Occasional Musings and Scratchings

Skewed Sketch #21

2012-01-25T18:52:00.001-08:00

So these are still a kind of warm-up. I think I might try this guy again, perhaps several different times, in several different ways.....

Talker

2012-01-22T06:17:00.001-08:00

It's time to align my actions with my desires. One of those desires is to make art, and to get better at it, but that will never happen unless I actually DO it. What do you believe in? Those are the things you should be actively pursuing. They should not just be ideals somewhere in your head or heart, but you should LIVE them.

Illustration Friday: Twirl

2012-01-21T13:16:00.001-08:00

Ah, how many twirling dance pictures have I tried to make in the past couple of years. Here is one that I started almost a year ago, when I did the others, and never got beyond the sketch and the spattering. I wasn't sure what to do with it. Almost everything else I do has a lot to do with light, and this was just a spattered sillhouette again a mostly white background. But I thought I'd take a stab at it for this week's topic. Too bad I did some irreversible things early on that didn't work, but my motto has always been, if you don't like something, do something else to it. Well.....I am most definitely not done, because I still hate this, but I think I'll post it anyway, and change the image when (if?) I work on it some more.

This is all in the name of the practice I wrote about in my last entry.

I really need to start some new things. I haven't been doing much art. Too busy with other things, but one always ought to be actively working on the things that one has decided is important.

I'm also really wanting to use my dip pens again. I'm missing the variable lines....and the mess.....

Illustration Friday: Prepare

2012-01-16T07:36:00.001-08:00

This week's topic is something I have been thinking about a lot, both in terms of individual projects, but also your whole life trajectory. You have to know what you want, or at least what direction you want to be moving in, and then prepare for that, so that when opportunities arise, you will be ready. It's part of saying "yes" to the universe.

I was visiting with a friend yesterday whom I hadn't seen for a long time, and she has a part time job working for a book-binder, one who does custom jobs with beautiful beautiful original artwork. She was telling me how beautiful all his work is, and how much she loves every single thing in his shop. So how does one go from loving something like that to working for someone like that? Well, she was prepared. Not deliberately. Not saying "I want to work for this guy," but every single time she had the opportunity to go into his shop, she did. She asked questions. She obviously loved it. And one day she said, "I wish I could stay here forever," and he said, "You should be my apprentice," and so she did. She didn't get paid at first, but now she does. It doesn't pay as much as her other job (which she doesn't love), but she made room and made time to do the thing she loved doing.

And we're all doing that with art. We have paper, and art supplies, and we start projects, and make sketches, and do all these things, even when we don't really have time for them. I am making sure that I am prepared for something to happen.

Illustration Friday: Messenger

2011-12-29T14:20:00.001-08:00

I happen to think that musicians, especially folk musicians who have had no "classical" training, and who live very close to nature, and who play directly connected to the currents of the universe, channel messages from the gods. It's not in any specific combination of notes, or rhythms, or anything else that can be named, but it's there, deep in the music, and it can only be reached through it. Or by doing things like walking long distances in the woods, or floating all alone in the middle of a lake.

This was the last of the four African musicians that I started in February, and I just found it--the sketch and the splattered paper--waiting for all the ink hatching.

Illustration Friday: sink

2011-12-20T14:46:00.000-08:00

Okay, I made this picture just for this topic. It was supposed to be someone sinking back into a swirl of negative thoughts, a miasma. I am totally swamped with end of the semester grading, and trying to sort out all the messes I've let accumulate all semester, and feel like it would be all too easy for me to succumb. My model actually looked desperate, like there was no helping him.

But somehow he turned out looking positive, like he's totally enlivened, invigorated, by tapping into all the wild craziness around him, so it's not fitting my idea of this topic at all. And now that I think about it, that's the way I probably am too. I may feel desperate, and all too susceptible to sinking into the morasse (however you spell that word), but it just won't happen. I put on the emotional brakes, and ignore it, and pay more attention to other things--like the web of tree branches against the gray sky outside my window.

This picture also reminds me of my very first picture for illustration Friday, that I posted in January of 2009, almost three years ago. I've really come a long way since then, and made a lot of pictures.

Hardingfele guy

2011-12-19T19:41:00.001-08:00

I made this one months ago, and was never satisfied with it. I don't think I ever posted it, since it's bigger than my scanner. But it sat above my art table looking at me every time I came into the room, and I never knew exactly what to do about it, but today it occurred to me that some white pencil might relieve some of the dead space, and so about a minute and a half worth of white pencil drawing helped a lot. It doesn't look much like it here (using a camera with a flash isn't too cool), but I thought I should post this because I've started three other pictures that I'm very excited about, and look forward to finishing sometime in the next couple days....

Same Guy, Different Instrument

2011-12-01T18:16:00.001-08:00

I didn't realize this was the same guy, but it is.....

Illustration Friday: Round

2011-11-30T14:39:00.000-08:00

Our society values stick-thin people. Hardly anyone real is stick-thin. Most people are rounder, if not completely round. But roundness is no reason not to live one's life. Here is one such person, who played during dinner at a marvelous weekend event. No one there cared one way or the other about how thin or not a person was. People danced, made music, talked, and generally loved being alive.

Second new sketchbook this year!

2011-11-29T16:39:00.001-08:00

Way cool--to start two new sketchbooks in one year. I'm not drawing in it everyday, but mostly every week, and it makes me really happy.

So here's another "skewed" sketch, but there's something wrong with his nose (beyond the inevitable "skewing"). Alas.

But I really like this new sketchbook. It's really really sturdy, and the paper is really thick and really smooth--both very important. I don't know why they sell all these sketchbooks with cheap or rough paper, because I don't like touching them, much less drawing on them. Smooth is where it's at.....

Two in one day

2011-11-12T18:05:00.000-08:00

I'm not entirely sure I like the direction these are going in, but it does seem to be what's happening these days. They're feeling too fussy, somehow. But all of the reference photos are my own--yeah!--so if I ever become famous I can legally sell these pieces (haha). I've been wanting to do that too (take my own reference photos, not sell my pieces--who'd want them anyway. I donated one to a silent auction, and it went for $10, and I was really bummed, because the person who got it probably never even did anything with it; I mean, who would, with something you bought for $10. It's better to just give drawings away to friends, who somehow, miraculously, still have them up on the wall 25 years later). There are so many interesting faces out there, and I'd like to draw them all. But they require some pretty particular kind of lighting (not that this one has it, but the last one did). So of course I should take my own reference photos.

Skewed Sketch--Fiddler

2011-11-12T15:49:00.000-08:00

This doesn't capture it at all, but it's an attempt. I don't know where the days are going, that I'm not able to find time to do any art projects.....

Skewed Sketches--The Pope and his People

2011-10-31T14:13:00.001-07:00

Two skewed sketches I made during a very contentious, all-day meeting. I also made a doodle that I spent all afternoon on, which I am sparing you from having to look at.

My son and I both thought this bottom picture was really scary. When he looked at it, he said, "Now, that is really creepy! It almost looks like the pope." Well, it WAS the pope, and I agree is really looks creepy. Halloween? Definitely! Except that that is his real face.

Rasta Flute Guy

2011-10-31T13:58:00.000-07:00

Another picture. What to say? I have a lot of new portrait ideas brewing--got some great reference photos this past weekend, and can't wait to get started on them.

This one I did during an 8 hour car trip (it didn't take 8 hours). I had already sketched the guy, and put on the splatters a week (or more ago), but hadn't had time to do the actual drawing until then. The highway was bumpy, so none of my lines are straight, but that was just something I had to work with.

Salutations!

2011-10-26T15:39:00.000-07:00

Fuel for the soul is a connection to the land, not minerals taken out of the land. This is a farmer. His very being is connected to the land, perhaps not as closely as the Native Americans before the whites came, but certainly so much so that he would be lost without it.

Illustration Friday: Scattered

2011-10-17T19:20:00.001-07:00

By the time you are the age of this woman, your children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren are scattered far and wide. It has to be okay, though, because you raised them right, and they are doing exactly what they should be doing.

Skewed Sketch #17

2011-10-16T05:47:00.000-07:00

See, I'm still doing these; I don't know exactly why, except they're kindof fun. I made this one at a most wonderful barn dance in an actual barn. It was the most magical night--beautiful October Indian summer weather, a bright moon, fabulous band, a gazillion people (lots of newcomers who were loving it), and a caller who called really fun dances. But my urge to draw became stronger than my urge to dance at some point, so I sat on the corner of the little wooden stage where I could watch the band up close, and made this from a little picture I had cut out and had stuck in my sketchbook.

Shirt Guy

2011-09-28T15:45:00.001-07:00

The third of the three little portraits. Ugh. His face looks like a plastic mask. And I haven't done anything about the "Ferocious" topic for Illustration Friday.

Woman with Jacket

2011-09-25T14:48:00.001-07:00

The second of the three little portraits I started the other day. It's a gorgeous afternoon, and I should be grading exams. Alas....

Coat and Hat Man

2011-09-23T04:12:00.000-07:00

It so feels like fall, and fall is the time of opportunities. It's 72F in the afternoons, and 48F at night, perfect sleeping weather and perfect going outside weather. Yesterday after school, I swam laps, walked the dog in the woods, did some yoga, and started three little portraits. They all made me really happy, even though I don't think this turned out all that great. It was the PROCESS that made me happy.

Skewed Sketch #16--Mesmerizing

2011-09-17T06:11:00.001-07:00

There are several things I consistently find mesmerizing. One is drawing, making cross-hatching, watching the patterns emerge, the black of the ink against the white of the paper, watching the images emerge and develop, as the thing I'm drawing comes to life.

Another is watching patterns in nature--water going down a stream, leaves in trees, the ripple of grasses when the wind is across them.

Another is watching children. I never tire of that, even though my own kids are grown now. Perhaps it's a good thing that I'm a teacher, although I don't really think of teenagers as children.

And then there's reading. I can't even contemplate how much of my life I've spent reading (a whole lot less now than I used to as a child, young adult, and not-so-young adult), but reading is the ultimate mesmerization, as it takes you out of your own life and into someone else's life.

It's only accidentally that I have a post for this week's topic, as I was just making another "skewed sketch" at school while my kids were doing their MAP tests (Measure of Academic Progress), and then I saw that this week's topic actually fit the picture I was making.

Skewed Sketch #15

2011-09-16T04:45:00.001-07:00

I have a student teacher this semester. Currently she is teaching two of my six classes, and I have to be in the room while she is teaching, but I'm not supposed to be "interfering" in any way, so I sit at my desk in the back and do what? I'm supposed to be "observing" so I can give her feedback, but I've never been one to just sit and watch or sit and listen. I can't grade papers, because I can't do that when there's talk going on. That pretty much leaves drawing.

This is from a picture in the Lawrence Journal World.

Some sketches

2011-09-13T04:28:00.001-07:00

I guess I haven't been TOTALLY lax, even though I haven't "finished" anything. I have been drawing in my sketchbook, and here's a selection from the past month.

Dante and Devereaux in 3rd period Advanced American Lit.

Kathy's mother during a Lawrence Barn Dance Association board meeting.

Professional development day

Another page from the professional development day

Sherman Alexie from a book jacket

Some bearded Jesuits, maybe....

Old Woman with Cane

2011-08-10T11:57:00.001-07:00

Here's the second of the "forced" portraits, that I'm making in hopes of getting back into the "inspiration loop." I really like the quote (Picasso??--that sounds about right) that Susan put in her comments on my last post: "Inspiration exists. It just has to find us working." It's SO true--I think of that for all the arts--visual arts, music, writing. I like this one a whole lot better than the last one, but it also is still just "showing up." I'm really trying to be there....

Irish Pub Guy

2011-08-08T11:45:00.000-07:00

So...it's been really hard to get back into the swing of making things. It's the old you-have-to-actually BE there in order to have any kind of inspiration, and since I haven't "been there" I don't have any inspiration. So I started a couple of portraits, and this one really sucks, but I'm posting it anyway, just to prompt me to make one that doesn't suck.

Doodles while doing Swedish lessons

2011-08-03T12:10:00.001-07:00

What does one do while listening (and responding) to language lessons? You can't just sit there, can you? Does anyone? It's like talking on the phone--you HAVE to doodle. So here are a few of the doodles (done on the computer) from the first four lessons.

Sketches from Trip

2011-07-28T05:41:00.001-07:00

But I guess I have made a few sketches in my sketchbook. Here's a selection of sketches from the two trips I took this summer, a total of four weeks gone. I guess they're uploading in reverse order (I never can remember what order I have to do that). But now I'm really ready to work on projects again. It's just so dang HOT that all of my energy and initiative is totally sapped, even though I'm inside in the air-conditioning. Or maybe that's the problem, because I CAN'T go outside without baking, I'm turning into a jellyfish. I need to go running, garden, swim laps, walk, and it's just unbearable (I'm not a summer person at all, even though I have summers off).

Rapper

2011-07-28T05:23:00.001-07:00

This seems like the last decent sketch I made, and it was well over a month ago, a month and a half ago, maybe more. That's what I get for going out of town for nearly four weeks, and getting out of the groove.....

Shadow Fiddler

2011-06-08T09:50:00.001-07:00

Oh, the joy of messy materials! I haven't used a crow pen in quite awhile (since I got my technical pens), and I must say that it is a joy. I had been frustrated by "blobbing", but decided that was caused by the ink getting too thick rather than the pen nibs themselves. But this was such a pleasure.

I started three fiddling pictures (the other two are handanger fiddle ones, whereas this is a "regular" or "flat" fiddle.

I'm not sure that I'm done with this. Already I can see some more things I'd like to do to it.... (but if I make any substantial changes, I'll change the image here.....)

Illustration Friday: Shadow

2011-06-05T08:12:00.001-07:00

Hardingfele (or hardanger fiddle) music seems to me to come deep from the shadowy nights of Norwegian winters. Every summer I get to spend four days at the Hardanger Fiddle Association of America's workshops, listening to, dancing to, and playing this marvelous, haunting, meandering music, and I've finally gotten around to making a picture to try to capture some of that feeling. Here's a link to the Hardanger Fiddle Association of America website, if you're interested in checking it out: http://www.hfaa.org/ They have some good YouTube links.

Illustration Friday: Soaked

2011-05-30T05:20:00.001-07:00

Okay--so I know this is from last week, but I started working on this last week, and it's honestly taken me this long. I did a lot of little sketches to develop the idea, and then got my son to model for me, then made some big sketches, and then cut them out and moved them around, and then transferred (roughly) it all to a big sheet of watercolor paper, and then....it was all process from there. But this was way more planned and organized than most of my pieces are. I can see where I still could have used more planning, but alas, I am done now.

The topic was "soaked" and that's something you very much want to avoid when encountering skunks.

By the way, this is very large, perhaps 20" and 14 or 15". It looks better if you click on it to make it larger.....

End of Old Sketchbook/Start of New Sketchbook

2011-05-23T19:57:00.001-07:00

It's always such an accomplishment to finish a sketchbook. My goal used to be to fill one up in a year, so that I could show it all to my friend Jan when she came to visit from Portland, but I started this one in October, and I'm done now, in May. That's only 7 months, and the funny thing is that I really really like a whole lot of what's in there, and even the stuff I'm not completely crazy about, I still like in a certain kind of way. There are no pages that I hate (not that I'd get rid of them, but it's nice to not even have them.)

So these are sketches from a neighborhood mediation meeting. It was an interesting meeting, and I filled up five pages in my sketchbook, and now I've started a new one.....and here's one picture from the new one (this is from a picture, not from life, though I do know the guy....)

The pictures above are actually in the reverse order they should be.....

Fiddle Breeze

2011-05-17T04:10:00.001-07:00

I have to say that working on pictures makes me really happy. It feels like meditation, pure and simple. When I'm making lines, I'm right there with each line. I'm not thinking about anything else, but the lines, and the values, and the movement. I don't think it gets much better than that.

This was about an inch too big for the scanner, so it cut off some of the top and bottom. Maybe I'll see if there's a bigger scanner at work.

Nope. Still too narrow. But looking at this again, I'm thinking it's too fussy, too many lines. I might need to simplify.....

Bruce

2011-05-10T04:43:00.001-07:00

I really truly am going to start some "real" things soon, but these little portraits are at least keeping my hand moving in the meantime....

Chinless Man

2011-05-03T18:47:00.001-07:00

Another one.....

Leroy

2011-05-03T16:23:00.000-07:00

Not much to say. I decided that it was better to be making pictures that I wasn't all that excited about than making nothing at all. Someone reminded me a couple days ago that things that are worth doing are worth doing badly, which, actually, sounds pretty bad, but it gets me thinking about students and writing and how, as someone said (and I wish I remembered whom) that if young people knew what crap they were writing, they wouldn't write at all, but if you're ever going to get anywhere, you sure as hell better be doing it.

So while I may be lacking in inspiration and ideas, I am making a number of small portraitish drawings, and for the record, I took all the reference photos myself. One of my goals is to get all my reference material myself.

Suzy (Sort of)

2011-05-02T01:54:00.000-07:00

Not really anything to say. Pretty simple and straight-forward. This is a lot smaller than what I've been working on....

Fire Dance

2011-05-01T09:42:00.001-07:00

Faster this time. It comes back a lot faster the second time. I'm not sure that I should be spending my time on this (I have some pen and ink things I REALLY want to do, but keep getting diverted--by gardening projects, by work, by social obligations. Argh!

Old-Timer

2011-04-30T14:28:00.001-07:00

It's been so long since I've done anything on this painter program that I completely forgot how to do the simplest things, and had to get my books out. It seems that one has to keep in practice to not have to keep learning the same lessons over and over again....

(This really looks much better enlarged--click on it twice).

Illustration Friday: Journey

2011-04-21T15:01:00.001-07:00

(Ack--since when do the new topics get posted before 10 am on Friday? I was going to get in on the tail end of "journey"--)

It is of course nonsense to call this a "journey" picture, when it's obviously the companion to "duet" from a couple weeks ago, but it is true, though, that the making of this picture has been a journey. I made the sketch (on watercolor paper, because I'm way way too lazy and impatient to do sketches on other paper, and heavens, transfer them to the good paper) at the same time I started the "duet" picture, and as soon as I finished the first one, I started with the pen on this one, and was pretty happy with how it was starting to turn out when I left it on the diningroom table one day when I went to work, and the dog, who has outgrown eating kleenex out of the trash and chewing the fingers off gloves, still has a proclivity for watercolor paper (he didn't touch any of the other piles of paper on the table) and did a job on it.

Well, I found all the pieces (fortunately he didn't eat any of them, unlike the last time he took a drawing, and I never did find even a scrap of it) and taped them back together, and wasn't entirely displeased with how it looked, so I made a few addition tears for effect and worked on it some more.

But it was missing....something, so I put some watercolor on it, and then it looked....garish, so a couple days later I painted over that with a wash of ink which helped some, but still.....

Much pen-work later I'm declaring it done, though I'm not at all happy with it. It's better than it was after the dog first shredded it and after I put the water color on it, but still....

So that's this picture's journey.

The Real Duet

2011-04-08T04:40:00.000-07:00

I'm going to cheat on this one. I made it for the "duet" topic, but I'm going to link it to the "bottle" topic for Illustration Friday. Here's my excuse. How do you "bottle" a song that someone sings? You record it, obviously, which is all well and good, but unfortunately, in today's society, far too many people only listen to recorded music, and not live music, or even worse, don't make music themselves at all. So perhaps these things SHOULDN'T be bottled..... Well, the color is all whacky because this is way too big for the scanner (it's just black ink on whitish paper) and thus taken with a camera with the white balance evidently off, but here is the REAL duet. I played hooky from school yesterday, and took the dog running through the woods, and worked on art projects all afternoon.

Illustration Friday: Duet

2011-04-07T09:25:00.001-07:00

This has been the most beautiful Illustration Friday topic yet. I have absolutely LOVED the illustrations--both the musical ones, and the nature ones (owls, bales of hay, etc.) and the abstract ones. Being someone who makes music pictures, I was really wanting to make a really nice one (and perhaps may), but instead I'm posting a quickie little funky drawing, mostly just to post something. I'm not done with this topic--either making something or looking at people's marvelous postings, but alas, it's already Thursday.....

Cultivate Joy #3

2011-03-29T20:08:00.001-07:00

So here's the third one. I'm pretty pleased. I think I'll make all three of these into cards, though I don't know if I'll give them to the people in the pictures, because they don't very much look like them. I took liberties.....

Cultivate Joy #2

2011-03-23T15:36:00.000-07:00

Here's another dancing picture. I started four all at once. This one taught me (reminded me, really, because I DID know this before) to not do things in the negative space that you're not going to do in the positive space so that you don't have the negative space being one kind of thing and the positive space being another.

Having said that, though, I do love the dancing couple.....

Illustration Friday: Cultivate

2011-03-22T20:42:00.001-07:00

Cultivate joy in all you do! I had the pleasure of attending a period ball this weekend, and was amazed all over again about the joy in the dancers. EVERYONE was smiling as they danced. They beamed at each other, and I thought, "YES! This is the way that all of life should be." Dance is a good way to do that.

(The image looks much better if you click on it to make it larger.)

Color Girl

2011-03-15T20:54:00.001-07:00

I can't say as I particularly like it. I was trying something new, and it wasn't working AT ALL, so I started adding pen, which helped some, but not, perhaps, enough. Ugh.

I've been told to quit drawing!

2011-03-11T14:40:00.000-08:00

Well, someone finally told me to quit drawing them. I've been drawing people at meetings for years, and no one has ever said anything, or looked uncomfortable, but today someone did. She said that it was creepy and to cut it out. I was quite taken aback. And now I feel self-conscious about it. I've been doing it for years..... Do you think most people don't like it?

Some more Skewed sketches

2011-03-11T14:33:00.001-08:00

More sketches done at school, when things were a little slow. I spent maybe 20 - 30 minutes on each one. There's nothing terribly exciting about them, but it seems like a long time since I've made anything.

Old African Horn Guy

2011-03-01T14:03:00.000-08:00

Here's the third one, though now that I've scanned it I see some things I need to "fix" so I guess it's not quite done....

Wavy African Flute Guy

2011-02-27T09:58:00.001-08:00

Here's actually the first of the four I started the other day. This is the one without the mask and spatters (obviously).

Cow Horn Man

2011-02-25T05:05:00.001-08:00

When he plays his horn, the children swarm. The five notes of the horn drift across the land and stir everyone's souls. Flies buzz, the adult settle back into their tasks, and everyone feels more connected to each other and the world than they had been before.

I finally started some new pictures, four in all. Is this mass production? I sat around for awhile two nights ago and made sketches, and then put the mask on. The next morning (yesterday), they were all dry, so I did the splatters with the toothbrush, and then yesterday evening that was all dry, so I rubbed the mask off of all three of them (one of them I didn't mask and splatter), and used the technical pens. I must say I'm a bit pleased.

Guitar Guy

2011-02-21T14:56:00.000-08:00

I need to be making pictures! It's so hard to start them. Too much going on. Too much stress. Too much tension. I do so much better when I can exercise every day, when I get enough sleep, when I can work in my garden, and when I can MAKE ART!

But as far as this week's Illustration Friday topic goes--LAYER--almost all of my pictures are layered. I start with a pencil sketch, then use a mask over the areas that are going to be white, and then spatter the whole thing with ink, then take the mask off, and use technical pens for the rest. I love layers. I love texture.

I don't particularly like THIS picture, but it's what I do. Layers produce texture, and life is all about textures. Life is not a clear clean arrow through time, but a thick texture of experience.

Skewed Sketches #10 and #11

2011-02-12T07:11:00.001-08:00

More of these "skewed" sketches. I would like to do one every day, but it seems two per week is about my limit. Even though they sometimes don't turn out so well, I'm learning a lot by doing them. These are both from photos in the newspaper, though I seriously doubt anyone would be able to recognize them. Certainly the people IN the photos would never say, "hey, that's me" if they saw these sketches.

Portrait with Hat

2011-02-06T05:54:00.000-08:00

,Soooooo> What does one say? I started this at the same time as I started the one I posted yesterday, and I kept hauling it to school with me every day, but never worked on it. Last night we went to a friend's house, and after dinner, instead of playing music with everyone I sat on the couch and did this. Very satisfying--to listen to fabulous old time music and work on a pen and ink drawing. This is part of the "portraits of interesting looking people" project, mostly for the purpose of developing my pen and ink skills, but also because they're interesting-looking people.

Disgruntled Fiddler

2011-02-05T15:03:00.001-08:00

I have NO idea what to do to "finish" this. It might just have to sit on my wall for awhile, and hopefully, after a few days of fresh looks, I might come up with some ideas. (This one is a LOT bigger than the others....)

Joyous Fiddle Guy

2011-02-01T19:20:00.001-08:00

One thing the technical pens are prompting in me, especially with larger pictures, is tightness, and that's something I'd really like to avoid. I know this doesn't LOOK like a tight drawing, but really it is, though I think I overcame it somewhat. And what takes such a long time isn't actually time spent on a drawing, though I did spend a fair amount of time on this, but finding the time (or the wherewithall) to work on them.....

Illustration Friday: Surrender

2011-01-28T18:36:00.001-08:00

I surrender!

I MUST do more art! It's driving me crazy not too. I'm still in love with my technical pens, but it's taking me forever to finish any pictures. I started this one over a week ago.

Skewed Sketches #8 and #9

2011-01-22T05:08:00.000-08:00

My entertainments...finding a photo (usually in the newspaper) that has SOMETHING about it that interests me--and that usually has to do with light, or wrinkles, or expression (preferrably all three), and then make one of these "skewed sketches". Starting with something like a blind contour, and then filling in with the rendering in ink.

Joyous Girl

2011-01-21T04:54:00.001-08:00

I guess I'm not going to get to any chickens this week for Illustration Friday. It's a shame, as I was looking forward to making a chicken picture. An actual literal chicken. They're fascinating creatures.

But in the midst of this week, totally stressing about how I'm going to send TWO kids to college next year, especially one who I don't think is ready for college, I was looking for something happy. A happy image anyway, which is silly, because working on ANY picture, even if the content is grim, makes me happy.

Skewed Sketches #6 and #7

2011-01-15T07:58:00.001-08:00

Two more "skewed sketches." I've been doing these at school, when the kids are working on various things and the few minutes here and there when I don't have anything else I need to be doing.

Illustration Friday: Deja Vu

2011-01-10T16:39:00.001-08:00

*******I am totally ignoring the topic this week, because I REALLY wanted to post something. This is actually the second "real" drawing for the resolutions topic--to LIVE so that when it comes time to die you won't find that you haven't lived at all. These folks are LIVING, which is what we should all be doing, all the time. Living in the moment, because this moment, NOW, is all we really have.

It's funny, though, how some moments seem like we've lived them before. There might be some kind of biological, or biochemical explanation for that feeling, but I don't remember it. It seems somehow, in my mind, tied to dreams.....

To Live #1

2011-01-08T11:24:00.000-08:00

This is one of two of the "real" pictures for last week's Illustration Friday, the one about resolutions. It goes with this part of the poem by William Cullen Bryant:

So live, that when thy summons comes to join
The innumerable caravan, which moves
To that mysterious realm, where each shall take
His chamber in the silent halls of death,
Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night,
Scourged to his dungeon.....

Illustration Friday: Resolutions

2011-01-06T05:23:00.000-08:00

This is not the picture I'm wanting to put up, but I've only begun the "real" resolution pictures, and this is a little doodle I did in the meantime.

Here are a couple quotes worthy of resolutions:

Thoreau, who "went to the woods because [he] wanted to live deep and suck the marrow out of life, to put to rout all that was not life, and not, when [he] had come to die, discover that [he] had not lived."

and William Cullens Bryant in his poem "Thanatopsis":

I can deal with resolutions like that.

Nyckelharpa Angel

2010-12-24T09:24:00.000-08:00

Ridiculously, I was hoping that this week's topic would be "angel", since it was Christmas Eve and all and I was working on an angel picture, but I'm going to post an angel anyway, since they seem to go with winter. You make snow angels, and you sing about angels in Christmas carols, and angels are much more on your mind than in the muggy summer days.

This is a nyckelharpa angel. A friend of mind commented on an earlier picture ("Fiddle with the Devil") that the fiddle is always associated with the devil, and was banned in the churches of many European countries, the nyckelharpa is often depicted with angels. There are tapestries in old churches showing angels playing nyckelharpa. Of course my friend is a nyckelharpa player rather than a fiddler, so he might be a bit biased.

So this is my nyckelharpa angel. It brings to mind more lines, my favorite lines from "It Came Upon a Midnight Clear"--about "the angels bending near the earth to touch their harps of gold", and :"the world in silent stillness lay, to hear the angels sing".....

Illustration Friday: Mail

2010-12-22T08:41:00.000-08:00

Okay....so this one requires some explanation. Well, maybe not "requires" but I'm going to give it anyway. For the topic of "mail," I thought of angels sending messages down to earth, only people have to be open to receiving them, and so I started sketching what that might look like. And once I started sketching (in pen, because that's what I do--I was in the back seat of the car driving to Kansas City to shop for a coat for my son, who was driving), I immediately thought of my all-time favorite poem, "God's Grandeur" by Gerard Manley Hopkins, and an image from the end about how the holy ghost is bent over the world with "warm breast, and ah! bright wings." So this is it. It's a doodle, done almost entirely in the car, and it is what it is.

Here's the whole poem:

THE WORLD is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

Fiddle with the Devil

2010-12-18T06:35:00.000-08:00

Nothing like being on vacation, where you STILL wake up at 5:15 (what's with that anyway? I was up watching a movie until 11:45....), but because you don't have to go to go running in the dark in order to get to work on time, you can spend three hours making a picture, and making gingerbread. Pretty luxurious, if you ask me.

This is the opposite of yesterday's fiddle picture, where the music is wafting all the stress away. This is musician as absolutely possessed.

Fiddle Bliss

2010-12-17T04:53:00.000-08:00

***************The joys of pen and ink, and washes, and toothbrush spatters.....Last night the choice was a) grade Huck Finn exams or b) drink a Free State Brewery copperhead ale and make a picture. No contest, really.

The title comes from the total stress I'm feeling in my life. It's wreaking havoc with my body and state of mind. All that's keeping me sane is exercising, making art, and playing music. All three of those melt stress away....

Illustration Friday: Phenomenon

2010-12-15T05:51:00.000-08:00

***************I am always loathe to make a new post after a post that I really really like, because anything else is always disappointing. But then I would never post again, and I can't have that.

So what these are is dream-sketches. Dreams are a phenomena that no one has ever been able to adequately explain. I'm taking them as mini-assignments. You have a dream, and the dream has images, but also has a feeling. So those primary images and that feeling is the starting place. How does one illustrate such a thing? Well. Here are three dreams from the past few weeks. I'm actually a little bit pleased with them, because they all capture the feeling I had in the dream. And the one about socializing under the stairs actually looks like the space under my stairs, even though I drew it at someone else's house. I guess I know what the space under my stairs looks like. It was in my dream!

Illustration Friday: Prehistoric

2010-12-05T09:52:00.001-08:00

With the speed at which technology is changing, it makes the older people in our society seem prehistoric somehow. My grandmother and cell phones? Well....

Meeting Sketches

2010-12-05T09:46:00.000-08:00

I'm so not a meeting person, yet alas, I have meetings I'm obligated to go to. Fortunately, no one seems to mind me drawing them. I'm discreet, I hope. I don't stare at their faces or anything, but I'm sure they know that I'm doing it. Occasionally someone will ask to look at one, but for the most part no one says anything. I wonder if they're humoring me like they might humor a child with no social skills....

Piano Jan

2010-12-02T14:38:00.000-08:00

So...I've been thinking about "savour" pictures all week, and haven't made the "big" one that I'm wanting to make, but here's a smaller one in the meantime. I've been missing the messiness of my regular pens, so made some spatters first, but then when the stupid pen starts dripping blobs of ink, I wonder what in the world I'm thinking..... I added some additional blogs in hopes of evening things out, but I don't think that worked particularly well. So it is what it is, something squarely in the middle between like and detest. Something to put in a drawer and not do anything with....

So the Illustration Friday idea is that musicians SAVOUR the music they make. Always.

Skewed Sketch #5

2010-12-01T15:32:00.001-08:00

I really need to find time to start some new pictures. I really want to do the Illustration Friday topic, savour, but need to to start. Here's another "skewed" sketch I did in school while my students were working on projects. These are gratifying, but not the projects I WANT to be working on....

Looking GIrl

2010-11-26T09:26:00.000-08:00

Another technical pen drawing, this time on textured paper for making acrylic paintings. What clean clean lines that makes (way better than the printer/copying paper I did my last drawing on).

Obscured #1

2010-11-24T10:03:00.001-08:00

I have been thinking and thinking about how to sneak this picture in under the topic "sneaky," and it really was this Illustration Friday topic that got me thinking about making the picture in the first place, but this boy is definitely NOT sneaky. He may be obscured by some very strange plants (and they ARE real--I drew them from a photo in one of my perennials books), but he is very present in the world.

This is another exercise from Bert Dodson's book Keys to Imaginative Drawing, where you make some kind of drawing of plants (or, as he suggests, tangled clothesline) and then photocopy it several times and draw some people behind it. This is my first one. I spent several hours on it yesterday, but I'm very pleased how it turned out.

Skewed Sketch #4

2010-11-19T07:51:00.001-08:00

I'm having a lot of fun with these. I can do them even though I feel like crap (sick for the first time in many years), and I can do them at school while my students are watching a movie, and I'm really really really liking the clean lines from the technical pens.

Skewed Sketches

2010-11-17T15:58:00.000-08:00

So....I bought some technical pens, which I really can't afford, but damn, it's hard to resist art supplies. I also bought some arty kinds of books. This is an exercise from one of them--Keys to Imaginative Drawing by someone Dodson. I have his other book, Keys to Drawing, which I think is one of the best drawing books around.

The idea here is to push yourself away from absolute representational realism into more manipulation of images. For the exercise, you take a photo (or a real person) and do a blind contour drawing or very quick sketch, and then use those distortions as the outline and do as realistic rendering as possible from the photo or person, but the whole thing is skewed. I actually really really like these. I used my new technical pens.

Afterwards #2

2010-11-12T15:55:00.000-08:00

The party is over, the dishes washed, and it will soon be time for bed. But a good time was had by all!

Illustration Friday: Afterward

2010-11-08T02:55:00.000-08:00

No matter how good or bad an experience you have, there is always an afterward, a time when it is just you, with your head, your thoughts, your emotions, and you will either celebrate or mourn; in either case, it will be a kind of let-down, because it's just the rest of your life, and though it may not seem like it at the time, it's just as real as what you're missing.

Spent #2

2010-11-05T15:20:00.001-07:00

Well...this one's not much better. The dog is better, though, and I think I'll go get some ink or other REAL art supplies out!

Spent

2010-11-04T04:15:00.000-07:00

I know that this composition is pretty static, but this is how I feel after a spending and evening late into the night at dog-emergency-room. I don't believe in heroic (and expensive!) measures to save the lives of dogs, but my dog impaled himself in the abdomen on something while chasing a squirrel up an oak tree, and we had to do something.....

Vocabulary Words (& random doodles)

2010-10-27T17:46:00.001-07:00

Another wonderful way to WASTE time! Actually, no, this is something I've been thinking about doing for many years....making pictures for sophomore vocabulary words. So one of them I made on a big index card at school with a ball point pen (while my sophomores were writing in their response journals) and the other, much less satisfactorily, digitally. The third image here is a doodle I made during Writer's Club (of which I am a sponsor) during a very animated discussion about the newest plot developments of the collaborative story the kids are working on (you can check it out at http://writinglikemad.blogspot.com/).

Dance weekend buttons

2010-10-24T09:20:00.001-07:00

One nice thing about making things digitally, on the computer, is that the dog can't chew them up. He doesn't chew shoes, or socks, or gloves, or books, or musical instruments, but for some reason he likes watercolor paper, and no matter how well I feel I've put things away, he pulls out those pieces of paper and shreds them. Or at least partially shreds them. I have a lot of things now with corners missing. And I'm completely missing two pieces. I don't know where he's taken them, unless he's completely eaten them, leaving not even a scrap of paper.

But he can't do that with these.

I've made buttons for our local dance weekend for the past several years. Usually I do drawings, and then scan them and add the type. This time I did it all on the computer. It was actually really fun.

As I was looking for images of leaves on Google Images, I thought "This is really stupid--it's fall and there are a gazillion beautiful leaves out there." So I got some and scanned them. MUCH more satisfying.

The different colors are for different folks--all weekend people, part-time people, and then the band and board members.

Illustration Friday: Spooky

2010-10-20T04:54:00.001-07:00

Aha! I got this one "done" (or sortof done anyway) this week too. I should have just waited to post this week's Illustration Friday picture.

This was from a sketch I did maybe six or seven years ago. I always meant to do something with it, but never have before.

I'm not exactly satisfied with this, and may try to again with a traditional medium.

Illustration Friday: Transportation

2010-10-18T15:32:00.001-07:00

I know, I know, I'm a week late here, but that's just the way it's going. I actually started this last week, but then kept ditzing with it, and now, when I should be finishing up a picture for "spooky", have decided this is done, at least for now.

I see this topic more as "transported" than "transportation." People are transported by their music.

Sketches

2010-10-08T04:29:00.001-07:00

Here are some sketches from the past week or so. I'm not meeting my goal of a drawing every day, but it's sure better than nothing. I especially like the cedar tree. I normally don't have the patience for that kind of sitting and looking at details, but I'd taken my American Literature class out into the woods to write about nature (we'd been reading Walden), and they had all disappeared, and I was sitting on a rock for a good half hour, and so I actually took the time. I'm never disappointed when I do drawings like that, and really should do them more often.

Illustration Friday: Beneath

2010-10-07T04:24:00.001-07:00

This topic makes me think of Edgar Allan Poe, who thought that beneath the face of the everyday lay the dark world of the human psyche, with all its fears and insanities. Not everything he wrote was twisted, with narrators on the verge of madness, but it was always close enough.

Just for the record, this is NOT the way I feel in my everyday life.

But here it is, for this week's topic.

New Sketchbook

2010-09-24T10:39:00.001-07:00

I FINALLY finished the last page of my old sketchbook that I'd been carrying around for over a year. The cover was falling off, and the pages were pretty tattered.

It's so exciting to start a new sketchbook. It's the same kind as the old one, with thick smooth paper, but it's all possibility still. This is my first drawing in it! My goal is to draw in it every day.

I love how many people are so themselves--despite current trends. They may be perceived as old-fashioned, and perhaps they are, but they are not being concerned with that. They're just going about their lives, doing what they do, and being who they are. This character strikes me that way.

Illustration Friday: Acrobat

2010-09-23T19:44:00.000-07:00

I had the idea, I found source photos, I made three sketches, and I was going to do this in pen and ink, but to play around with the composition, I scanned the three sketches, and moved them around, and then thought, what the heck--what can I do with this digitally. I think I'll still do an ink version, though, since I'm so in love with ink.

Immovable #2

2010-09-20T16:43:00.000-07:00

Here's the other picture I started for Illustration Friday, whenever that was, for the topic "immovable". Couples are sometimes immovable in their interactions with each other.

This is another study in expressions. It's subtle, but I hope their set lips and rigid expressions show, at least a little bit.

House Concert Sketches

2010-09-12T18:28:00.000-07:00

Marvelous house concert--friend John Anderson from Australia sang all sorts of wonderful songs. He looked pretty funny with his head and face all shaved off though (notice the before and after pictures), and I discovered while making these sketches that I can't draw and listen to poetry at the same time. I could listen to songs, but when another friend read a couple poems, none of it registered, even though I was only making hatchings in a dark area and not really drawing properly. Interesting way the brain processes things.

Wacky Sortof Self-Portrait

2010-09-02T21:07:00.000-07:00

So....I'm doing some of the little exercises in this book I bought, to learn how to do the Corel Painter program. Actually, I have two books, one very formal and one very loose. I've learned a lot from both of them. It still seems like a waste of time, but alas, this is what I need to be doing. I need to be creating SOMETHING, and currently my art table is blocked off by huge stacks of boxes, which will hopefully be gone in a day or two.

Illustration Friday: Immovable

2010-08-31T21:40:00.000-07:00

When I think immovable, truly immovable, I think of mountains, continents, even single boulders, but people too can be immovable. The force of a person's will is a mighty thing to behold.

I started a picture yesterday that I was really liking. This was the one I started while I was waiting for the ink wash to dry on the other one. I'm not sure I'd really call it done, but it's done in that I'm not going to do anything else to it, because I don't know what I can do to make it any better, so this is it.

Another "uncaged" joyous person

2010-08-14T06:28:00.001-07:00

Here's the second picture that I started for the Illustration Friday topic "caged." I'm really enjoying these joyous pictures.

Illustration Friday: Caged

2010-08-08T15:39:00.000-07:00

I was reading again, the poem "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" by Maya Angelou, looking for some inspiration, and there are indeed some great lines--like the free bird who "dares to claim the sky" while the caged bird "stalks/down his narrow cage" and "can seldom see through/his bars of rage." Powerful stuff. But I'm not interested in illustrating "bars of rage." I would like to think instead that the human spirit CANNOT be caged, and thus I've started three drawings of uncaged people, joyous people. Here's the first.

Illustration Friday: Artificial

2010-07-31T12:43:00.000-07:00

So maybe this is cheating, just a little bit, because I don't happen to think there's anything artificial about playing cello. I'm much more interested in the real, the connection, the melody, the music....

But here's a story. I've known this girl since she was a baby, and one day when she was ten or eleven, it broke my heart to see her flash me the most artificial smile I'd ever seen on anyone. She'd been having a really bad day, and I didn't really expect much of a response from her, but it didn't seem like that kind of fake smile was something a child should be able to do.

Happy Sax

2010-07-29T11:00:00.001-07:00

I'm going to stop apologizing for these images, and just say that they are what they are. I don't know how old the boy is here--thirteen, maybe. He's a senior in high school now, and doing band again after a year hiatus.

(This looks better if you click on it to make it larger).

Memories in Ice

2010-07-20T17:44:00.001-07:00

I know this is making my blog look uneven, to have both traditional and digital stuff, but alas, it's what I finished today, and if it's really really basic and crude, well, I'm slowly learning how to manipulate these things. When I started this last week, the stupid program kept crashing. I saved every couple minutes today, just to be safe, but it seems to have gotten over whatever it was that it was doing.

This was the month where everyone important in my life was gone--partner out of the country , boys at Cape Cod with their dad, and even my mom gone. The boys are back, but I still feel like this sometime, like I'm all alone in an empty house (the dog doesn't count), haunted by echoes of distant joy.

Art Date drawings

2010-07-20T10:16:00.000-07:00

So cool to have a friend come over to make pictures together. We have completely different sensibilities, so worked on two very different sorts of things. I spent most of my time sketching out a picture I've been wanting to do for several weeks now, but never got around to starting, but then after I'd applied mask and an initial wash layer, I needed to wait for it all to dry, and made these two drawings in the meantime. I'm not very pleased with them, but am happy to have made SOMETHING. It's only when you're making stuff that you ever make GOOD stuff, and if you don't do the mediocre stuff, well then.... (or maybe that's just some kind of totally lame excuse.)

Accordion Guy # 10

2010-07-17T06:34:00.001-07:00

I don't know what to say. This is the first "accordion guy" picture I've done on the computer instead of with pen and ink. Though it's fun playing around with this digital stuff, and seeing what different effects you can get with different settings, I really miss the real stuff. It's messier.

I find it interesting though, that whatever medium a person uses, they have the same kind of basic urges. This seems very clearly MY picture, despite the fact that I made it on a computer instead of on paper.

But now I'm going to go start a paper picture.....

Telephone Doodle

2010-07-14T19:53:00.000-07:00

Here's a doodle that lasted for four telephone calls--first with my sweetie who is out of the country for a month, then two rather short businessish calls, and then a long chat with a friend. I used to do these on paper, or wash dishes, fold laundry or sweep the floor while I talked on the phone, but since the battery in my portable phone died, I have to sit here (in front of my computer) and talk on the phone, so there it is.