Sleeping Girl

I made this picture last week, but it was riding around in my notebook buried under notes, until now.

Instinct II

This is the second of the "instinct" pictures that wasn't what I had in mind, but wanted to be done anyway.

Illustration Friday: Instinct

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This time I actually had something in mind...but every time I started sketching it, something else came out...so I pursued the something elses, and this is the first one. It's a bit crude, and rubber cement doesn't work very well for a mask, and the ink kept dripping off the pencil I was using to spatter the ink off the toothbrush, but it's a first step.

Birthday card

It seems like it was just yesterday that I was making birthday cards for everyone's 40th birthday, and now a whole bunch of people are turning 50. They're not the same people (the ones who turned 40 are now 45), but still.....

So here's a picture for a card I made for a friend who turned 50 on Thursday. She's a contradancer. But besides wanting to make a card for her, I wanted "practice" with dancers, since I make the buttons and fliers for our local dance.

I don't at all like how this turned out, but I didn't have time to start over....

SHE was thrilled, though....

Illustration Friday: Celebrate

,ca
Every time a fiddler plays, it's a celebration.

Being Deliberate

In Jos Smith's book The Pen and Ink Book, he (she?) says "For years Picasso deleted accidental passages that 'worked,' then attempted to recapture the effect intentionally. His reasoning was that something belonged in a picture only if he could include it at will. What could not be repeated had no place in his work. This approach, in which you become a student of your own drawings, is one way of assuring growth in your work."

This is exactly my goal (or one of them anyway)--to be able to DELIBERATELY create something. Most of my pieces that I like the best are accidents. The things I've been posting in the past several weeks are not.

Illustration Friday: The Ravages of Time

Illustration Friday: Time

Standing on the "bank and shoal of time."

Girl in the Dark Woods

I think I'm still massively confused over what I want to be doing in these pen and ink drawings. I'm first off trying to (somehow) join the figure and some kind of background. And to get the whole thing looking consistent.

But this girl...I'm not sure how she got so grim. A little scared, yes, but angry?

Girl in a striped room

So here's another thought....

Illustration Friday: Flawed II

I seem to be a bit confused about what I want to be doing with this pen and ink--whether I'm being decorative, or painterly, or what I'm trying to achieve--and the result is muddy, indecisive things like this was.

So I cut it up, because it IS flawed. He's flawed. His life is flawed. It was a picture of a very disgruntled person from East Germany as unification with West Germany happened too fast.