished image but a record, a base upon which the finished image will form. With pencil I feel a need for more polish, more finesse. To me, trial and error in underpainting is simply error in drawing.

This holds true even with the more finished layers of the painting. I can go back and forth deciding on the correct placement of an edge. A line is only one dimension; a brushstroke of paint exists in two dimensions and approximates form more accurately. I struggle with line, its abstraction of nature. I need to invent it, to infer where it should be, and I do not trust my eyes.

In the Beginning...

I've decided to start a blog in which I explore my thoughts about art in general and my own art-making process. For a while now I've scribbled down ideas in my sketchbook or written isolated pieces, but now I'd like to compile them cohesively. And use lots of big words... note how I could have written "put them all together in one place."