Introduction:

Jim Branscum:    1945 -

The following two paragraphs contains the information on me and my art work written in most brochures.  (I'll continue after you have read them,  Jim Branscum)

"Jim Branscum is a nationally renowned,  award winning artist whose works have been commissioned by a multitude of notables from within entertainment,  business and government communities.  His powerful bust of Waylon Jennings is pictured on the cover of the singer’s "New Classic Waylon" album.   His dramatic life size bronze, "The Three Graces", is permanently displayed at a massive commercial complex near Phoenix, Arizona.  A memorial commissioned by the state of Arizona to honor the veterans of the Korean conflict was designed by the artist and erected adjacent the state capitol building where it is viewed by thousands daily.

The artist’s reputation as a sculptor is truly laudable; however,  he is even more celebrated for his incredible pencil drawings.   Everyone who has seen his drawings is moved by his awesome talent.  The qualities of his meticulous drawings incorporate a rare and unusual depth and breadth reflecting a classic idealism that embodies dignity,  elegance and grace.  The modulation of light and dark tones, the contrast of values and the harmonizing of the objects and textures allow his drawings to be appreciated from a visual,  emotional and intellectual perspective."

With the exception of the two paragraphs above,  the information included on this web site is material I have written.  What is covered in this segment of the AIA web site is primarily determined by the questions asked of me during exhibitions of my work.  The most frequently asked questions concerning art are, "Why do you work in pencil?" and "How do you achieve the textures and continuous tones in graphite?"  To answer these questions,   I must take you back to the beginning of my career as an artist.

First Five Years:

For the past twenty-five years,  I have survived as an artist through what "purists" might call crass commercialism,  I sell my art work.  Early in my career,  I learned the maxim,  "If you don't sell,  you don't eat;  if you don't eat,  you won't create."  Because of the truth of that maxim,  I make no apologies for my marketing efforts which began at art fairs and shopping centers throughout Arizona. 

The first five years,  my attempts to market my work were more exhibitions than sales.  The number of exhibitions attended were determined by my savings.  When my savings were depleted,   I would revert to former skills (house painting, upholstery and cooking) to earn income.  When bills were again paid, with  little cash reserves,  I would return to the art exhibitions until I again had to repeat the process.  Needless to say,  I did not find "overnight success."  During this time I continued painting studies with Bill Ahrendt,  Alan Alexander,  Hal Weber and other noted Southwest artists.

The summer of 1977,  found me working in construction north-west of Chicago,  in Glen Ellyn,  Illinois.  I had a journeyman painter's card and a summer job in a union shop.  The pay was sufficient to allow survival while saving for the winter art exhibition season in Arizona.   This would be my last job outside my chosen field of art.  The event that changed my life and my career seems a little strange now, to have made such a major impact on both.  Elvis died. 

It was less than a week after celebrating my 32 birthday with a trip to the Chicago Art Institute.  I was already frustrated at my inability to survive as an artist and my lack of skill when compared to the great works hanging in the Chicago Art Institute.  It seemed as if any progress made during the production periods of my artistic endeavors were lost during the forced breaks to create income.  Although I had only seen Elvis in concert once in my life, I was connected to his music from the beginning song of his career,   "That's All right Momma."  The death of Elvis caused me to feel as if my youth had also died.  More than that,  I feared I would never be a success as an artist until I had the courage to stay in my chosen field regardless of the income it provided me.  My return to Phoenix brought a new resolve,  "Rich or poor,   I will always be an artist."

Pencil Selection:

I was determined to survive as a representational artist.  An honest appraisal of my work brought the realization that my knowledge and skills in drawing and painting required improvement.  For the representational artist,  the two skill are inexorably connected.  It is impossible to be a good representational painter without competent drafting skills. 

To improve my drawing and painting skills,  I began "chiaroscuro" (light-shade) drawing studies.  I had many medium options to create my monochromatic drawings,  graphite pencil,  charcoal,  pastels, conté crayon,  etc.  I selected the pencil.  The decision to work in pencil was made for two reasons;  because it was an instrument used by everyone,  and because of the transparent properties of graphite on paper.  In some ways,  I wanted to show that the medium used by an artist was of no importance to the quality or value of the work created;  however,  I still saw the pencil studies as a means to become a better painter,  not as finished works of art.  Over the years,  I have developed a love for the pencil as a finished medium.  My only objection to the rendering "style" that identifies my work is the time required to create it.  

Drawing style:

My  drawings are created in a slow rendering drawing style that is more akin to transparent water-color painting,  than oil painting.  The white of my paper is my highlight,  the brightest light on a drawing or painting.  All other values (the lightness or darkness) are created by layering the graphite over the paper.  The number of layers of graphite determine the deepness, or darkness, of the value.  To truly create a highlight,  all other values around the area of the highlight must be toned down. 

While my rendering style is similar to transparent water-color in that I use the white of the paper as my highlight and a mixture of graphite over the paper to tone the balance of the image,  I strive to incorporate the criteria used in creating an oil painting into my drawings--  opaque lights and transparent shadows.  Form is not lost even in the deepest shadows of my drawings.  Some say my work looks like a black and white photograph. While meant as a compliment,  I do not agree.  I record form the way the eyes sees form,   which is not the way a photograph records the same form.

This is a good place to talk about working from photographs.  Most,  if not all,  of the representational (realistic) artists I know utilize photographs in the creation of their work.  There are a few who "never" work from anything but life,  what is in front of them,  but these are the few rather than the many.  For this drawing series,   I could not get a healthy eighteen year old to sit for 150 hours,  it would be even more difficult to find models in their eighties,  nineties or a hundred plus years to pose for the length of time it takes to create a small portrait.  So,   I work from photographs that I take of my models and family portraits they provide for background composition.

While working with photographic references,  keep in mind that photographs are almost always distorted and have false shade and shadows (unless you have the skill of Ansel Adams).  The camera records light differently than the eye.  The eye sees form in even the deepest shadow,   most photographs lose form in the shadow.  Additionally,  the perspective in most non-professional photographs is not accurate or "true." Finally, anatomical proportions are also distorted.  Without going into more detail,   take my word on it.  You must create you own horizon and vanishing points and know general artistic anatomy to compensate for lens distortion,  and include form in the shadows to correct the film's distortion of light.   Do all this work on full size preliminary sketches then use a light table or a window to transfer the corrected sketch to the final ground (in this case, paper).  Now you are ready to render the sketch into a completed work.

There are two ways to achieve the deeper values in a pencil drawing,   to use a soft pencil and press harder on the paper,  or, using a harder pencil, to layer the graphite until the desired value is achieved.  I found that layering the graphite one grade value at a time allowed me to reach the desired shade with a clean transparent value that permits form even in the darkest areas of my work.  Also,  even in the darkest areas,  the light of the paper still comes through the layers of graphite.  These clean deep values cannot be created by pressing harder with a softer pencil.

Drawing pencils are graded to allow the artist to know in advance the value the pencil will produce.  The gradations are as follows:

     H pencils have harder graphite cores; 
     B pencils have softer cores; 
     Further, there are grades of both H & B pencils:

     H,   2H,  3H,  4H,  5H,  6H,  7H,  8H,  9H:  the higher the grade number,  the harder the graphite; 
     B,   2B,  3B,  4B,  5B,  6B,  7B,  8B,  9B:  the higher the grade number,  the softer the pencil.

In the middle of these two gradations is an HB pencil.  95% or more of every drawing in the Aging in America series is produced with an HB pencil.  I have found that softer pencils tend to smudge easily and will hide the "tooth" (texture) of the paper and destroy the transparent qualities of the HB pencil.

At the end of my work with an HB pencil,  I use 2B - 4B pencils to achieve the deepest values.  It is important to note that throughout my drawing process,  I use less pressure on the pencil than one normally uses to sign their name.  This is how I maintain the "transparent" quality of the graphite in my renderings.

Time Requirements:

The downside for anyone attempting to survive in the art world creating representational pencil drawings in the style I employ is the time required to render the continuous tones.  A small 11 X17 inch drawing takes a minimum of  150 hours.  Some drawings of the AIA project have take over 600 hours (Sister Malachy Culhane, AIA Drawing #11).  In the past twenty years,  I have never produced more than eleven drawings in a single year.  

Using pencil as a finished medium should not be attempted by those with little patience.  Another factor to be considered is that the tremendous time required to create drawings in this style make it difficult, if not impossible,  to survive on the income from original drawings alone.  Realizing this factor from the onset of my pencil studies,  I produced offset reproductions of my work to compensate for the time required to create the original drawings.

First Five Drawings to Present:

My pencil studies began almost as an experiment.  Out of ignorance of copyright laws,  I created five drawings while working from published photographs of the early south-west.  These drawings are not included in any listings of my work nor will they be included on this web site because they were not created from personal research.  Yet,  they are important to discuss because of the reaction at their first public exhibition.  I exhibited four drawings and was working on the fifth drawing at Phoenix Arizona's first shopping center, Uptown Plaza.  All four drawings sold at that exhibition.  Further,  Major General Lawrence VanBuskirk,  U.S. Army, Retired,  purchased the fifth incomplete drawing.  Even paintings which had been exhibited at many previous shows sold at the Uptown Plaza exhibition and I received four advance commissions for pencil drawings.  Since the uptown Plaza exhibition,  I have not produced a single original work of art that was not sold prior to its creation. 

My work is now included in many collections throughout the U.S. & Canada.  My original drawings are still reserved many drawings, most often,  years, in advance.  The value of my drawings have climbed from a modest $450, for General VanBuskirk's 18 X 24 inch drawing in 1977, to $10,000 for a 1997 pencil commission of approximately the same size.   However,  due to the medium,  pencil, and my drawing technique,  even with the current fee for my drawings,  income from my original work does not cover the production and exhibition costs of this project. 

"If it is not profitable,   why work in a medium that takes so long?,"  is a question I have been asked numerous times over the past twenty plus years.  The answer to the question, is in the "prints" created from each original drawing.  To provide the freedom to work in a style that makes it difficult to survive on the income from original art work,  I reproduce my drawings in limited edition reproductions (commonly referred to as prints).  If it were not for these "prints,"  the Aging in America project would not have been started nor would it have taken me to this point in my life.