negative, positive

Time flies!

I have been drawing with a broad-nibbed Pilot Parallel pen belonging to Ansel. It's incredible. Totally unwieldy, totally unpredictable.

I enjoy its thick, fat marks and the fact that they could either indicate negative or positive space. Who's to say what's what, anyway? And that one can't transform into the other?

from the archives

hello

Hello out there, loyal readers, casual stopper-byers, people stumbling across this blog by accident. Hello, hello! I'm taking this opportunity to say hello since I haven't posted in a while.

There are so many reasons for this. I won't regale you with them; instead I'll tell you that I recently made an inner pledge to draw just a little bit more and since I was on my way to yoga class right as I made that pledge, I brought with me a little sketchbook and my favorite brush pen (thank you again, Ansel) and drew people as they warmed up.

Then I went to work and right before my first student appeared I had time to sketch these cute birds from the bird calendar hanging on the wall in my studio:

I love the action in the picture above.

I have been reading about Goethe, who struggled with reconciling different parts of himself: the artist, the man, the member of society, the efficacious maker of policies and shaper of civil life.

He wanted to be it all, cultivate it all: he felt it all within himself, could not let one part die so that another could live. 

That, he felt, would be an untruth.

As far as I can tell what he felt, of course.

Here's what I can share with you about Goethe with certainty:

something's happening

I'm just not exactly sure what.
I got a clue, though, while I was drawing in one of my favorite places in the world:

Skaneateles.

Aptly and justly nicknamed Jewel of the Finger Lakes.

Anyway, I found myself not doing the work to actually look at things, work with them, be with them, create them as living as I could on the page. I was taking shortcuts.

On one drawing I actually scrawled: "Lazy!"

As a description of myself. 

I don't recommend name-calling as part of one's self-talk repertoire, but there it is. It happens.

I felt BORED.

I seldom feel bored.

But again, there it is. It happens.

I think boredom - or at least, my boredom - is a sign of emotional exhaustion. It becomes difficult to care, so you don't. And because you don't care, you don't pay attention, and the world of beautiful gesture, color and detail no longer reveals itself to you.

That's ok.

If I'm emotionally, mentally, physically exhausted, it means I need to rest.

I might have to step back, rethink some things, get a new perspective.

The next day I looked at this maple seed and it was beautiful:

So I spent some time with it, immersing myself in its gradations of color, its subtle undulations, its presence, weight and weightlessness.

That felt good.

bugs

It's been one of those times when the only drawing I do is doodling on to-do lists. 

Someone who knew about these things once told me "there's no such thing as 'bugs'". And yet, here they are.

random drawings

Katie allowed me to draw her - this isn't her, but it captures something about her. And she requested a ruff, after I said I'd made her look like a young Shakespearean actor.

San Francisco, and its patron saint, have been on my mind.

People in water.

just 4 days late

to honor This Guy: