Stick machine

Not sure if that's what this is...but I thought it was beautiful.

Two guys at lunch

Happy hand-tools

These are so charmingly cheerful...but I can't imagine how they'd cope with our pick-ax-worthy hardpan and caliche.

Fast grackle and slower people

Except for that gal with her glass of wine -- she was flitting all over the conversational space, almost as hard to catch with a pen as that grackle.

Red and blue mash-up

Serpentine

Random luck

While waiting for breakfast

Only in Texas

I told Beth to leave her car running as I jumped out to take a very quick pic. Didn't want to assume I'd be welcome, even though the sign said they were closed.

Hill country haiga

Trouble in mind

Cape May / Blues

Troubled, at first, by the snapping
kelp on rock whip-crack, wrack at
ebb tide where shallows fell off so
fast the whole ocean stops short, breaks.

(I sent my mind out to walk some remembered beach and still
can’t get quiet inside.) Trouble in mind, like the song, but
there’s nothing soothing about radio Broonzy singing nerve to
nerve while blues needle me with a slash-mouth, flotsam grin.

Troubled, again, by blown glassine pillows
of stranded man-of-wars, sand stained wet
where they bled out, wrecked dying colonies still
electric and lethal even here in my mind’s eye.

(I sat for seven hours one day on the seawall, long enough
for the tide to leave and come again, long enough for my heart
to beat seashell ontongenies when I went to sleep, sleep the thing
now broken.) And now, awake, recalling the green shoreline stink.

Troubled, at last, by those Os formed
when limpets leave their home scar to
graze, scours of hunger sent wandering,
wandering, belly and foot much the same.

Pentimento rustilicious

Tag(10)ged

For Ernesto:

Fargo
Ohio Impromptu
The Princess Bride
Pulp Fiction
'Round Midnight
Secondhand Lions
Spirited Away
Suicide Kings
Unforgiven
Wings of Desire

Passing the tags to a passel -- post yours if you'd like to play:
AM, Andy, Laura, Lydia, Sheri, PMBC, Susangelique.

Arroyo enredado

Disconnect

Nothing special, plus ducks

Dialed in

Wandering at Central Market

Lost the thread of time this past Saturday, but was treated to a swift-flowing stream of faces and stories.

The older very fat woman in particular: large clear light hazel-green eyes in a soft pillowed wrinkled face, a feathery silver moustache almost as thick as the thinning hair atop her head -- telling me about her needlework, and seeing Cornell Hurd's shows, and her darker (implied) story about shock treatment.

Will you?

Come Play

Those braided chains around each finger:
rings rosy, helixed where what’s within
reaches for anothers’ skin.

The fissured callus beneath each heel:
mud-flat playa where what’s without
turns, returns, and ends the drought.

Those ghost-fine lines across each cheek:
ex’d and hatched where smiles begin
and rest, again, from outside in.


*****************************************

The poem above missed the submission deadline for the current issue of quarrtsiluni, "Come Outside" -- but you don't have to miss reading/seeing what's been published there.

Sew

In the waiting room

See Monday, March 6, 2006

I went back, and it was still there.

Gateway alley

Desultory cats

Red berry day

My amateur botany fails me -- I have no idea what these are, other than pretty against the brittle fallen leaves.

(For those who like piles o' linear people, my sketching will resume today; have been prepping for a Big Meeting at work and that's cut into my sketch-time.)

Peacock blue and rust

Upgraded on Blogger -- let me know if you have difficulties

Just a quick note to let y'all know I've upgraded on Blogger. If you have trouble commenting, getting feeds, or other fun stuff, let me know by emailing me (I'll put email in the comments area for those who may not have it.)

Mayfield Park

Pie-eyed in Marble Falls

The Bluebonnet Cafe is known for pie, and I also enjoy it for people-watching. Sorry, but I ate my slice of lemon meringue pie too fast to sketch it. (The meringue is almost as high as some of the waitresses' up-dos.)

Peacocks (made me think of toile)

Another afternoon, another coffee chain

Cho Ado

Early this morning

"They were pebbles but I call them stones."

This put me in mind of one of my favorite bits of Beckett.

A bit of Mississippi in Texas

At hand

A long day for me, but Murry's on vacation -- Sputnik had ample opportunities for fishy treats.



I scooched around a bit to get a better portrait angle. The TV was on, and I caught the ghost of a few Mur-chortles and concatenated them.

Heiroglyphic rust rooster

Little excuse for not sketching except a busy, busy day. So I thought I'd share an anonymous sketcher's work.

This left me wondering: was it Duke who drew the rooster? Or was the rooster named Duke?

Drink me

"...and round the neck of the bottle was a paper label, with the words 'DRINK ME' beautifully printed on it in large letters. ..."
From Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll

Three neatly coiffed, two ruffled

The man at the lower right was younger-looking than I caught, but he kept glancing at me much as the boy-grackle did.

Fast train

7 x 7 / 02-05-07

I wanted to play with something a bit different, so quickly drew a grid of 49 empty squarish shapes and, in little fits and starts, filled them.



As I sat and sketched, a man took notice and asked what I was doing. We chatted -- he was a project manager for a construction company, and was in town while his company built a luxury mall. Seeing me draw, he said, made him recall a drawing of a Jaguar he drew in high school -- a sketch his mother had saved, and brought him just recently.

He talked at length about his musically talented niece, and I recommended some Austin-ish coffee shops. It was a pleasant interlude, especially since that grackle wouldn't hold still.

Leaning

Leaning on friends for help (thanks, Anita and Andy); leaning just past my center of gravity; leaning out over the water and seeing...something to share.

I'm at the beginning of my learning curve with Camera Raw and some other new tools, but it all seems to be working so far!

Starbucks and hot chips

I got my laptop back! It seems these things are prone to overheating and cooking their chips -- which is what happened to mine.

So I'm reinstalling some apps and drivers, but thought I'd share yesterday's coffee time sketches. More to come as soon as I'm fully reset. (And a great big "thank you" to The Mur for setting me up to do image processing on his machine while I was computerless.)

Thoughts skipped like stones

Pahnk

Early morning coffee two-fer

When I started paying attention to hands...really looking attentively...the thought struck me, "They look like flowers."



Later that day, at lunch, a pleasant woman noticed me sketching. As we chatted, I told her about needing to draw more hands in order to better understand their basic forms. She said, peering at some people at the next table, "You know what hands remind me of? They look like flowers!"

Between heaven and earth

Deli people