"Portrait of Edouard and Marie-Louise Pailleron" by John Singer Sargent

 

Portrait of Edouard and Marie-Louise Pailleron, oil 60" x 69" by John Singer Sargent (1881)

This painting is currently at the National Portrait Gallery in London, as part of the Sargent show "Portraits of Artists and Friends". It's up until May 25, 2015 in London and then it travels to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (opening June 30th, 2015).  90 of Sargent's works are being displayed; many are usually in private or out-of-the-way locations, so it's very special to see a grouping like this.

I was lucky enough to see the show with my artist friend Ilaria Rosselli del Turco (click on her link to the right of the blog text). Ilaria is a wonderful companion for general museum adventures. She sees paintings in a somewhat different way than I do and it's a treat to bounce ideas off such an intelligent and talented person.

I should write about the entire Sargent show but since it takes me forever to write a blogpost these days, I think I will just focus on this painting, which I was particularly eager to see. It's usually in Boise, Idaho, I believe. (Another big draw for me was Sargent's Portrait of Dr. Pozzi. The handsome doctor deserves his own blog post, maybe I will get to that one of these days.)

Marie-Louise was 11, Edouard was 16, and John Singer Sargent was 25 years old the year this painting was created. The painting was created over a stretch of several months; Marie-Louise said later that she remembered eighty-three sittings. (I've heard various figures for the sittings, but, still...!) As you might imagine, the sessions didn't always go smoothly. Marie-Louise later wrote that she and her brother had argued with the artist about such matters as what clothing to wear and the way her hair was to be arranged.

I love this painting for so many reasons. That fiery red background and the sharp dark silouhette of the boy's suit are theatrical and dramatic. The complexity of the whites and creamy halftones in the dress are a triumph of skill. The rich orientalism of the Persian carpet adds a sense of mystery and luxury. Marie-Louise's arched hand is marvelously painted and manages to be graceful and childish at the same time. I stared at it at the Museum for a long time. The bracelet is wonderfully impastoed, set in carefully and confidently over the softly brushed flesh of the wrist.

Their expressions are restrained and ambiguous. They're not exactly happy to be sitting there, and they look like they might say something rude to that young painter who was taking forever to paint them, though I'll bet children were a little better behaved back then, so they bit their tongues. Edouard seems to be thinking especially dark thoughts, probably about all the better things he had to do with his time.

Think about how very different this painting is from a portrait of two siblings that might have been painted today by any number of professional painters. Maybe this is just an aspect of being American, or maybe it's an aspect of growing up in the 19th century.  American portrait painters today almost always portray relentlessly cheery, sunny and upbeat American children.  I don't know whether it's because the American clients prefer cheery children, or whether the artists themselves are cheery, or we are all eating too much sugar, but that does seem to be the norm. These two are solemn and serious.

The thing that strikes me when I see Sargent's paintings in person - in photos also, but more strongly in person - is his strong sense of design and composition. I've converted the photo of the painting to black and white and then posterized it to a few values so that you can get a sense of what I'm thinking.

Sargent has done things like value massing and making those masses unequally sized. And can you see that jagged diagonal that runs left to right? I got very excited about this at the museum. I did a crude sketch below to show you (red line). Once I saw left to right wave movement in this painting, I started seeing it in some other Sargent paintings, too. It's not only a way to connect two shapes in a way that's subtle; it's also a way to include the energy of the diagonal with the rather static shapes of the children.

There's just much to learn from a Sargent in addition to the way he puts down paint.

3-Day Workshop at Scottsdale Artists' School: Painting the Portrait Figure

Portrait of Theodore Roosevelt, John Singer Sargent, 1903. Image from here.

Even if you had no idea who the man in this painting was (and for all I know, you might not) you'd have some opinions about him based on how the artist has composed this painting.  The hand on the hip, the other hand gripping the finial, the bold stance - all this indicates determination and a powerful  personality. Sargent is remembered not only for his virtuoso technique, but also for his ability to indicate personality in his portrait and figurative work through gesture and setting.

Knowing how to use body language to artistic advantage in a painting is important to any figurative artist, whether or not one intends to paint portraits.

I'm teaching a 3-day workshop in October which will explore aspects of constructing a figurative painting or portrait to reflect the subject's characteristics through the use of body language and composition. We'll work on a fairly large canvas so that we can include the subject's posture and at least the hands, which can incredibly expressive of character. We'll be working with the same model throughout the workshop, so we'll have plenty of time to discuss subjects such as lighting, pose and clothing.  I taught this class a few years ago and it was great fun.

"Character Reveals Itself: Painting the Portrait Figure"
October 17th - October 19th, 2014
Friday, Saturday, Sunday
9:00 - 4:00

There are still some openings for the workshop - please contact Scottsdale Artists' School for more information.

First Place Award, 2014 Butler Institute of American Art's 78th Midyear Exhibition - "Maddie in the Act of Painting"

I'm very proud to post that yesterday my painting "Maddie in the Act of Painting" was awarded First Place at the 2014 Butler Institute of American Art's 78th Midyear Exhibition in Youngstown, Ohio. I really regret not being able to make it there for the awards ceremony on July 27th. The wonderful Leslie Adams, who also won an award at the Midyear this year, took six of the photos included below and generously called my studio phone in Arizona on Sunday afternoon to tell me the good news. Thank you again, Leslie!

"Maddie" is 12" x 12", oil on linen mounted to panel.

My painting on the right side of the doorway.

Shot of the hallway showing the light that comes from above.

Leslie's fantastic drawing that won the Honorable Mention.

My friend Alex Tyng had this wonderful painting, "The Unseen Aspect", in the show.

This is a beautiful museum! So many beautiful paintings in this show! So many artists creating such remarkable work, I'm proud to be included in this show.

And this is what the Butler Institute of Fine Arts looks like from the outside (I found this photo online). Lucky Ohioans!

"Sir Duncan Campbell" by Sir Henry Raeburn

I get over to San Francisco pretty frequently and when I do, I try to get to the Legion of Honor Museum and visit "Sir Duncan Campbell" by artist Sir Henry Raeburn (1756 - 1823) . The painting is usually hung at eye level, gazing down benignly into your own eyes, since Campbell was clearly painted on a somewhat elevated model stand.

"Sir Duncan Campbell"  Image taken from this site.

I have tremendous respect and admiration for Raeburn. Born in Edinburgh, Scotland and orphaned, he taught himself how to paint by working with a jeweler, painting miniatures. After deciding to pursue portrait painting as a career, he married well, met the famous English painter Joshua Reynolds and then went to Italy to study art for two years. Raeburn returned to Edinburgh and started his very successful career in commissioned portraiture.

  "Charles Hay, Lord Newton",   by Sir Henry Raeburn, image from this site.


Raeburn's painting technique is characterized by bold brushwork, dramatic lighting and a sensitivity to the characteristics of the individuals he painted. His paint handling is fluid and expressive, with remarkable control of tonal relationships. Sitters would come to his studio and be entertained by his wit and good nature as the painter worked on capturing the likeness. He seemed to have an immediate and fresh response to his sitters; he had "... an unpremeditated view of the outcome, which meant a minimum of planning and little preliminary 'drawing' on the canvas in the sense that [English painter Sir Thomas Lawrence] would have understood the term." Duncan Thomson, Raeburn: The Art of Sir Henry Raeburn, Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh 1997. This meant that some of his paintings evidence signs of overpainting and changes as the painting progressed. It also means he employed a variety of paint techniques throughout his life. Many of his paintings are broadly worked in the manner of Velasquez, but he also painted portraits which are subtle and nuanced.

Raeburn worked sight-size, meaning that he set up his easel next to the podium for his sitters. His studio was lit by a large north-facing window which he had built for his use, and also installed a complex series of shutters to control the flow of light into the room.

Thomson, Ibid., page 24. My scan, which is a little fuzzy, sorry.

Darren Rousar has written a wonderful post on Raeburn and his sight-size technique on his Studio Rousar site here.  Rousar's site is a terrific source of information about painters working in the realist tradition, I highly recommend it to artists.

My books and my research online indicates that Raeburn apparently left very few drawings or preparatory sketches. However, around ten years ago, in the early days of Ebay, my husband found this online, "Portrait Drawing of a Lady, by Sir Henry Raeburn." He paid around $200 for it. It has no particular provenance except that it came from Canada. Is it a fake? I suppose so, but well, here it is anyway. If anybody reading this is a Raeburn expert I hope you'll email me. A few years ago, I did get to go to Scotland and briefly thought I would take this with me to show the experts up in Edinburgh, but then I thought I might not be able to get back out of the country with it.

"Portrait of Lady" by...... ?...

Meanwhile, I try to sketch Raeburns whenever I'm in museums. I often don't have much time; it depends who I'm with, but I do stand and draw them whenever I can. Raeburn was amazingly prolific in his career and his paintings are widely distributed. One of my best experiences was in the sparsely-attended museum in Dublin. The museum guards wanted to bring me a chair and were extremely nice to me, especially after I told them I had distant Irish roots. This is what I did with Sir Duncan Campbell in San Francisco:

My little sketch.

Narrative Art, Part Two: "The Raft of the Medusa"

"The Raft of the Medusa" by Theodore Gericault. Photo from Wikipedia. One of my favorite paintings, hanging at the Louve.

First, a little background: in 1816 the French frigate Medusa ran aground off the coast of what is now Mauritania. The lifeboats could not carry everyone, so 147 passengers and crew were left to drift on a hastily constructed liferaft, which they endured for 13 days, suffering terrible hardships. Only 15 of the 147 survived the ordeal. The incident became an international scandal.

Gericault was a young painter (he was only 27 when he painted this) and the story of the tragedy fascinated him. He created this large, non-commissioned work by doing a lot of intense research, including interviewing two of the survivors, and went to morgues to learn about how he could best depict dead flesh. This painting caused an immediate sensation and helped launch his too-brief career.  Gericault died young at 32 but his reputation far outlasted him and he became one of the leading lights of French Romanticism.

Gericault went through many preparatory oil sketches in the design of this massive painting, as you can imagine - he wanted to get the design right and spent much time in the planning stages of this piece. But after he decided on a composition, he seems to have painted directly on the canvas without preparatory sketches:

[Géricault's method] astonished me as much as his intense industry. He painted directly on the white canvas, without rough sketch or any preparation of any sort, except for the firmly traced contours, and yet the solidity of the work was none the worse for it. I was struck by the keen attention with which he examined the model before touching brush to canvas. He seemed to proceed slowly, when in reality he executed very rapidly, placing one touch after the other in its place, rarely having to go over his work more than once. There was very little perceptible movement of his body or arms. His expression was perfectly calm ... 
Quote from Wikipedia.

One of the problems with this painting, by the way, is that Gericault used bitumen as one of his colors, which degrades over time to a kind of treacle, eventually destroying much of the painting. I've also heard that there is a problem with Gericault's white in this piece.

I'm including this painting in my narrative art series for many reasons, but first I want to point out that it segues from what I was talking about the other day. It's an example of changing the viewer's perspective to maximize impact for narrative purposes. When I talk about the viewer's perspective, I mean that this scene is painted as if the artist were standing on a boat just a little to the back and off to the right of the raft. This is not quite a bird's eye view, but it is a broad, omniscient view, and it might be interesting to contemplate how the artist could have swiveled this around a bit to portray this scene while facing the waving figure, for example, or perhaps a dying-person point of view from the raft. Both options would have changed the way we interpret this piece, though possibly in a subtle and hard to describe way. The way it is depicted here seems as if Gericault is not only making a statement about the horrors of this incident and the dramatic rescue of the few survivors, but that he is also making a statement about the perennial hope of mankind for some kind of rescue. You don't have to know a thing about the historical background of this massive work to be moved by it. It has a broader and more universal appeal.

I think that this painting also shows an internal, left to right sequencing, from the death and desolation on the left, through life and hope climaxing at the the top of the composition as the crewman frantically waves to the passing ship for help.

Gericault spent 18 months on this painting, working intensely. It obviously took over his life for a while, as you can imagine working on a painting this size (193.3 in. x 282.3 in., or, 16 feet x 23.5 feet). He was consumed by this painting. Gericault is one of my heros.

If you get to the Louve, there is a big bench in front of this painting where you can sit and gaze up at it, imagining yourself part of the raft, or maybe you can imagine yourself becoming Gericault for a time, trying to get this all down on this massive canvas.

"The Garden of Earthly Delights"

"The Garden of Earthly Delights," Hieronymous Bosch, triptych on oak panels. Created sometime between 1490 and 1510.

A hi-res version of the above is available on this link to the Prado Museum.

Remember when...
...You were a teenager and you decided to take the Third Class Radiotelegraph Operator's License, which was required by the FCC to turn radio stations on in the mornings and off at night, because you figured this would increase the chances of being hired in broadcasting so you could someday have a job other than being a waitress, so you learned enough math to take the test and - quite incredibly - pass it, and years later you wondered why you ever let the License lapse because it would add a certain panache and possible suggestion of math skills to your current resume, but meanwhile, you had to get to somewhere in inner-city Detroit to take this test, so you got up at three or four o'clock in the achingly bleak cold to be driven there to be at the test on time, and you took the brain-shattering test, one of many such brain-blasting efforts you would make in your lifetime, by the way, only to muse much later that the acidity and quantity of brain-eating tests are probably the reasons you love to write periodic run-on blog sentences even though you know it is not funny to most readers and very wrong in a grammatical sense, not to mention a bad example to other writers, and after the FCC test you decided that, it being around 9:00 a.m. and you were too revved-up to eat anything, you would go and reward yourself by seeing a first-run movie in a big-city theater, so you happily settled into the 8th row center in front of the massive, pre-multiplex cinema movie screen because there was, excitingly, practically nobody else there and, in the dark, freezing, hollow, desolate vastness of the cavernous echoing theater, in a city that was in its own slow slide into despairing, decaying ruin...  you got to see the brand- new movie.... The Exorcist. 



ATTENTION to scary-movie avoiders: you can just skip this. You don't have to watch anything just because it's there.

If you weren't around when this movie first came out, you can't grasp the sensation this movie made on a surprised public. To see a young girl suffering on screen was itself enormously shocking, not to mention all that Hell and demonic possession business.

And by the way, while I'm on the subject of this movie, am I the only one who thought that the little weird orange statue of the creepy bird monster moved around mysteriously in the movie all by itself and nobody noticed or commented on it? Was that a set continuity glitch or was it part of the plot? If you've seen this movie recently let me know what you think, because I'm not watching it again.

To further the line of thought in the above paragraph, the concept that all matter is alive is called Hylozoism.  Tell me you didn't consider this possibility as a child. Now, there's a scary concept to explore! Stop chewing on the end of your pencil, your pencil hates that!

I'm writing all this because I'm trying to set you up psychologically for Heironymous Bosch's "The Garden of Earthly Delights". I first encountered the third panel in an art book in my youth and so for years I thought the whole piece consisted of the single panel, Hell. (This was back when you couldn't get information about anything on the internet and so one would stumble innocently upon something strange and wonder to yourself, what the heck....?) I'm embarrassed to say that it was many years before I figured out there were two other panels to this iconic work.  The first panel depicts Paradise, the center panel represents the Garden of life's pleasures, and the third panel, as I said, is Hell.

Please note that even in Paradise, animals are gleefully eating other animals and tearing them to pieces, so in Bosch's mind, death and eating animals was always part of God's master plan. If I ran the cosmic Zoo, that is not really what I would do, but that's another blog post.

But Hell! That's where Bosch has let his imagination soar, or sink, or however you want to call it.

Detail of right panel, "Hell", of "The Garden of Earthly Delights", taken from this Wikipedia discussion of the painting.  Maybe it's not such a good idea to look at these images too closely right before you go to bed.

One interesting thing about this imagery is that Bosch has kept the scale of the fantastic in proper proportions so that it seems more visually credible. For example, the musical instruments are gigantic in Hell, but they are painted in detailed accuracy and in correct scale with one another.

This is the particular closeup of Hell (again, taken from the Wiki link for the discussion of this painting) that has stayed in my own mind all these years.It may have been that ghastly face that pulled me in,  perhaps that gaze is a magnet that pulls us into the painting, that makes us take a closer look.

There has been lots of analysis by scholars on this haunting painting and of course, modern eyes see this painting very differently than the medieval mind.(If you're interested in medieval theology and Netherlandish art, be sure to read about the subject more fully in online sources, it's interesting.) This work still possesses the power to appeal to our emotions, though, and I'm pretty sure there are an awful lot of people today that don't react to this panel on a purely scholarly level. They are thinking more along the lines of... please God, have mercy, spare me this end.

I don't want to want to delve too deeply about religious belief and the power of fear on this blog, although it's an interesting topic, isn't it? The point that I want to make today is that art can contain the power to shake us up, to make us stop and think about our own lives, to possibly even change our ways. Movies have supplanted the stationary visual image in their power to shape public culture. Where does this leave painting?

I think that painting still has the capacity for being more than a color coordinated decoration for the walls, an object for intellectual examination or an investment that we may someday recoup or leave to our heirs. It can inspire us, or make us quake in fear. There is an intellectual aspect and an aesthetic aspect to artwork but the key is the emotional impact, which resonates differently in each of us.

A great painting is a memorable painting, an tenacious image that gets placed in your brain.  The key to great artwork is that you can revisit it again and again to look and think about it, according to your own personal time frame and desires. It's a synergistic combination of content, technique, and viewer participation and understanding. (By the way, did you know that there is a theological doctrine of synergism? It involves the idea that salvation involves some sort of mutual cooperation between human freedom and the divine. I suppose that's what the concept of "grace" might be about. Perhaps it's as if someone throws you a ladder to salvation but you are the one who climbs up, or not, as you choose. Hmmm.)

A great painting is a silent portal with the thinnest of membranes. It's a portal that you can move in and out of, or not at all, as you wish. You can linger for a moment, for hours, or not at all. Time is yours to control. In this Bosch painting, you are welcomed to get a glimpse of an artist's idea of Hell. The good news is that you don't have to spend eternity there - you can take your eyes away any time you want to. I'll address this concept of imagery and frozen time later on in this blog. I think I need to think this through more fully.

"Landscape with the Fall of Icarus"

This is one of the paintings I grew up looking at, in one of the Time/Life Art Series books I kept checking out from the library.  There were not a lot of paintings to see in my town but there was a wonderful library with art books. The first famous painting I remember seeing in person was at a school field trip to the Detroit Museum of Arts. Please, people, do not sell off the paintings at the Detroit Museum of Arts.

This painting was long attributed to Pieter Brueghel, but since it's an oil and Brueghel worked in tempura, it's now thought to be a copy by a student. It shows the moment that Icarus, son of Daedalus, plunges into the ocean as a result of the candle wax melting off the self-made feathered wings (while escaping from a tower with Daedalus, the boy had defied his father and flew too close to the sun, thus melting the wax that held his wings to his arms).

I liked this painting as a child because I knew about the Icarus story and I was fascinated by the fact that at first glance, this painting doesn't seem to be about the fall of Icarus at all. It seems to be a painting about a farmer plowing his field, though how you can plow fields that steeply inclined is a mystery to me. Far away in the background, a boy with wings is falling from the sky into the ocean, and nobody notices, they just go on about their business.

As a child, you identify with the boy falling into the ocean and of course being an alarmist even then, I figured, well, yes, awful things happen all the time, even to children and anyway, you could see that the bird wing experiment was a pretty dumb concept to begin with.

But as I got older I got the point that is made by the poets that wrote about this painting -bad things happen, and yet the world moves on, largely oblivious. People keep planting the fields, people go about their business, boats sail by and a miraculous being who tried to achieve something incredible dies instead and it all goes without notice.

Of course, this is not the point of the Icarus myth itself. The point of the myth is to obey authority and avoid hubris, as if that is ever a fun couple of objectives. But the point of the painting is, I think, much more interesting. The artist has made a very interesting comment on human nature and how  we are the center of our own world, often to the exclusion of others and some very interesting events. If you don't doubt that we think we are the center of the world, go look at Facebook and watch the artists talk about themselves. "Well, enough about me, tell me, what do you think of my work?" (And yes I am just as bad, I guess.)

The real point of this post is that you can interpret a painting a million different ways. It's not just the knowledge and intent of the artist that matters, it's the knowledge and intent of the observer, too. A painting is a dialog. We need good, educated viewers, just like we need good, educated artists. If you don't know the legend of Icarus, how will you understand this painting? Well, you'll get something out of it, and it could be interesting, and you might be really impressed by the whole steep hill plowing reference, but you won't get as much out of it. If you didn't know the myth, part of the language between you and the artist would be lost. Ars longa, vita breva, etc. but ars gets a lot more breva if we lose a part of our cultural heritage. You could listen to the story on your headphones, but wouldn't it be better if you knew a little something about it in advance of your museum trip?

Now you'll have to go and Wiki the legend of Icarus if you don't know it.

There are a few excellent poems written about this painting. I'm going to write out the poem by W.H. Auden, "Musee des Beaux Arts", otherwise you'll be too busy to go and find it:

Musee des Beaux Arts

W. H. Auden

About suffering they were never wrong,
The old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position: how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.

In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water, and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

"The Laughing Cavalier"

The laughing cavalier isn't laughing and he probably isn't a cavalier, so you'll just have to accept that.

I know what you're thinking: "Frans Hals! Uncomfortably crass facial expressions, occasionally too slapdash, tsk tsk tsk,", but take a good look at this and try to deny that this painting can teach you how to paint.

Photo is from The Art Renewal Center

I think this is marvelous example of what an artist can do with paint. It looks like a tightly finished painting until you really start looking at it and then you see how the paint has been applied - broad strokes, then looser ones, layering, alla prima flourishes - it's just all there. He has modeled form beautifully and subtly but has also allowed his brush to dance around when it gets a chance to let loose, in the sleeves and embroidery. Franz has condensed some values and expanded upon others and has concentrated detail on the important facial characteristics. It's "about" the form and yet ... it isn't all about the form.

He isn't trying to impress us with excess detail and finish, though the painting is quite detailed and finished. He isn't trying to show off all the noodly little bits that you see when you  zoom in on something, he's showing us the parts that mattered, what he could see and summarize. He's still being sensitive and discriminating but he is having a little fun there, too. He's made judgment calls. He's focusing selectively. Look how subtle the value change is in that hat, it's a value 10 with a value 9 [on some scales, values 1 and 2, respectively - why are there different value scales?! can't artists agree on anything?] to show where the light hits, that's all he says in terms of value changes for black, the hat basically is an interesting shape setting off his (detailed, paleish) face against the thinly painted neutral background.

So, Hals is exploring form while painting something beautiful and sensitive, includes bravura paint application and textured patterning, fits it all into a memorable strong design composition and lures us in with that wonderful hint of an amused smile. Is this a memorable painting? It sure is.

I recently read an essay by a critic which gives an in-depth analysis of this painting. I can't find it and I have a feeling it's somewhere in my art book library. It's also possible I read it someplace on the internet. I'm going to go ahead and post this anyway and if I find it later, I'll edit this and let you know.

I spent a very long time looking at this painting at the Wallace collection in London a while ago. When I stand in front of paintings I try to have a sketchbook with me so that I can remember what I'm learning, and I learned a lot here. Usually I move aside for the ubiquitous folks with their headphones so they can peer in and examine the surface, or at least they pretend to. Sometimes these people just stand in front of me for a long time, just to stand in front of me, I guess. (Why? They even do this when the rest of the room is empty. I'm not there that long, I'm not carefully copying every single thing, I'm just sketching with a pencil and making notes to myself. I'm usually off to the left of the painting, or to the right...why can't people just... stand next to me? Is that so bad? ) Once, in New York, a horrible lady with headphones asked a guard to move me aside because she thought I was standing too long (over two minutes) in front of a William Orpen painting and I was interfering with the sequence of her headphone narration. 

I had a really nice experience at the The Wallace Collection, though. Try to go there if you make it to London. I can't remember if there were people with headphones there or not. While drawing, I looked up to see a little British boy, maybe, oh, 10 or so, timidly standing behind me with a notebook and he had his pencil out to draw the painting too - not as part of a school project, it was because he seemed to just want to do it. The fact that I was doing it made him decide it would be okay if he did it, too. I gently asked him to show me his drawing, he shyly did so, and we had a wonderful quiet little chat. I love artists.