Undersea creatures

It's big, it's messy, and I feel set free somehow.
Ebony pencil and paraffin... reaching back while looking forward. There's something so right about scrubbing away with that pencil right down to the nub.

Night fishing

This drawing started out as a map of my childhood neighborhood. I am surprised that it went figurative on me, but since I'm looking for new territory, I decided to go with it. i like the 'reflection in a pool' quality. And the organic edges. And the scribbling.
Exhale.

Mourning a process

I'd like to say I've pushed these drawings about as far as I can, but what really happens is I get more fearful - no, wrong word - more rigid, less likely to take a chance with them, less adventurous... and now they are less interesting.
What a drag. I think I need to give up the time-consuming ink drawing and get onto something freer and looser...
this process clearly needs to die, at least for the moment

Treasure hunting in the studio

I found an ancient can of blackboard paint in the studio and it prompted an afternoon of repetitive-chalk-mark-making... if I could I'd wear this thing.

Pondering creativity

This morning Hal and I were talking about ideas, where they come from, how to lay the ground work for more, how to recognize them when they do come...
I always say I can't make this drawing until I've made the one that came before it.
The thought process mirrors, so they say, the biological process of building nerve pathways in the brain. Thinking and drawing begets more thinking and more drawing.
But growth and change often seems to occur while I'm doing something else, crosshatching in a dark area, for instance, not really thinking about anything, but enjoying the physicality of drawing and the connection between the pen and the paper.

Halloween is upon us

Restless, though benign I think, souls are stirring the air around here. I can almost feel them wandering through rooms, going through the refrigerator, hiding my pencils.
This process of drawing – layering random ink-pen sketches with burnished china marker – seems to invite them to take form through my fingers, a writhing chain-link-fence-like sub-strata of energy.
I was working with a story recently at the newspaper about 'buckypaper,' how it's made up of carbon nanotubes that stick together (left?) to form super strong skins for use someday soon in lighter-weight aircraft and spaceships. I love how everyday experience and encounters filter through me onto paper.

Rooster on the windowsill

Bell jars and other vessels have been in my dreams lately. I seem to notice them all around me.
They're about holding onto something, maybe something precious, but probably something I need to let go of.
But I like them in my drawings, where I can isolate forms from the environment; saving them or saving all the rest of us.
Or perhaps this time the drawing really is just about that rooster on the windowsill, ready to crow.