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?

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:

mid-january musings

snowman joy

Friends, I'm still here!

A terrible cold over the holidays left me with little energy to do anything but - strangely - learn languages on my computer. So there was no drawing or painting really but some doodling! Ansel got me this wonderful pen. To wield it is to see a world unfold.

my studio

I spend a lot of time at this cute little piano with cracks in its soundboard...

and with this violin, peeking here from under its blanket...

and looking across the room at this little cupboard.

happy international fountain pen day!

I peacefully coexist with at least 10 fountain pens. I don't know how it happened; it just did. There was the Waterman. Then, finally, the Pelikan.  3 "vintage" ones of my mom's. And then Ansel got a Kaweco, and a Rotring.

All in all we get along great. A long time ago, there was an incident with a bottle of royal blue Pelikan ink, my backpack, and a cement floor in front of my locker in high school...but no one remembers that. Oh yes, and the parent of a girl I babysat who called me over and met me at the door with the old Sheaffer fountain pen I'd given his daughter, safely housed in a plastic ziplock bag. "I don't know what you meant, giving her this, but please take it back, we don't want it in the house." 

Okay. Not for everyone. But definitely for me! Hooray for fountain pens, dangerous, messy, unpredictable, beautiful, small and mighty.

Featured here: Pelikan fountain pen with Pelikan turquoise ink; Pilot Petit-1 fountain pen with J. Herbin mostly Lierre sauvage and a little Vert pré green ink; Pilot Cavalier fountain pen with J. Herbin mostly Gris nuage and a little Perle noire ink, Waterman fountain pen with a different mix of J. Herbin Vert pré and Lierre sauvage (ne jamais mélanger deux encres différentes notwithstanding)

spend some time with these guys

skaneateles

Skaneateles is one of my favorite places on Earth.
The lake reaches right up to the edge of the town, or rather the town reaches right into the lake. The water is clear. Ducks abound. In summer, you can run from the porch of the Sherwood Inn straight down the grassy hill into the water. In winter, thick ice forms on the surface of the lake. Sometimes it breaks into huge clashing plates that make an eerie sound when the wind blows.

The hills in the distance across the lake look pink, green, blue, gray, depending on the weather and the time of day. Boats appear: big touring ones, little sailboats, kayaks, paddle rafts.

The town is kitschy, like the one I grew up in, but lovable, again like the one I grew up in. Its antique stores and thrift stores and libraries burst with the history of the people who live there and have lived there. I picture them all like my Quaker and Puritan relatives: reading crumbly leather-bound books at night, grinding coffee by hand in the morning. Their spirit, strong, stern, boundedly but bloomingly beautiful, lives in every eave and hedge and curb and curve of Skaneateles.

2 views: one while I was there, one a memory-reflection that evening.

sketches & notes

Life has been a little hectic lately and most of my drawings & paintings have appeared on lists of things to do.

Also this little guy appeared when I was trying to show Ansel some key places in my home state of California...

These little fairy magicians were helping me remember the words to a song:

And this guy is illustrating a point - his toes are beyond strange and his arms are way off, but maybe that's part of the point ;)

My first 5 attempts at this cartoon all looked like they were doing yoga, so when this guy showed up, I decided to be happy with the result.

bubble people

Yesterday we were talking about those plastic bubbles that you can wear and run around and bump into people.

fear 3

Often there's a busy little part of our brain occupying itself with coming up with a thousand and one reasons why what we want won't work, won't happen, can't be, can't be ours, can't happen for us.

It's nice to be able to move into another part of the brain where things are possible, the air is a little clearer, and the view is clearer too.

This guy can be grumpy.

The appeal of having something that is OURS, too, is great.

But what ELSE is ours?

things in transition

These things are all waiting to be moved around!

crabapple - early spring

We could not have asked for a more beautiful Easter day in Rochester. We went to our friends Katie and Mike's house and I sat outside and drew while their son Padraig played with a wind-up bird.

In the top left-hand corner you can see where I was testing out the effects of water on my new felt-tip pens.

I loved the twistiness of this tree, and the things Katie had hung from its branches, still very bare at this time of year. Padraig claims this tree doesn't bloom, but I'm not so sure?

rochester

It was a beautiful Easter day. Ansel and I went walking in the sunshine, down by the river, and stopped to sit outside the library so I could draw the view.

katie's studio

I spent a nice afternoon hanging out (like these skeletons ;) ) in Katie's Alexander Technique studio and got some drawings!

The skeleton below has a neon green mustache and a three-cornered hat.

studio 2, x 2

I've been practicing for a drawing of Katie's studio that I plan to do: whenever I have a spare moment I pull out my notebook and do a sketch of my teaching studio. 

Here's one in marker and one in pen, merging together on the page.

hofmannsthal