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snap shot stage two

March 19, 2022
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2022 0319 snap shot stage two

Here is one way “snap shot” might go. Were this image taken to its conclusion, the background would be made to evoke “bombs bursting in air” explosions, illustrating “war’s desolation,” backstopping these words:

snap shot

silhouettes and aftershocks
now reveal the cost of wrath
are we safe inside our box? o
potentates won’t stand for that

It seems to fit the acrostic, with immediacy in the Snap, and destructive chaos in the Shot.

Suppose, though, we’d had enough of war, and rumors of war. We might take the same acrostic and evoke something more sweet and innocent:

2022 0319 snap shot stage 2a

snap shot

sage & salt & sassafras
nature spices up our hash
applesauce & ice cream too
pastries make a passe-partout

And the background would be pastoral, and perhaps there’d be a spot illustration of an Ice Cream Social. The acrostic works with a little stretching, since Ginger Snaps are cookies, and Jello Shots are “desserts.”

Does the artist want to Work, at getting a point across and influencing away from violence, or Play, doing some feel-good ain’t-it-great-to-be-alive uplift? Is she or he or they more or less an artist for going against the grain of natural inclination for the sake of a soapbox, or taking the easy way out and producing a more free-flowing expression?

Friends, THIS artist wants to do it all. If you look over my nearly two thousand blog posts, you’ll see my spectrum ranges from Goofissimo to Muy Serioso. Slapdash and meticulous; flighty and pondersome; looking into the Abyss and daydreaming about the Stars. As Walt Whitman pointed out, he contradicts himself because he is Large and contains Multitudes.

And so it is with you, Friends. Hope you have plenty of Love and Enjoyment in and among your Multitudes! 🙂

snap shot stage one

March 18, 2022
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2022 0318 snap shot stage one

This morning I unblanked a page to the extent that you see above. There is a temptation to make two dozen or so artworks based on this image, and challenge myself to make them different enough so that each piece offered something none of the others did, and yet the whole of them would make a worthwhile exhibit in a reputable art gallery or museum. Ambition fuels achievement, and even if the goal went unachieved, or otherwise a failure, I have some confidence that the six months or so effort I see going into the endeavor described would be time well spent.

On the other side of my psyche, there are these wild horses stuck in their gates at the start of the race, and they want OUT and they want  to RUN and STRAIN and FINISH THE RACE will all due speed, and some undue speed that risks injury.

In the middle and reasonable region of my mind, there is a person who looks a little like Groucho Marx and a little like Morgan Freeman and a little like Eleanor Roosevelt, and that amalgamated chorus of reason says to explore some, but don’t get carried away. I think this imagined trifold of humanity makes the most sense.

Why do artists makes artwork? There is no one reason, but there are a few main reasons. One is the simple urge to bring something into being. One is to advocate a point of view, be it “Isn’t this bowl of fruit lovely?” or “The End of the World is Nigh.” One is to have something to trade for groceries or adventures. One is to try to make sense out of a tiny square footage of the Universe.

What drives me may be nothing more than addiction to expression. I’ve been drawing since I was two and a half years old, and I wrote the first of my thousands of poems and other creative writing when I was seven. I like making myself, and then my friends, and then the world, something to look at and something to think about. So today, to kick things off, I started drawing tiny circles on the page, one by one, asking and answering “Where should the next one go, and how big should it be?” Soon there was dialog, with circles saying “Concentrisize me” or “give me a sister” or “Geez it’s crowded in here.” A few said “Convey a gravity well.” And then they all said “Make us the background of a double-acrostic poem.” Instantly “SNAP SHOT” came to mind. It feels like it pushed itsd way up from my subconscious.

End of stage one. Stage two follows, sooner or later…

Inner Workings

March 15, 2022
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2022 0315 inner workings

Long ago T. S. Eliot said “Our beginnings never know our ends.” And much longer ago, legend has it, Alexander the Great anticipated the Indiana Jones scene where Indy, menaced by a guy brandishing a fearsome, whirling array of sword steel, shrugs, takes out his gun, and shoots the guy. But in Alexander’s case it was a complicated knot that no one had the wit and dexterity to untie. Alex shrugged, whipped out his sword, and hacked the knot into non-knottedness. It was both a naughty and an unknotty thing to do, but it solved the problem and left the rest of his afternoon free.

Earlier today I had a complicated work in progress, and showed Facebook and Instagram folks what I was up to, thus:


I captioned the above image with this: “Here’s a drawing in an early stage, with some photoediting. It might be called “non-objective” but human beings can’t help objectifying everything from cracks in the sidewalk to clouds in the sky. ‘That looks like…’ starts many a sentence in an art museum. Faced with the blank page, I asked my hand and carpenter’s pencil to show me something that evoked Energy and Connectivity. An hour later here we are, and the drawing is starting to tell me what it needs, and asking me: Remember the vapor trails out of White Sands? Remember the motion of the caterpillar’s tiny legs? Can you wrap a few tendrils around this form, and give that spiral over there a hint of majesty?”

Minutes later, my music-loving, fellow 2D artist friend Myra Smith responded: “I thought inner workings of a human ear,” and my instant, flip response was “Huh?” But even as I was being a smart-aleck, that potent phrase “inner workings” resonated, echoing between my human ears. I loved it as a title. And I loved it as a quick, Cut The Gordian Knot solution to the work in progress: superimpose a face on this swirly stuff, tweak the drawing a little, and call it a day.

My thanks to Myra for some superb, catalytic conversion.

Smartphone As Stroke Victim

February 2, 2022
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2022 0202 broken stroke
Friends, are you frustrated looking at this image? Feel as if you are not getting the full picture–it’s blurry, and you can make some of it out, but there is a lot that you can’t decipher? That was done on purpose. It is a non-traumatic way to simulate what having a stroke might be like.

Two days ago I was walking home, looking at my smartphone. Decided to put it away and concentrate on walking. It snagged on my hoodie’s pouchpocket and fell on some gravel. The screen was splintered near the upper left corner, and the display was radically altered, with ghost-images, dimming, and a test-pattern-esque block where the impact had been.

I find it a bit ironic that I’d had a sculpture of Iron Man as the screen wallpaper. Iron Man, played by Robert Downey Jr. in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, often had circuitry problems of his own.

And in the case of my phone, not only was the display screwy, but the touchscreen navigation went from nearly-impossible-to-use to totally useless. I did manage to use it to call my friend Martin Klass to give me a location of a Metro PCS shop, and I was able to communicate via text with a good friend with whom I play Words With Friends, but after that it became worse than useless–for instance, the alarm went off promptly at 5:30 AM, and I couldn’t turn it off; it would eventually stop chiming; then every five minutes it would go off again. Three times for that; three times at 7 AM, which is my Snooze/Reminder alarm in case I am lazy,

I thought of my phone as a stroke victim, getting and giving inappropriate signals, doing things it/I didn’t want to do. And when I got a replacement phone, and the SIM card, essentially the Soul of my phone, was transferred to it, like a stroke victim it had to be taught how to do ordinary things all over again. It still doesn’t know that I don’t like AutoCorrect. I have lost my text-message history. And, alas, and alack, my superb Wordle record seems to have been expunged. C’est La Vie, mes amis!!

To ease possible frustration, here is a transliteration of image and text. A guy (probably a self-portrait, but think of him as Anyguy) implores his phone “SPEAK to me!!!” The phone replies “=ZZZT!=” Beneath the phone’s word balloon it says “HISTORICAL NOTE: On January 31st, 2022, I dropped my smartphone, cracking the screen. It is useless.”

Broken Stroke

Brain bloodbaths may wreak HAVOK on us oldsters
Reducing even sleuth Hercule Poirot*
Obliterating skills bpth mind & motor
Kaputting future plans of to & fro
Entanglementing unto un-OK
Now rendering a staid routine flambée

* SPOILER ALERT for Hercule Poirot fans: Agatha Christie, legendary mystery writer, wrote Curtain, which was to be her final Poirot novel, at the age of 39, when she was at the height of her creative powers. She then locked it up and wrote many more mysteries, but saved Curtain for last. In the novel, Poirot, an enfeebled stroke victim, is mostly confined to a wheelchair. –Friends, that’s how I remember it, at least. I am 67 years old and my cognitive decline is well started. I cannot tell you how grateful I am to be lucid enough to reach out to the world via these blog posts!!

Draw Anything, and other tidbits of advice about drawing

January 2, 2022
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20220102_080649

Long ago the artist Kimon Nicolaides wrote a book called The Natural Way to Draw. It has something to offer for artists at any level. And one piece of advice in the book is “Draw anything.” If you are willing to draw ANYTHING, from a stain on cement to the Andromeda Galaxy to a bent big toe and the toe next to it, and you actually DO draw those things, and anything else, but especially subject matter that is indimidating to you, perhaps a vase with the reflection of half the room it is in, or a cityscape with dozens of buildings in it, or an electric pencil sharpener with the brand name on it (see above), then you will be a more fearless, more powerful artist.

Another piece of valuable advice that Nicolaides dispensed was put sternly in all caps in the Introduction, where he described the best way to use the book.  First he said that it’s all very well to look at other people’s drawing, and read about how to draw. but the most important thing to do is after you do some of that. “THEN SIT DOWN AND DRAW.” The best way to learn how to draw is to DRAW, find out what you did, DRAW some more, look at it after putting it aside for a while, DRAW and keep your strengths and weaknesses in mind, DRAW DRAW DRAW DRAW DRAW. Take it as an article of faith that keeping at it makes you better.

The best advice I ever got about my own drawing, as I’ve mentioned several times in this blog, was on a slip of paper with my portfolio, which was critiqued by outstanding art teacher Darlene Goto. SLOW DOWN! she wrote. I am still trying to take that advice, 48 years after she gave it to me. I will say that though it almost always benefits a drawing to be mindful and deliberate while making it, there are some special times when the ease and flow of the drawing are so transcendental that the best thing to do is let go of the reins and go Full Speed Ahead. But those special moments don’t occur very often. They do tend to occur more often when drawing daily and often, though, so DRAW DRAW DRAW DRAW DRAW.

(Or PAINT PAINT PAINT PAINT PAINT, if painting is your thing. Another bit of advice: Try Everything. As many media as you can handle and/or afford. A cheap way to get into Sculpture is with big bars of Ivory soap, or a salt block obtained at a feed store, or armature wire. A little-kid’s watercolor set costs very little, yet you will learn a lot from it if you put in the hours. (As soon as you can, buy some decent brushes though, and upgrade from multimedia paper to a good watercolor paper.) Try markers, colored pencils, chalk, gouache, India ink, Sumi-e ink–or just follow your instincts. Find something you enjoy using.)

Put your work on display, even if you think it’s unworthy of view.

Join drawing groups on social media  Look at stuff your friends have done. Soon you’ll go from “How did THEY do THAT??” to “Bet I will be able to do that some day” to “I can do better than that.” But it is no one’s place to be scornful. It is everyone’s place to learn and to encourage others.

Here are two contradictory pieces of advice: “Have fun!” and “DON’T Have Fun.” Most of the time it is good to enjoy what you are doing. Sometimes you must do things for the sake of the image that are difficult or tedious to do. It can be frustrating to get something just right, and there is the pitfall of overworking the life out of a drawing. Sometimes the greatest value is not in the drawing itself, but the lesson the drawing provided.

That’s enough advice! NOW SIT DOWN AND DRAW. 🙂

stuffscape in F major

October 31, 2021
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2021 1031 stuffscape in F major

This is a value study, which is to say it’s an array of light and dark from paper-white to graphite-black, with many shades of grey in between. I did it to warm up for an important drawing, of a friend of mine and the dog, now deceased, that she loved. I have made sketches of them prior to this value study, and found them lacking; so, to take some pressure off and get some momentum going, I carefully over the last few days built up this “stuffscape.”

The title, “stuffscape in F major,” has a musical reference because making an array of forms in a careful, rhythmic arrangement is similar to composing music. Some musical pieces are called “tone poems” for a similar reason: some music partakes of poetry.

There’s a pencil amongst the stuff. You don’t have to be a “Where’s Waldo?” whiz to find it. But to some it may sully the non-objective purity of the image. I say Rejoice, for this drawing is now Meta. There’s a lot of Meta going around these days. 🙂

I had a devil of a time, what with the soft graphite in the pencils I used, keeping the paper unsmudgedly clean. Old-school draughtmanship has its drawbacks.

tonal range

July 5, 2021
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2021 0705 tonal range

tonal range

torch’s blaze to darkest char
oleo to chop-fraught sea
new-paint-glisten on a barn
amateur but p.f.g
let the graphite SMILE & be

“P.F.G. stands for Pretty Good. 🙂 And the original meaning of Amateur is someone who does something for the sheer love of doing it. I love to draw.

Birdwork In Progress

October 11, 2020
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Here’s something I’ve been working on for a long time. It’s at that fork on Creation Road where I the artist must decide whether to put a LOT more work into it, or wrap it up as a cleaned-up As Is. I am uncertain so I am soliciting input from whoever reads this, i.e. You.

This drawing is heavily avian. The temptation is to throw in not only more birds, but anything Bird-related, such as Larry Bird, Brad Bird, Harlan Ellison’s psuedonym Cordwainer Bird, Nicolas Cage in the movie Birdy, the American Eagle, etc. Maybe throw in an obscene gesture or two.

What is most likely to happen is I’ll do a LITTLE more Bird-stuff, clean it up, post it, frame it, and then consider the use of its basic structure as a springboard for a MUCH larger piece, either a large canvas or a mural. Give the elements a little more living space. Study Hieronymus Bosch and various Breughels to go to school on myriad-detail structuring, then set to on canvas, wood or wall.

Note about the fellow in the foreground: on his chest is a triple=acrostic, “Aero Dyna Mics.” It goes like this:

As Clara Blandick’s Auntie Em
Eliminates Your rootless stem, I
Raise a Sting and fell an Orc
Or skewer Bad Guys with my Forks

Any thoughts on where I should go with this piece, Friends?

2020 1011 bird

the unsold story

August 10, 2020
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Here is an illustration for a story that has not been told, much less sold. I invite you to write that story and then either tell it in a comment on this post, or sell it on the open market. (No compensation to me, other than acknowledgment that I inspired you, is necessary.)

20200810_171649