Deborah Dendler Blogs

I'm continually mystified by the copious amounts of drawings and paintings of celebrities done by beginner or amateur artists. I realize they don't know any better, but still. I've already mouthed off about how I feel about copying photographs: ("G... 

Now that the wild asparagus season is over and I've eaten or given away everything that I picked, I'm mulling over the casualties of this asparagus season which was an odd one. A lot of the thin, young stalks in shallow soil on a southern exposure o... 

The first time I went picking wild asparagus with my brother-in-law forty years ago, I couldn't see any, while he seemed to find asparagus everywhere he looked. "You're looking with city eyes," he said. He was right. I had just arrived from downtown ... 

Not all drawing materials are created equal. For two color chalk drawings, I use Gioconda sanguine chalk and Gioconda black graphite. These are also called "5.6 mm. leads" and they're used in a lead holder. For highlights, I prefer white Conté penci... 

Besides chalk, my favorite drawing material is pen and ink which I use for quick sketching. I draw freehand without preliminary pencil construction lines; I measure by eye alone. I try to ignore the details and just draw the big shapes. The looser an... 

Some sculpture packing and loading operations go better than others. A couple of weeks ago, I loaded two sculptures on their way to a show in a museum more than an hour away. First sculpture, a fragile terra-cotta, went into the car fine. The second... 

I've been agonizing over a sequence of questions for so long that I'm starting to feel like I need some help. I'm confused about what shows to enter, and what to exhibit, and where, and why. What I need is a Magic 8 Ball for Artists, to answer ques... 

Last summer, I was cleaning out my studio and hauled out an old sculpture from the closet it had been parked in for more than 20 years. The sculpture is a student work - the first sculpture I ever cast in plaster, in fact. I'd kept it all these years... 

Like everyone else on earth, I have a website (deborahdendler.com). I am amused and amazed on a daily basis by how many visitors do or do not visit my site. For a long time, I've been mystified by two things: What's up with Russia? And, what's the p... 

I'm so excited! I finally did some drawings of a baby that don't look like Winston Churchill! They also don't look exactly like my grandson, but hey - you can't have everything. At least he doesn't look like he needs a cigar. 

I have to confess that I don't get photo realism or hyperealism. The whole pointing of creation is to make something new that didn't exist before. But in photo realism and hyperealism, the image already exists as a photograph. Why recreate it as a ... 

There was a time when the top art buyers in the world were also its cultural leaders. Popes, emperors, kings, and the aristocracy were the patrons of the art world, its trendsetters, and its critics. At the top of the socio-economic ladder, they we... 

I can't believe how much computer time goes along with being an artist today. If you'd told me when I was in art school more than thirty years ago how much time I would spend now every day on my laptop, looking up stuff, futzing with digital photos ... 

Where I went to art school, sculpture students were not allowed to save any of their sculptures for the first year. Every day you sculpt a clay portrait and/or figure; every Friday, you take it apart and put the clay back in the clay cans. After an... 

Deborah Dendler Living artist, not a zombie Education School of Hard Knocks University of Bad Life Choices Skills Made more than 14,520 peanut butter and jelly sandwiches Able to answer the same question hundreds of times, pleasantly ... 

The internet presence/public persona of an artist is all just make believe. I think I'm an artist, therefore I am. All the different social media are just different avenues of the big electronic imaginary playpen we're in. Or is it a fishpond? ... 

I spent the first thirty years of my life as an artist without writing a single press release. I was brought up to be unobtrusive, to never call attention to myself. The idea of promoting myself was so alien to me that I never even considered it. ... 

The internet has leveled some playing fields, and one leveled field is that some exclusive art exhibitions that used to be really hard to get into can be slightly more accessible now. There are so many opportunities everywhere that sometimes a good ... 

I have a really simple drawing tip for drawing on toned paper with two colors, but in order to explain it, I'll describe my whole drawing process from the beginning so you know what I'm talking about. It's not as complicated as it appears...  

"If you're not getting a rejection a day you're not trying hard enough."* Rejection is a built-in feature of an artist's life. You get used to it. Constructive criticism can be negative, which can be good for you. In art school, constant critiq... 

Anybody trying to create on a regular basis eventually runs into the problem of the creative well running dry, or, writer's block. I think it's important to remember that in nature, nothing produces new growth year-round, all the time. Blossoming, ... 

If you're spinning your artistic wheels, doing the same thing over and over again without inspiration, you're stuck. Just like a car stuck in the snow, mud or sand, you need to stop so you don't get yourself into an even deeper rut. The laws of phy... 

Winning awards, commissions, grants and kudos of all kinds are pretty much the icing on the artistic cake. Winning stuff is not a reason to work at art, but it certainly makes the ride smoother. I have to say that 2015 was a very good year for me. B... 

The art world (the galleries, museums, critics and their artists) is governed by the whims of fashion. Right now cynicism and spectacle making are in style; Jeff Koons and Damion Hirst rule. The current art world is like a nuclear arms race, everyo... 

The first time somebody asked me to give away some of my work, I was horrified. I was infuriated. It was a painting that wasn't dry yet and I wasn't even sure the painting was finished. At the time, I was having trouble with actual, physical theft of... 

To state the obvious, there are basically two kinds of artists' shows: solo and group. A solo show is a big deal. Exhibiting the work of one artist, a solo show focuses on the most current work the artist has produced. A special kind of solo show i... 

I used to think I couldn't afford to enter national juried art shows. Now I think I can't afford NOT to enter them. Partly, it's a resumé thing: you need new entries on your resumé every year so you have to show somewhere. Partly, it's a way of buil... 

Sometimes I wonder what is the point of applying to elite shows, competitions, grants and solo shows. My odds are not great. I'm old. I'm not cutting edge, startlingly innovative or snazzy. My chances range from "a snowball's chance in in Hell" t... 

“I’ve had the privilege to be owned by some truly wonderful animals. I had the two best dogs that ever lived, a border collie and her favorite puppy, and now I have the two best cats. Not sure where I go from here if my cats don’t live as long as I... 

Plowing through the monthly listings of artist's calls for entry, grants, etc., I came across one for an artist residency on Skopelos, an island off the coast of Greece. It calls to me. I keep thinking about it even though I added up all the costs ... 

Firing the kiln, patching plaster, mounting reliefs in frames, patinating sculptures - I'm busy getting my work ready for a solo show, which opens in five weeks. What makes this more complicated is that I'm also driving across the country in two wee... 

From May to November, I sculpt every day in my clay studio. I think of my studio time as my "Hemingway hours". The idea comes from one of Hemingway's novels, "Islands in the Stream", in which the main character, a painter named Thomas Hudson, says ... 

I started my “Rearing Horse” relief sculpture with a drawing based on Leonardo’s study for the “Battle of Anghiari”(see previous blog). Then I did a drawing study of the skeleton of a rearing horse, and then a drawing study of the muscles. Once aga... 

From Thanksgiving 2014 The end of autumn is complicated. Everything seems to happen at once. I try to resist the pull of holiday uproar to focus instead on the real celebration: the harvest of another season of growth. It feels like a natural t... 

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