Drawings by Chris Bellia

Leave no Line behind!

I am a senior citizen who has tried to teach himself art as time allowed in his computer career.

I had a heart attack December 2017 and had to have quadruple bypass surgery so will need a career change as I refuse to retire, perhaps now I can focus 110% on art instead of squeezing it into my life.

I travel as much as I can to study are including Bali, Venice, Rome, Florence, Belgium, England, Germany , Budapest, and Prague, mostly work related so I am always trying to squeeze in Art.

I am not a modern person, more interested in Renaissance and Baroque because I like allegorical art from the past and have an interest in trying to perfect 3D drawing, but keeping a more traditional look but not holograms, more like lenticular images.

Since I can remember I have always been interested in all forms of art and have a great collection of art in low places as well, which reflects the history of image making on paper in all areas that are not usually considered “high art”.

When I do get to travel I try to make every minute saturated with art and spend most of my time buried in art books when home.

Because of my “other” career, I have never had time for any school, so everything I learn has to be self taught. I have a preference for ball point pen and colored pencil more than painting and I think I am addicted to lines more than mass, color, or shapes, …lines to me are everything and each line as you create it is like its own little prayer, in a spiritual way more that a religious way.

Composition is everything so yes I can get better at balance, but I do not want to be driven by a need for photo realism or a heavy requirement andor dependency on light and shade, I am more interested in Line work like Durers woodcuts and Heemskercks engravings than heavy Caravaggio light drama, so Flemish woodcuts and engravings are mostly what I study, trying to preserve the energy of the lines more than mass and shading.

In this sense I am backwards, I want light and shade to take the back seat in favor of line driving things, if an images gets so blocked up with reality it can become a crutch, so I am more at home with Van Goghs linear approach to painting and well as Lautrec, shut off their colors and their lines still sing in black and white.

I like the format of the Drawing Academy and I am ok with the formal academic techniques but as a means to an end for composition, I don’t want to be Ingres, I don’t want to lose the sketchiness, so the Drawing Academy will help me finally have the time to focus on art, and add more structure , but I only want enough to make better compositions, I need to learn more about light and shading but more for compositional placements of lines than for photo or academic realism. I am ok that Durer knocked out the Book of Revelations in black and white, without depending on color or a lot of shading as opposed to Dore who lived for light and and shading but does not communicate the same energy because he loses it in the greyscales.

I want to structure design and balance but I don’t want to get lost in realism, Rubens for all the colors, never lost the sense of rhythm of the underlying lines, the energy transcended the color and shading, his art always holds up well in black and white. I would like to get a better understanding of academic are without getting lost in it, because even something like Holbeins “Dance of Death” works and Martin Schongauer, makes gothic linearity work without pushing it to over realism.

I think people should vote for me to help me get on the true track I need to be on, I cant go back but even with my health as it is I can make a value added transition, but from a pure art perspective (no pun intended) I think I can keep the linear tradition moving lockstep with the painter and charcoal traditions, I don’t want to reinvent crosshatching. but I do want linear sketchiness to be the backbone, not photorealism.