One of my latest ones, and a few old friends...

A treat...more than one this time...a little "gallery".


The random flow of the pencil to start and then following where they will go, my eyes look ahead for the next turn, letting accidents happen, a broken pencil lead makes different marks than a sharp one, a dull point softens a shadow.


Winter Nocturne








Fluid Improvisation

As much as I love filling a larger sheet of paper with my musings, I really love making the long skinny ones, but they're very small, usually about one or two inches wide by six or so long...the small ones always feel more personal to me, more precise, where the larger ones can meander along, loping lines, loops and holes, bubbles and flow, a babbling brook of ideas played out...textures played with...





And then the wee one's like "Essence" are always special, more immediate and manageable...to look at this little one, in spite of its size, it has some big things going on in it that I really love, there's so much going on in that small space (about 2 x 2 inches) it's fascinating...to see one framed in a crisp white mat is delightful...


Last night before I went to bed, I took a brief inventory of my pencil stock, I have plenty of them in various stashes and carriers, boxes, etc...and I have the "chunk" a fist size hunk of graphite which is always a treat to use on a bigger project to make sweeping marks with, and to shave dust from...I often see them as paintings rather than drawings...they're dry media paintings, like pastels are often classified as such...


Storm, Winter Night

This last one is a recent bit, done on a 11 x 14 sheet, has so many lovely bits in it, my eyes have a feast, I don't know if anyone will ever truly appreciate them as much as I do...but I look at the textures and tones and see not only pencil marks, but I also see the natural forms that can be found outside my window, in my garden, on a tree, in the grain of wood, or the ruffles of lichen...the soft shadows of snow drifts on a stormy winter night...
All are beautiful to me...

They are my joy.

Shimmering Twilight, on painting dogs and ghosts,

Han Fei, a Daoist philosopher, (280-233 BCE) tells a story that I absolutely adore!

Dogs and Ghosts


The royal painter of Ch'i was asked by the king what objects were the easiest and what objects were the most difficult to paint.

"It is the most difficult to paint dogs and horses; it is the easiest to paint ghosts," the painter replied.
"Why?" asked the king.
"People know what dogs and horses look like. When I paint them, I have to make them look like dogs and horses, which is rather difficult. But nobody knows what ghosts look like. I can paint them anyway I wish, and yet no one can contradict me. That is why, Your Majesty, I have always preferred to paint ghosts rather than dogs and horses."

The king nodded in agreement.

I guess I am a painter of ghosts...this drawing Shimmering Twilight is full of them...

Windows

There's more than one drawing going on here...or so it seems, from about November to early January I blew through the remains of a pad of Bristol smooth paper. I love how the graphite lays down on this surface, it stands up to a lot of scratching and the soft leads take on a different texture, sometimes sitting up like brush strokes. The sheets are 11 x 14 (oops, I thought it was 16 x 20, but it wasn't, it just felt that way), so I had more space to run my pencil around in, but I still felt the need to scale down, make smaller spaces, yet have them overlap and connect, flow in and around each other...I tried to leave more white this time, but wound up going back and fooling around adding more...some of the white is too glaring, or just too flat, but I'm leaving it alone for now...

Winter Nocturne, the moon is riding low on the horizon

I just scanned this one yesterday...more to come another day.

The blackest blacks and various shades of gray...so many subtle things happening in there, I can sit and let my eyes roam and get lost in the nooks and crannies...I know it probably doesn't make much sense to most people as the visual journey I present to them appears complicated...it's is hard to explain what it is that I see while I'm working on them...it isn't so much what I see, it's what I do with what I see after I make a mark, and where it goes from there depends on what the next mark does, if the pencil is sharp or dull, sometimes if the tip is broken I'll work the ragged end to do something else, and grind the dust and chunks into the paper surface with the butt end of the pencil or smear them with my finger tip...what ever works, right?

Indeed, I have fun...it is my joy, my fantastic voyage, layers from white to black, sometimes they appear carved rather than drawn...I keep thinking about how I would translate these into 3-D, oh my goodness, wouldn't that be fun? Ceramic, wood, metal...spheres, curves, coils, curly-cues, holes, structures...maybe some day I will play that way...

The Liar's Diary

THE LIAR'S DIARY is out in trade paper today, JANUARY 29, 2008! The author, Patry Francis, one of my favorite people in the whole wide world, she is proof that hard work, patience, and determination will make your dreams of being published come true. She’s one of us—the quiet people who observe the world around them every day, working day jobs for years to pay the bills and raise a family. She’s one of us who silently slinks off during a lull in life to a “room of one’s own” or even a corner of the living room, to spend a precious few minutes or maybe if we’re lucky an hour or more to write because we are driven to write that one book that we believe is in us (many of us are fortunate to have more than one). Patry has an extraordinary soul, and on more than one occasion she has been there saying all the right things for many of us during our meltdowns when the publishing world just looks so bleak for those of us knocking on the door.

It is rarer than people think to have a book published—agents are daily inundated with hundreds of query letters from writers looking for representation by post or email or online submission forms, I can’t wrap my mind around it sometimes—so when I found out that Patry was finally chosen, I couldn’t be more pleased! It’s just a stunning feeling to finally know that it can happen, and so awesome to have it be someone so special! Imagine the years spent writing, revising, rejection, more revising, and then—well—what the hell, writing another book just in case that one might be “the one”, and then finally, one day it happens, that’s the big IT. An agent accepts the challenge to represent your book, sells your manuscript to a publisher willing to take the risk—the dream becomes a reality. But—here’s the big bad BUT—just when you think you’ve got it all, you discover you have an aggressive form of cancer. This is what has happened to my friend. Patry is at home recuperating from surgery (thankfully her prognosis is good!), so unfortunately, she won't be able to do the necessary footwork needed for promoting the book in its new paperback format, with a lovely new cover to dress ‘her’ up for the party. So since Patry can’t, we’re out here instead, several of us (Patry’s favorite people in the whole wide world), fellow writers like myself, and other publishing-biz folks, have banded together to help spread the word by blogging about her book.

I have to say, ever since I finished reading THE LIAR'S DIARY (way back when it was a freshly minted hardcover with a squeaky spine) I have been telling everyone I know about it, loaning my copy to friends and relations, watching it become “loved” every time it is returned to me…the good news is, it is still sticking with me long after I finished the last page, which is what good books are supposed to do! I am very proud to count Patry amongst my friends, and my goodness, if I had the power, I’d move heaven and earth to see her get well again so she can continue this precious dream come true to write and publish more books—she is the most deserving of us to see this through.

To read about Patry and learn to learn about her and THE LIAR’S DIARY, please visit her blog Simply Wait at:

http://simplywait.blogspot.com/

Please visit your favorite bookstore or online store to order this fantastic book, and enjoy a good read!

All the Time

All the time in the world...this is an old favorite, the delicate grays are really the star in this show, it's sometimes hard to restrain the desire to go darker and leave a light touch rather than bruise the paper surface...sometimes I feel anxious to finish so I rush it, but this one, I didn't, I kept telling myself "You have all the time in the world..."

Escape

This one was simple, it might've taken all of ten minutes to do, it's small, 9 x 9 I think...just playing around with tape, an Ebony pencil, and then an eraser lifting some black off...then that right edge, a loose tendril looking to break free...

I have days like that...now and then, doesn't everybody?

Maybe, maybe not.

I have a little news on the book side of my creative efforts, I will be self-publishing my ghost story "Dusty Waters" in a few weeks time, I'm waiting for the details to come through, and my proof...I won the opportunity by being a participant in the Amazon.com Breakthrough Novel contest, so as a 4th place award I get to publish and sell my book on Amazon.com...kinda cool, don't ya think? It's not really the way I wanted to go with my writing, I have been hoping for a traditional book deal with an agent and all that, but so far no agent seems willing to take me on (yet, I'll keep trying). So...it's not much, but it's a start, I might be my own best customer...anyway...I'm working on drawings for the book cover, having some fun, I'll probably post my efforts after I make a bunch of them, and see if I have a favorite...or if anyone else does...my first one was almost a goner cuz I tried to make a guitar motif (since Dusty is a folk singing guitar slinger), but it didn't go so well, then I went at it with a what the fuck attitude and got it wet and went wild, beat the crap out of the paper surface...now I like it...funny isn't it? Sometimes that's the way it is...

Progression

See...before all of this, I did this and that and the other thing...I did some ultra real things like this little Jerusalem Cricket that I copied out of some book with bugs in it, I saw one of these when I was in Utah, so, I just HAD TO draw it with precision in colored pencil...I mean, it's not something that you see every day (If you're from Upstate New York that is...) I was very impressed by this bizarre looking creature crawling around the parking lot outside the camp ground laundry mat, sooooo...










I didn't always draw creepy crawlies...I loved making landscapes so I did hundreds of them...maybe a thousand mental islands...dunno...I lost count, but I thought I'd show you two that I still like quite well...


A monoprint of the wind in the trees...









...and the moon rising behind the woods on the ridge behind my house is a small oil painting...










This was my last representational drawing, two panels, pencil trees with a colored pencil dawn...






















This is a "Shard"...





Yes, I really have a thing for blue....



















And black n' white is my foundation...I happily return to it whenever I feel the need, which is most of the time...this is "For Cello"...I really love the sound of a cello and this little one made me think of it.













Surface Dusk to Dawn, is part of my current mixed media Celestial series...ahhhhh, progression is lots of fun!

Dragons hide in the mist of distraction

Dragons hide in the mist of distraction, 9/26/06

Mixed media consisting of drizzled white acrylic paint, pencil and colored pencil on Bristol paper.

I'm sure you can spot the dragon...he's there...the title comes from a Chinese bit of wisdom from the Mustard Seed Garden Manual of Painting...if you don't have this book in your personal library, get it. It's one of my most favorite art books ever.

This old drawing was exhibited at both the Delavan Gallery (November 2006) and the Syracuse Technology Garden (July-November 2007).

It's got a little bit of everything going on in there, which always pleases me...and I always loved Dragons...

Celestial Spring, the phases of the sun and moon, II

This is the latest in the series, a big mixed media mess, but OH DID I HAVE FUN MAKING IT! I've been fiddling around with it for months, it's on a full size sheet of Arches watercolor paper, so it's not my normal size, the big ones always take longer to make. I don't know if the picture here will properly document the layers involved, but what I've done is start off with a flood of yellow watercolor, then I let it puddle and dry, throwing salt on it, tipping it so the wet can run and drip, I splattered white acrylic paint all over, then let it dry. After it dried I began to draw on it in pencil and colored pencil, spattering water all over it, shaving pastel dust and water soluble pigments (graphite and colored pencil) , and then weeks on and off of adding more drawing and shavings, water, splashes and scratches, until yesterday when I said "All done!" There are plans for another, a but a winter theme, something deep ultramarine blue...very dramatic...fun stuff like that! I'm adding two details, I hope they will help give you an idea what's going on in there...

Have a happy new year!!!!!