Illustration Friday: Messenger

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

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

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

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

Illustration Friday: Round

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!

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

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.