A few drawings made quick

Not everything has to be a "project" that takes days n' days or weeks 'n months...I love doing drawings that happen in one sitting, these are quick studies that happened in a sitting...a splash here, a dash there...done...sometimes it's just a color that sets me going, sometimes it's the paper, the texture, the shape, or something about that pencil...whatever hits me at the time, I go with it...

Inspiration and the things that I have no words for

I said to myself, I have things in my head that are not like what anyone has taught me -- shapes and ideas so near to me -- so natural to my way of being and thinking that it hasn't occurred to me to put them down. I decided to start anew, to strip away what I had been taught...I found I could say things with colors that I couldn't say in any other way -- things that I had no words for.

Georgia O'Keeffe

I have to attribute what I've done these past few years to these words of Georgia O'Keeffe...some time ago...oh, I think around 1990, I went back to making art after not making art for a bit of time...I never really stopped, but I wasn't getting anywhere seriously with it. I wasn't really looking and seeing anything that I wanted to see...I spent a lot of time copying pictures from photos that I took or copying something someone else wanted me to do (I did several portraits of pets, mostly cats). I bought the book Georgia O'Keeffe: Art and Letters at a bookshop during a Sunday afternoon prowl with my Fred and proceeded to read it cover to cover and felt that special "tug" toward inspiration...well, that was around 1992 or so...it has been a lot of years of sloping various paint forms, making piles of pastel dust, and several volumes of sketchbooks full of inspiration before I came to these two little drawings using colors and textures, shapes and lines that I never knew how to translate from my mind to paper...until now. (I also took a couple of years off from making pictures to write my first three novels.) These things take time and patience...I've studied both...and I'm still learning what to do with what I have...

Georgia O'Keeffe: Art and Letters by Georgia O'Keeffe

My review

rating: 5 of 5 stars
I found this book during a Sunday afternoon bookstore prowl in the early 1990's, probably around 1992 or so...I read it cover to cover and found my way back to making art the way I wanted to make art, but I had to go through a lot of paper and canvas, paint and pencils before I really got to the core of what I wanted to make...it's a fascinating read and powerful, especially for the artist...


View all my reviews.

Georgia O'Keeffe

Small drawings

This little winter watercolor that I made in 1999 fits well with the type of day we're having...it's a pretty one...winter...as much as I complain about the being cold and gray part, there's a special quality that I would miss if I didn't have it in my life...



Winter mornings especially...






and nights...









watercolors done on scraps...
I love making small drawings and paintings, I keep a small sketchbook with me all the time, it's no bigger than 4 x 4 and its been filled with small pictures that I diddle about with while waiting for a ride or waiting in a doctor's office waiting room...it's the waiting book...I've had a few such books over the years...I have an archival Solander box full of sketchbooks that I've carried since the early 90's when I finally got back into drawing religiously...especially after 1995 when I moved out to the country and could see the sky again...



This little drawing Something I Saw is about 2 x 2 in size, just a wee bit of a thing...I love it.















And this little drawing Season's Change is about the transition month of November...it's a bit of a beast...I tend to have dragons in my drawings...and the last storm that blew through certainly had the look of a dragon...

Although the large drawings give me room to sprawl and make a mess...but it's these little ones that make me happiest...they're more concise...yes, I like the character of the little ones...they seem more special, more immediate...

Can you imagine an entire exhibition of tiny drawings and paintings?

November Twilight

November Twilight is a mixed media mess...but I love it better now than I did the day before I finished it...it was one of those drawings that wasn't working, until I got to the "oh fuck it" point and threw everything and the kitchen sink at it...

It started with a black acrylic background with heavily textured brushstrokes, then I began scribbling and scrubbing the surface with Derwent Soft Drawing Pencils, their muted earthy tones were the perfect colors that I wanted, after awhile I got into trouble as the color wasn't laying down so well...then after a week of glaring at it for being so disappointing, I got out the big guns, the mop brush, and watercolors, then I opened my jars of acrylic washes and splashed...for most of the creation of the piece, the two circles had been at the top, when I flipped it "upside-down" I liked it better...although it wasn't what I was going for to begin with...it turned into something I wasn't expecting...sometimes, part of the struggle is the fun part...

Just a scrap of paper turned into something more...

I'm a paper freak...I love touching paper and from my fingertips I can imagine what I can make with it, what kind of marks I'll make, what kind of medium will flow best on it...I will go through the art store and fondle the paper surfaces...not only am I a visual artist, I'm tactile, and I love making textures...this blue bit is on a ragged piece of printmaking paper that a fellow artist gave to me, and I loved the shape of it as is, and without hesitation I turned it blue and then as I watched the watercolor puddle and flow, I saw the shapes that I wanted to bring out, and saw the parts to leave alone...

Fun stuff...

Then there are the small pieces within the larger work that I find so pretty because of the beautiful mess I've made...


Another piece...an old favorite...

And this one, I used the junkiest paper, painted a white acrylic surface with lots of rough brush strokes, and then scribbled water soluble graphitint on it, and then made it wet and splashed, squished, made bubbles, and splashed some more...playing with texture...

Wintery exhibition...

I thought I'd do a little winter exhibition...it's not quite knee deep snow out there, but it's working on it...this is a little bit of this, a little bit of that...we've all experienced a sunny winter day that is so bright it hurts, and then those dark nights with the wind blowing through the eaves and making the windows rattle...winter is such an emotional season, so closed up and concentrated...beautiful and brutal...as much as I dislike the cold and dealing with the potential disasters, it's a fascinating time of year...and each piece reflects something of that...

Sometimes I have to say WOW!

I finished this one this week. Ain't she a beauty? I'm so in love with this one right now, I stop to look at it every now and then and love it some more...mixed media, watercolor, water soluble graphitint, and acrylic washes with graphite and various colored pencil treatments...I haven't settled on a name just yet...I keep waffling between Beethoven's Fifth and the Fifth Dimension's Age of Aquarius...a weird combination...maybe I'll just call it The Fifth...

Ongoing work

On occasion, I make presents, something special for a person, and this one I made...

Making art sometimes requires making a mess...

Well, this isn't too messy really, just some waterlogged sketchbook paper over scribbles of water-soluble colored pencils, dry colored pencil scratches, and woodless color shavings mashed around with a chopstick of all things... This one is entitled Haze, from a day spent on my sunny porch, September 14, 2008,












Here's some close ups of the mess...












Experimentation and "OOPS" accidents...

Random marks equal lighthearted fun...

Patience goes a long way...

(let it dry a little bit before diving in again!)

Have no fear of failure.

Don't be timid.

Be prepared to get messy!

Autumn ideas

These are a progression of drawings, 2005, 2006, 2007, and 2008...on the first two I went through a phase in which I played around with creating panels on one sheet, taping out borders, making a mess drawing over everything and then pulling off the tape to see what I got...sometimes I had a little trouble with the tape...tape and I don't always get along...so now I just stick with the outside border...all four are autumn inspired drawings...reaction to the changing season, the wind and the rain rather than the autumn leaves, which is what everyone thinks about first...up here on our hilltop acre, the elements of autumn often rage at night and have a more intense quality about them that can be harsh...sometimes nightmarish...the 2008 drawing entitled Heffalumps and Woozles is straight out of Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day!

Study of mist and mountain

Here's a study that I enjoyed making a few weeks back...a sort of Chinese misty mountain thing going on...once again this is done with woodless water-soluble colored pencils, and lots of play with water and using the pencil sharpener to shred color into the water to create thick layers that are just as crusty as any acrylic paint...

Once again...I have way too much fun...

The details below are just as pretty up close...

New work

Nocturne, October 9, 2008
color pencil, pencil, and watercolor on Stonehenge paper, 8 x 8 inches

I love green...can't you tell?









River of Fallen Stars, October 4, 2008, colored pencil, pencil, and watercolor on Stonehenge paper, 8 x 8 inches

A smaller version of the big one that was sold this summer...

Drawing from Nature

The drawing is "I Want More Out of Life", September 26, 2008, pencil...lots of heavy 9B black, smudges (accidental and on purpose), a smattering of hard leads carved in to model the blacks...the push and pull of layers, opposing forces, order and chaos...

The two photos are studies that I've made from the things I found around the yard, the dried grass coiled and laid on the weathered wood of the porch floor, the evening light raking across it, the strong verticals of the wood grain, and then the classic beauty of a snail shell...shapes and lines that catch my eye and wind up repeated in my drawings and paintings...

Inspiration all around!

Photographic accidents

This is a very crappy photograph of one of my recent drawings, I loved the paper and the way the graphite covered it, it's soft and fuzzy, but this is not an ideal photo of it...lighting a graphite drawing is always challenging because of the reflective nature of the medium, and scanning it hasn't been easy either, the paper took some abuse while I worked it, so the scanner catches all of that and makes it look worse...maybe someday I'll snap a good shot of it...

but I loved the glare so much when I had the overhead light on, I had to get it...well, just because...

Why not?

The "Colors", Waterfall and details

"Colors"...this is what I often call colored pencils...the colors...I've started playing around with the "colors" again, these are the monoliths by Creatacolor, woodless pencils, although they're annoyingly fragile, and very often will break under pressure, I love them to bits! I shred them into a dry powder with my fingernail, saturate them in water, squish and mush them around, dip the point of the pencil in water and scroll it around on its side...oh such lovely textures, just like paint! Yes, so...last weekend I was fooling around on the porch, enjoying the September sunshine, and opened a new sketchbook of tall narrow paper and made this Asian style vertical landscape-like mess...I took several close-up shots of details...they're just as pretty as the whole thing...

I started off with working the colors dry, just scribbling randomly, light to dark, and with a small-ish brush, I went into the dry work and soaked it, then went back in with the pencils and shavings from the sharpener...as you can see from the details, there's chunks visible...
Sometimes I have way too much fun!

Windstorm

It's windy outside today, so this drawing feels right to post...Ike is coming our way, I can feel the humid Gulf air in the wind, it's going to be a steamy and stormy day...

This drawing June Windstorm, June 19, 2007 a pencil drawing inspired by the weather at the time, is a whirlwind of marks that seemed to spiral out of control while I made them, and then I managed to tame them...I like the drawing better every time I look at it, there are little places within the whole where my eye finds a place to rest and study the textures...when I finished it, I had my doubts...but I always remember those stormy days in June when I made it. I love stormy weather as long as everyone is all right after it's over...it frightens me so much when the wind knocks things about and the lightning is close...

There are storms coming today...I'll have my pencil ready to record what I feel and see...

Inspiration from nature and going with the flow

I really do love lichen...I collected pieces of it off of tree bark when I was a kid, it just looked sooooooo...cool.

Ruffles and lace, so fragile...beautiful...

I'm sure some people would say "eeuu, gross..." and some people would think seeing this stuff growing anywhere in abundance is a scourge and needs to be eliminated because it's not supposed to be there because it's somehow bad...to me, it's life.

This cool blue patch is on a chunk of wood in our yard...we had cut a tree down several years ago and I've created a wild flower garden around the large rotten parts that were left behind along with the stump, and I've been admiring the various forms of fungus growing there for years, and this particular piece that had been once shaped as a chair (and even used as one while it lasted) is now fostering a small pine tree that had doubled in size this year, from the death of one tree comes life, I love having this part of my garden...

This sort of thing inspires my art...this is where some of my shapes and flow comes from...

Fluid Improvisation, 2007
pencil drawing on paper, approx. 12 x 9

My pencil just rambled everywhere in this one...it's a bit chaotic and the eye really has no particular place to rest in it...which I don't mind really, I like to find my own way around sometimes anyway, I don't like it when someone approaches me with: "Can I help you?" Look, if I want your help, I'll ask for it...go away...please...let me look around and enjoy myself without the pressure...I guess that's why I was such a lousy student...I always baffled my teachers, I just preferred flailing around on my own working it out... "just let me do it!" I wanted ownership of what I did, I didn't want someone to come along and finish it for me just because I asked for help, which someone did once...they just made a mark on my picture to "show me how" and I threw it away because it was no longer mine...the proper thing to do would have been to use a clean piece of paper and showed me how on that...oy, some egos are just intolerable...




This little one came from my small daily sketchbook where I fiddle with my pencil while waiting in waiting rooms of doctor's offices or waiting for my Fred to pick me up from work...it too has that chaotic spirit to it, doing it's own thing that I love so much...