Contact
Email: rochlin@arizona.edu
Facebook: Jay Rochlin
Twitter: @rochlin
About
(Short version):
I retired from the University of Arizona after eight years as a teacher at the School of Journalism in June, 2012. Before that, I was editor of the University of Arizona Alumni Association’s magazine for 20 years. Before that, broadcasting, both radio and TV.
I took up drawing in September 2014 and focus on realistic graphite renderings of people, with a few animals included. I do some ink. I draw mainly from photographs I took myself and just a few that belong to other people. I also draw from life at The Drawing Studio’s open sessions.
(Long version):
Thank you for stopping by my drawing web site. I hope you enjoy some of the sketches. And, if you’re not an artist and think you might enjoy it, I hope you find some inspiration here.
I started drawing as an absolute beginner in September 2014 at The Drawing Studio (TDS), in Tucson.
I’m not sure what exactly motivated me to take that first class. I couldn’t draw. At all. Anything. My penmanship is barely readable, and I got bored at art museums or galleries. But still, at the time I was “drawn to drawing.”
I’ve always been a photographer. As a kid and in college I loved doing my own black and white – shooting, processing, and printing. I was fine having the lab do my color.
The transition to digital photography was slow for me. Today, I only shoot digital, and enjoy taking pictures with my fancy Canon DSLR. But the magic just isn’t there. I get the job done, but for me at least, too much is about the equipment, the computer, and the software. I was probably taking better pictures but wasn’t getting the personal satisfaction I used to get by creating a beautiful black and white print.
What, I wondered, would be visual and expressive and kind of the opposite of a full frame DSLR, I-Mac Pro, and Photoshop? How about a pencil, eraser, and a piece of paper?
I was fortunate to land in Paul Mohr’s “Drawing Fundamentals I” course at TDS along with about 10 other, mostly retired, beginners.
The first thing he has us draw was a cat. Mine was right out of kindergarten or first grade. Pointy ears, three whiskers on either side. Then a truck. Then a tree. Same results.
Then he asked us to draw a circle. Needless to say, my circle wasn’t a circle. And I knew it. And that was the key.
Paul understated, OK, your circles aren’t quite there. You can see that. That’s good. There’s your pencil, there’s your eraser. Now fix it.
We stood back and saw things to erase and fix. We looked at the circles upside down and sideways and always found something to erase and make better. This side was too flat. That bit bulged out. We asked classmates what they saw was wrong with our circles and made those corrections.
Within 20 minutes, we all had drawn perfect circles. We were believers. Then spheres, cones, triangles and pyramids. And utensils. And chairs. And bottles.
I took the next level class from Paul and repeated the entire sequence with another TDS master teacher, Deb Steinberg. And I learned a lot from her. Then a portrait class from Paul and then plenty of YouTube videos.
As happens, I began to develop preferences for both subject matter and media. I found myself drawn to black and white and to realism and to people. I found that I enjoyed pencil. I loved the simplicity. So basic. The idea that I could someday create something beautiful and meaningful with a pencil and a sheet of paper appealed to me a lot. Plus, I was getting better and enjoying the process.
About two years in, a friend, Jacquie Brailey, herself a fairly new artist, encouraged me to try a class with master artist Larry Wollam, through Pima County Parks and Rec. I did that.
Larry is a national class realistic watercolor painter, but he teaches in whatever medium a student wants to learn and grow with. He does and teaches only realism. That’s what I wanted.
I went through his beginning exercises. Part of his regimen for beginners is to set up still-life compositions – a shoe, grapes in a bowl, ceramic birds, masks, a boot -- and have students draw them. Other, longer-term students work on their own projects, usually from photos. Photos? I hadn’t seen that done in person before, and I said, “hummmm.” And the people using photos were creating some fine drawings.
In one session, I found myself working on a Raggedy Ann doll Larry had set up. I was not having a good time. I told myself, I don’t care a bit about Raggedy Ann. Why am I spending my time doing this? I imagine it’s good for me, but I don’t want to spend another minute on that doll. I want to work on something I do care about.
I told that to Larry and he asked, So, what do you care about. And I answered, People. I want to do portraits of people. And Larry said, OK, bring in a photo of someone you care about and would like to draw and let’s get to work.
At one time I owned and used a 4x5 film camera and I got to take a few pictures of my dad with it. There was one shot that I particularly liked. I made a print of it and brought it in. Building on the skills I learned at TDS and with Larry he showed me all kinds of techniques that allowed me to reproduce that photo using only a single HB pencil, an eraser, and a piece of tissue to do some smoothing with. The drawing actually looked like him and I liked it a lot. And, I loved the process and the tools. You can see that drawing (Abe Rochlin) on the “Family” page on this site.
I got re-inspired and have focused or improving my realistic drawing skills ever since. The feeling I get is much like the thrill I felt as a 13-year-old in our family’s garage photo darkroom in Nogales that my father had set up as I watched my picture come to life in the first tray.
On my drawing board, little by little the eyes begin to resemble the person whose photo I am drawing. Then the mouth and nose. Eventually some volume, some three dimensionality. The first tray in the darkroom might take between 30 seconds and a minute. Realistic pencil drawing takes longer. Lots longer.
The results are what you see here.