Sun Portrait #1

I hated the picture from earlier today so much that I had to make another one that I didn't hate. Of course I should have been grading the sophomore response journals that I collected a week ago, but alas...I didn't.

This doesn't look much like the person in my reference photo, but I took it this week for the sole purpose of using it as a reference photo, and I'm not entirely displeased.

Illustration Friday: Entwined

As I was looking through stacks of old photos, thinking I needed to find a box for them, since I'd given my old box to my son to take with him to college, I can across a photo of that son with a bunch of his classmates in fifth grade, after going to Star Base, or whatever it was called, the program where they go and be introduced to making rockets and stuff like that.

These boys are all entwined...happy, silly, together after three days of this intensive program. As together as they are in this moment, they have no idea that they will all shoot off in completely different directions.

Of these boys, one of them dropped out of high school and was still smoking a lot of pot and living in his mom's house, one of them became a high school football star (he played violin in 6th grade and a whole bunch of girls chose it too just so they could do orchestra with him, and then he quit the next year) and may perhaps being playing football at some small university somewhere (he's nowhere near big enough to play at KU), one of them ended up in remedial classes in high school, and may still be there for a second senior year, one of them shot and killed someone in a drug-related robbery and is going to spend the rest of his life in jail, one of them nearly dropped out of high school when his older brother committed suicide, but was saved by art classes, one of them is a very very very nice boy who works hard and is kind to everyone, and the last one (my son) just spent an intensive first semester in college, writing 16 heavy-duty papers on ethics and political science. None of them were still friends with each other by the end of high school because they went such different ways. But then, if fifth grade, they were a group--the boys of the class.

The drawing is terrible, but I'm posting it anyway. I'm hoping the next one will be better. This one made me Really Sad.

Music III

******* Here's another picture on one of the "blurred" pieces of paper. Yesterday I made a whole bunch more of these speckled on wet papers, and got some great effects which made me think of ways I could use those effects deliberately.

The problem with using sketches from my sketchbook as reference material is that they're a little vague on what exactly is going on with fingers (the sketchiness of them was just fine on the quick sketch, but nowhere near enough information for this) and what the lights and darks are (which I wasn't dealing with in the sketch, but on this I wanted to know).

But I'm happy to be making pictures, even ones that don't quite work.

ILlustration Friday: Music II

Okay....now here's the REAL Illustration Friday picture.

Illustration Friday: Music

It's not like I haven't made a dozen or so "music" pictures, and I have some cool ideas for this one. But it's been our local dance weekend, and I didn't have any time at all. This is a sketch I made of one of the musicians at the dance weekend playing accordion, which I am going to post temporarily, which I'm working on a "real" music picture.

New Paper

**********It's perhaps a silly thing to get excited about, but I bought a package of "cardstock" paper--not really sure what I intended to do with it--but when I opened it up, I was surprised at how SMOOTH it was. It made me want to draw on it--so I did, and sure enough, my pencil just glided over the surface....

Sombrero Guy

See...I have six or seven of these pieces of paper that I splattered ink on top of a light wash for the "blur" topic, and now I have to put something on them.

Accordion Guy #8

This is my reward for finishing the last class set of Frankenstein essays (I started four hours ago--ack!)--scanning and posting this little picture I made last night (when I was WAY too fried to grade essays). I now have two class sets of Scarlet Letter essays, and two class sets of Scarlet Letter tests, which are mostly writing and will take forever to grade. I'd much rather be making pictures (or playing music).

But this is another picture for the Illustration Friday. I "blurred" a whole bunch of pieces of paper with a light wash and then spattering ink on it so that it blurred in interesting ways.

Illustration Friday: Blur

I'm thinking about the blurring between reality and fantasy, or between this world and other worlds that we can't normally see. Between sleep and waking, between dream and the everyday. This topic makes me think of Charles De Lint's novels, where the OtherWorld is very close in many places to this one.

I'm not sure this picture at all captures that feeling, but it seems like it's been so long since I made a picture that was any more involved than the sketch I made last week (which I really really liked) that this felt really good.

Illustration Friday: Skinny

It seems entirely possible that being old and skinny might be the most fun time of your life. The children are long-grown, you're long-retired, and all your cares have come to pass. All that's left is to enjoy life.