Willie Nelson If You Squint, and Other Sketches

Yesterday I worked the two-to-six shift at the Village Gallery, the artist’s cooperative where my ceramic work is displayed. (All members are required to put in two shifts per month.) It was a slow afternoon, and though I was working alone, I had a lot of time on my hands. With Willie Nelson playing on the CD I made this page:

Sorry about that, Willie. Doesn’t look much like you unless you squint; and the words imply rocky relations. Such is the nature of acrostic, rhyme, meter restricted poetry.

Oddly, the back of this page had a previously drawn panel array with a near-Willie in it:

I had started this the day before, intending to flesh it out with eraser and more pencil. I may well leave it as is. It’s nice and mysterious with what’s left unsaid.

Here are some more sketches I made during my shift:

Note that one of the sketches is all words. That’s OK–Charles Dickens did some sketches that were all words, compiled in SKETCHES BY BOZ. “The Poetical Young Gentleman” is a must-read for poets who don’t want to make fools of themselves.

Most of these sketches are exemplary of the way one of my pages gets started. I just think out loud on paper (that isn’t loud at all, is it?), and sometimes the magic works, and sometimes it doesn’t. (Note the drawing problem of the fellow starting up the stairs, for instance.)

But the sketch that I feel best about was left at the gallery, in the folder of Husain Abdul-Alim, an artist who with his spouse has purchased a couple of my ceramic creations. He does carved-wood masks, mostly intended for hanging on a wall. I did a calligraphed thank-you note that included sketches of three of his masks. I hope he likes it!