{"id":4085,"date":"2012-05-31T13:33:01","date_gmt":"2012-05-31T21:33:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/?p=4085"},"modified":"2012-11-08T17:07:25","modified_gmt":"2012-11-09T01:07:25","slug":"comparing-writing-and-painting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/2012\/05\/31\/comparing-writing-and-painting\/","title":{"rendered":"Comparing Writing and Painting"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today I’m discussing some analogies between writing and the visual arts (drawing and painting). By way of background, here are links to a bunch of my drawings <\/a>(for Saucer Wisdom) and to my paintings<\/a>. <\/p>\n

(i) When drawing, I get some quick sketch in pencil, then ink it in, then have to white out pieces and redraw them. Or if I\u2019m painting, the same thing, I just rough it out in light paint and see if it\u2019s the right shape. I don’t actually have the ability to draw a person so they look exactly right on the first go. When painting I pick away at it with my brushes and colors until it looks okay.<\/p>\n

In writing I try and write a rough version of the section pretty quickly, then go over it and tune it, and then there will be things that don\u2019t work that I have to keep redoing. But eventually I feel it’s right. Versimilitude is a process, not a one-shot thing. And (side-point) photo-realism isn’t the only goal.<\/p>\n


\n[A likeable punk roadie for The Recently Deceased<\/a>, seen at the Anarchist Book Fair in Golden Gate Park.]<\/p>\n

(ii) In drawing, whenever there\u2019s a part I\u2019m confused about\u2014something tricky like two hands holding each other\u2014I end up having to use lots and lots of white-out. Or if I\u2019m painting I rub off paint and layer new paint over. And it ends up all bumpy and crufty and never does look as smooth and clean as the rest of the picture.<\/p>\n

In writing, the transitions or actions I\u2019m not clear about take the most rewriting and reworking. But I don\u2019t think it\u2019s necessarily true that a rewritten <\/em>patch has to be bumpy and crufty as does a redrawn <\/em>patch; in drawing the bumpiness is partly a result simply of the not-so-great physical properties of the white-out, or in painting it has to do with whether or not I bother to sand off the bumpy impasto layers beneath. But maybe gnarly cruft is okay too.<\/p>\n


\n[Street murals in Balmy Alley off 24th St. in SF.]<\/p>\n

(iii) When drawing or painting, I sometimes think that if only I could take the time to fully visualize the difficult passage then I\u2019d be able to draw it clean and right the first time. But often it just seems too hard to think, and I go ahead and draw it or paint it wrong, just so I have something to work off of.<\/p>\n

In writing, I\u2019ll often think that if only I could fully think through a scene I could write it much more effectively. But many times it\u2019s just too hard to think all that\u2014I\u2019ll feel like being active, in touch with the medium, so I just go ahead and write even though I\u2019m not sure what I\u2019m doing. And then I take it from there.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

(iv) In both mediums, I need to realize that something that might have the superficial <\/em>appearance of a finished piece, but that it\u2019s really still a sketch <\/em>or a first layer <\/em>that needs to be reworked. I\u2019m kind of surprised how prolonged a process it is to make a drawing or what I consider to be a finished painting. I hadn\u2019t realized it would take so much revision. By long experience, I\u2019m of course familiar with the huge amount of revision that a written scene takes. It\u2019s kind of comforting to see that visual art can be just as hard.<\/p>\n


\n[Clouds\u2019 Point of View <\/em>, painting by Isabel Rucker.]<\/p>\n

(v) My old art mentor Paul Mavrides says about art in general, \u201cIt\u2019s not the realistic style that matters so much. It\u2019s having something to say.\u201d\u009d And this makes me feel free to write a little more cartoony and sketchy sometimes. Or to be more expressionistic in a painting. And in writing this idea helps me fight my feeling of being inferior to a fine literature exponent who creates beautifully textured descriptions and aper\u00c3\u00a7us in a work that perhaps doesn\u2019t have all that much to say.<\/p>\n


\n[Copa Loca <\/em>ice-cream parlor in the Mission.]<\/p>\n

(vi) I worship the notion of \u201ceyeball kicks,\u201d\u009d as in the early cartoons by Will Elder in Mad <\/em>and Panic<\/em>. Elder\u2019s eyeball kicks are, to me, of a piece with the piled-on detail of Bosch\u2019s teeming works. A higher apotheosis is reached in the later Bruegel where there\u2019s still very much action, but the surface doesn\u2019t teem and wriggle, it\u2019s harmonious and integrated. And this I try and fill up the surfaces of my canvases.<\/p>\n

And Will Elder, Bosch and Bruegel have always been touchstone icons for the kinds of novels I want to write. Over the years I\u2019ve felt like my writing has gotten closer to this ideal. It\u2019s a matter of taking your time\u2026without losing the thread.<\/p>\n


\n[View of SF from McLaren Park, reminds me of the crystal city in the background of a Bosch painting of Saint Anthony (not the triptych one).]<\/p>\n

(vii) One problem in painting or in writing is how to suggest the endless levels of Nature\u2019s span and detail while only using a square meter of canvas or a hundred thousand words. Painting and drawing use the trick of perspective at the high end. At the low end, a painter can use the fact that the fractal structure of paint <\/em>is like the fractal structure of plants and dirt<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Writing uses the trick of narrative at the high end\u2014suggesting a universal theme. At the low end, writing uses the telling detail, especially the cunningly selected and seemingly random detail. At first it doesn\u2019t look like writing owns a shortcut fractal trick like paint-scumbling. But the fractal, multiply-linked nature of language is the Muse\u2019s gift to writers. I\u2019m thinking about the way that a word can mean so much more than it ought to. Just those few little letters hook into so many associations. A well-chosen phrase manages, like a skillful glob of paint, to signify more than itself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today I’m discussing some analogies between writing and the visual arts (drawing and painting). By way of background, here are links to a bunch of my drawings (for Saucer Wisdom) and to my paintings. (i) When drawing, I get some quick sketch in pencil, then ink it in, then have to white out pieces and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4085","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4085","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4085"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4085\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4443,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4085\/revisions\/4443"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4085"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4085"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4085"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}