A good drawing day... well, lots of drawing. This from the floor under the Christmas tree.
Yesterday's drawing leads to a whole menagerie of creatures... I think they might work well as cut paper animations. This is going to be a good year.
It's Christmas and we are flaking out, eating too much and watching "I'm Your Man" Leonard Cohen songs concert video, very sweet with lots of my favorite songs performed by young artists. Hal was working on a drawing and prodded me to "just make a one-minute drawing." OK, well here is one that took two Lucinda Williams songs to make. Hope your holiday has been as good as ours.
The trouble with drawing bigger is that it takes a lot longer. I get bogged down and stale, and I haven't any other drawings to choose from for posting.
In Red Hook over the weekend, I saw a drawing show at the Kentler Gallery, www.kentlergallery.org. Way cool and inspiring.
I was just lying on the floor drawing under the Christmas tree, as yet undecorated.
I was thinking of this as an under drawing (like an under painting), but now I will postpone its 'shroud.' Sometimes I have to live with a piece for awhile to know what it needs.
Bought some gold and white and silver pens... it's almost like drawing in color. Ha.
OK so I didn't spend days and days on this seascape... and I'm too interested in the ink pen I was using – how its quirks (blotches, scrapes, skips and drags) pretty much created the illusion of water without any real intent on my part.
Repetition of form and ritual mark- making yield sci-fi landscape ... or saddle horns ... or anthills ...
I spent a lot of time this week driving on slick and snowy roads in upstate New York. Yikes.
One of my teachers, Lorraine Fink, encouraged us to work in series. I like that since only one out of any six or so pieces really hits the mark. She said, when you go back into them, to work on the worst one first.
Carrying on. I experimented with blackening in yesterday's drawing, but decided against it. Bowing to the possibility that I don't know how everything is supposed to turn out.
I've been trying to stop before a drawing is done. Check back tomorrow to see how it all works out.
Well, I have mixed feelings about this work. Yeah, it's bigger, but less free. And less successful in terms of, well just about everything: composition, energy, spontaneity... back to the drawing board.
OK I know this isn't 50 percent bigger than the last entry, but 50 percent smaller... I regress. But, the bigger (16 inches square) piece is in the works and should be ready for posting tomorrow.
Drawing outside today. Hear it's the last warm day now until Spring. So, here's another work in progress. This one is 50 percent bigger than yesterday's installment... tomorrow I hope to make one bigger still. Maybe by the end of the month I'll be drawing people-sized again. Figuring out the tools and materials has stalled me.
So, Sunday's drawing finally reminded me of early work: big paintings from ODU, big drawings from Ireland. Sometimes I wonder how much I don't see. These pieces are much smaller, with a similar energy, more spontaneity.
I had this ink drawing that just wasn't working. I gave it up but kept going back to it... Tonight I got out the china marker.
Sometimes repetition can become monotonous. Marks and shapes come out on the paper and I think I know what I'm doing ... but then I never do.
There's always a connection between what I'm doing day to day and what I'm drawing. Sometimes the drawing comes first and the connection second. Like this drawing I made yesterday at the laundromat and a potful of creepy tubers found under the sweet potato vine today.
I packed a box with a couple of cactus ears. They are going to Milwaukee to live with my sister-in-law. In the last few days, all my drawings have cactus ears in them.
The most interesting thing about this drawing for me was turning it around, viewing it from all sides. Really dramatic changes.
Today I was working on a big drawing with a china marker, but this small ink sketch I did later in the day was infinitely more satisfying to make... Why? I dunno.
Yesterday I was happy to discover a subtle freedom in drawing within a grid. Today I blew it all by thinking ... Will it be boring if I continue on to the end? What if I leave it unfinished? What if I leave it just slightly unfinished?
Freedom to make marks without intention occurs within structure. Ritual, repetition, meditative drawing... there's something so right about drawing that line, thinking only "that line" and not "how does that line interact with the line before and the line after."
A drawing of a "thing" morphs into a drawing of a thing in space... floating layering, changing, drifting away.
Trying to capture a slow flapping – no, swaying – in the breeze, though it's too late in the season for new life. Must be ghosts then, huddled together for company, safety, strength ... seem sort of hopeful, don't they?
No-mind needs no broom to sweep away the clutter of earth-bound living. But I do.
Today the beach was flat and pristine. Receding waves left salt edges - overlapping, entwining and rubbing out each other as they flowed back into the bay. Nothing else, only a scuffed gull print here, a pearly stone there.
Today I find myself making this drawing I didn't know I would make, or even like... Yesterday I discovered something that worked in the skeleton drawing – conflicting directions that I usually intuitively avoid. But it worked, in a way I couldn't see before. So, the next thing I know it's creeping into other drawings. Is it workin', not workin', I dunno.
All this week I have been making Halloween drawings, well, illustrations. And also working at my day job - which is really a night job - which meant that there has been precious little time left over for yard work or ink drawings.
Fall continues to claim small living things, drying and scattering seed. We've had so little rain here, the process seems accelerated – too soon and too fast. I am resigned.
Today was such a good day. I finished a huge project that had taken up most of the summer. Delivered the CD and brushed myself off. Took a nap, grilled salmon for dinner, drew this picture while the laundry was cookin'. I thought it was about a nighttime sky... but then it sort of erupted.
