Side dish No. 4, enhanced

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.
I have to stop myself from just blackening in the whole thing.
Leaving town again for a week. I'll be back to posting Thursday Dec. 6.

Just keep working

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.
This one? I dunno yet. I'm still not getting at the 'thing' I'm looking for.

Red light

I've been trying to stop before a drawing is done. Check back tomorrow to see how it all works out.

Side dishes

Thanksgiving in rural Mississippi. These were worked in Miss Betty's kitchen during the second and third football games I endured (The Packers won the game I actually watched). I'll be contemplating going bck into these during the week.

Happy Thanksgiving

Bigger, not necessarily better

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.
It's good to have a goal, which is to draw life-sized, free and easy and interesting.
On the road again, this time its Mississippi for the holiday. So, taking my sketchbooks and will post lots when I get back next week.

One step back

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.
It's been as hard as I figured it would be... still using the ink pen and china marker, but tightening up when I should be loosening up. Thinking too much and fearful... the best parts are the missteps.
As for these guys, too smudgy but looks like they're having fun.

OK, here's what it should really look like

Animal, vegetable, mineral

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.

Here's another one

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.

"Inspiration exists, but it has to find us working. "
-Picasso

Dig deep into the toolbox

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.
Alongside the deep (refreshing) contrast, I'm digging the sense of roundness and object-ness that the forms have taken on. As if they are etched porcelain, or plaster. Hmmm.

Mixed bag

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.
On the brighter side, my friend Wayne has a birthday coming up. I spent part of the day making small notebooks for him. Here's one of the covers, front, back, spine and end flaps. Way more fun. The images came from the Internet... weird what comes up when one plugs "naked gay man" into Google images. Yikes. I hope he likes them.

Tubers

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.

Just draw

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.
A friend asked me once how you know, when drawing, that you are drawing from your own sub-conscious self, or the collective unconscious or simply influenced by you exterior environment. I said you just have to trust.
But now I think it just doesn't matter.

Fire

The most interesting thing about this drawing for me was turning it around, viewing it from all sides. Really dramatic changes.

Flow and balance

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.

Work in progress finally finished

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?

Why o why can I not just let the work unfold as it will?

Work in progress

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."

Como esta?

A drawing of a "thing" morphs into a drawing of a thing in space... floating layering, changing, drifting away.

Petals, pedals, paddles

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?