Spider web

Morning and I've been sitting outside, listening to the cicadas and emptying my cluttered head. I made a few drawings and suspect them of resembling bits of leaves and seeds and insect found all around here in myriad spider webs. In the past week or so, Hal has liberated two huge and beautiful dragonflies that were snatched out of flight in high webs between the pine trees. We discovered them just dangling in thin air...
I also found cosmos blooming in my late-planted wildflower garden. It's a good day.

Dusting off the cobwebs

How can it be almost three weeks since I last posted a drawing???!!
How can it be two weeks since I last made a drawing???!!
I wish I could say it was summer easy livin' but its not, just plain old too much work to do for money and feeling sapped of anything bordering on a good idea...
I drew this yesterday in a meeting when I should have been paying more attention, but was thinking about nuts and berries.
But, I look forward to mid-September when I finish up one of my big projects and begin story boarding a new animation. Until then, I vow to get back on track here, updating this blog that helps make me feel whole. Ciao.

On the verge of being scary

Here's another of the slightly bigger drawings I've been bringing along this summer... again, it's two types of pens, the V5 very black and opaque, a cheap ball point used on top of that. They call it black, but it's gray with a purple/red cast to it in certain light. Last night I couldn't sleep, so got up and worked. Something so peaceful about drawing in the quiet darkness. Even a vaguely disturbing subject like this one loses its sharp edge, drifts silent and benign.
So, except for insomniac nights, I've no time to draw this past week and it hurts. I've acquired a huge bottle of ink and am dying to open it up. Will be out of town now until Wednesday Aug. 15, and hope to have something to post by then. I can feel the summer slipping by too quickly.

I am counting my breaths

And this ...

Yippee. We've got reason to celebrate.

Ahhhh ...

That's better.
To look back over this body of work, one could conclude, and rightfully so, that I struggle for balance ... between the dense and the minimal, between the inner and outer worlds, between clutter-mind and no-mind.
But it's transformation that I seek. I want nothing less than release from the heaviness of the physical world. I want a soaring spirit; a broad view of the universe; a path with no beginning and no end, that is not leading anywhere special. Simple existence.
What's different about making a drawing like this? It's quickly made, without second thought. And what's it about? Um, waiting to see the doctor, glancing up at his fish tank from time to time.

Hmmm ...

... I'm not sure this is better than the earlier incarnation, just more complex. I do like the difference in color, achieved by changing pens from a V5 to a black ball point pen. Transparency, negative spaces, motion, ritual and repetition. It's got everything.