At lunch Thursday

Much as I'd love to post a fresh photo, being kept indoors through an icy four days has thinned my selection of new pix. It's supposed to rain this weekend, but if I can get out for a bit, we'll see what I find.

Oh -- there are poems baking as well.

When to say "enough"

I took a pretty ambitious path when I decided to paint Keith.


And although I could tell my preliminary sketch -- laying in the "bones of the painting" -- wasn't as accurate as I'd like, I went on.


Of course, it was a bold and crazy thing to attempt watercolor -- the first in years.
But Laura's work and my memory of James McMullan's work made me want flowing color.







I may have wanted flowing color, but flowing color was more like color-wrassling.

The inner creative dialogue went something like: "Yikes! Wassat?! No don't flow...argh! Dang it, now what will I do?"

I haven't worked with massed tones and areas in so long, it's like learning a new language -- with all the feeling inept and being unable to communicate that entails.

(My apologies for any formatting distractions on this post. Blogger is limited for page layout and I'm just not ready to move to Typepad yet. You should see the small Keith images above as a cascade, from left to right -- and these larger ones stacked top to bottom.)



Anyway...I reached for a tool I knew better. Or so I thought -- colored pencil on highly-textured watercolor paper is not the same thing as colored pencil on smooth vellum Bristol.

After teetering back and forth between my eye, my mind, and my hand, it was time to say "enough."

Dim orchids

When I went inside the greenhouse, the warm moist air fogged my lens...but I still saw things, dimly, to catch and share.

Out of the loop

Ice permitting, I'm off on a business trip and won't be back posting until Saturday. (And if ice does not permit, I'll be looped back in sooner...)

Happy creative energy, y'all!

Almost Famous

I'm almost famous!

Marly, of The Palace at 2am, was kind enough to interview me!

If you've been amassing burning Witzel questions, or wanted to delve deeper into all things Trivial and Witzel, her thoughtful and fun interview may provide the answers you seek.

But you should go to The Palace for other good things -- deeper dives into mid-list and neglected-but-good books, Asian poetry and their sensitive translations, and much more.

Thanks, Marly!

Jeweled lantana

Courtesy of the ice-storms in Central Texas.

After Hans Holbein's Jakob Meyer

There was something about his mouth that reminded me of Dave MacIntyre's, so it was time to study.

I love Holbein. His gift for the essential and for the salient detail helps me understand forms and faces better, no matter the quality of my copy.

Dave MacIntyre study

Thanks to Dave for letting me sketch him...and for helping me practice, practice, practice.

If you get a chance, stop by his blogs "Concrete to Cottages" and "Colour Void" and tell Dave "hi" from me.

Soft geometry

Lost and found

New BBQ joint

The BBQ was very distracting and seemed to inspire the crowd to fidget, so there was lots of seeing/little catching.

(Genuine bit of Chinese BBQ sauce on the image of the solo woman below.)

Monumental kale chard

What was I thinking?
Of course this wasn't kale, it was chard.

Thanks to my free-floating editors Dave and Laura for helping me fix what posting before coffee wrought!

Breakfast meeting guys

While waiting to meet someone for an early breakfast, opened up my pad and caught some other breakfast-meeting people.



I keep telling myself that practice will help improve the proportionate eye and fluency/speed.

I know it will. I'm just not very patient with myself.

"Indelible" / Ink

It was a long busy day in Witzel-ville, and my thought -- "When I get home, I'll just sketch the cats and Murry" -- turned out not to be a good one. Those silly rascals were zipping in and out of my line of sight, or posing like fur-covered meatloaves with their backs to me. And Mur was cranky and grumbly related to some after-work work he had to do.

But I needed to sketch at least one time.

Then I recalled some amazing photos of homeless people I saw on Flickr by a man named Tom Stone, and found one that my pen said "Yes!" to.

I hope you'll click on those links -- you really should see Tom's work.

Chlorophilia

Wrinkles and boots

Cafeterias are the best place to find people who wear both belts and suspenders and indoors-fedoras. But I need to study and practice hats more -- there's a geometric truth in a hat that I'm struggling with.



I'm not a particularly fashionista sort of person. But her outfit was amazing -- full-on "These Boots Are Made for Walking" without the retro-chic tongue-in-cheek.

Invisible worm

I stopped to look and catch because I was very attracted by the backlight making stained glass windows of the greens.

But when I cleaned the image up in Photoshop, I saw the worm.

Of course it made me think of Blake.

See it? If not, click on the image and look for a very small curve -- a tiny green crooked finger -- at the lower center.

Infant Joy

And for Blake's poem "Infant Joy" you can go here and here.

Working and practicing

Remember him?



I did see him at that life drawing class, but he was busy working in the studio space above the session and decided not to come in and sketch.

Went to see his work when the model took a short break, and it made me think "what if Georges Braque were mashed up with Luis Jimenez and some cartoonists, and they decided to paint rodeo cowboys?"

But he has nothing posted online, so I need to ask if I could take a pic of one of his paintings.

In any case, I got crazy-brave and decided to try watercolor, in order to dig a bit deeper into color practice and to begin/restart my painting experience.

First, I roughed in the "bones" of the drawing using a light colored pencil on watercolor paper.



Then, sitting on the couch while Mur read and the cats hovered, I set down some marks and areas. The intense attentional focus left me reeling a bit -- for me, at least right now, there is no automaticity without a high degree of effort-filled attention.

More to come.

Metamorphosis

Under the surface, things change.

It was a busy Sunday

It was a very busy Sunday, what with photo wanderings, restaurant sketching and life drawing -- I may have to pull back on some sketch time to recharge. Or maybe that's just the next-day soreness talking.

We shall see.

Surreal time

Life Drawing / Costumed

Went, for the first time in years, to a life drawing session. The day I went, they were working costumed. (Please click on each image to see the detail.)



22 people packed into a smallish room, and judging by our sketches we each saw a somewhat different woman -- it was as if the model had become her own cousin, multiplied 22 times, a fractal version of herself endlessly branching through our pads and canvases.

Some of what I experienced:
1. An unexpected performance anxiety that déjà vu'd me right back to those college art student moments. So that's what I was feeling back then...
2. Physical intensity -- standing for two hours with just a couple of short breaks, combined with item one above, put me in a state similar to a very high-output workout. I am very sore this morning.
3. The feeling of being "all thumbs," since my conté and charcoal were too blunt for portrait detail despite sandpapering.

It was good to work large again, to use those bigger muscle-movements.

Piling on at a grocery store café

It was hard to find and catch photos yesterday, given the low dark clouds and grey cold rain. But I spent time with pen in hand, so there are some things to share this morning...

Large women and slender men x 2.5

Looking back

Waiting to meet someone for a breakfast business chat, I thought, "Well I could draw right now." And so I did.

I like the flux that flows between the "looking forward" and "looking backward" points of view.

Cling / Wrap

The implied object

MB raised a good point in a recent comment about the summary quality of line and its tantalizing relationship to photo images. In Scott McCloud's wonderful book Understanding Comics, there's quite a bit of drill-down into the perceptual roots that underly our ability to see the whole from the essential detail.

Whether the thing shared is encoded in the most minimal yet evocative line or a data-rich full rendering, I'm seeking (and of course I'm not always up to the task of) salience, radiance and understanding.

Looking at this little sketch the morning after made me think about the implied objects all around us -- the internal maps we have of the details of highway as we drive, the corner-of-our eye perceptions that our minds parse or discard.

What do you think about this?
What are the implied objects in (and of) your own creative work?

Some lagniappe: when I searched Google using the terms "'internal maps' perception art," here's what I found -- and liked.

Busy daze pile-on

Where does the time go? I suspect a small crack in the universe lets it leak away, leaving me with only the nubbins in which to draw. (You can see proof I've even lost track of the month.)

Big sky

Step by step

Some days, this work, these paths, seem as windblown as the leaves in this image. Some days, it seems as much a process, a step-by-step-by-step, as climbing those granite stairs was.

Bunchaguys

Cats x 3-ish

I need more more more practice. The girls move fast.

Missing numbers

Extra Sweet

The light was pineapple-golden, but Blogger wrung out some of the sweetness.
Still, I thought it tasty enough to share.

City Café, Elgin

Lactuca virosa

Friend of Phở

Including real-life phở spatter (sorry, I was a bit messy.)

The bananas were large, and dangerous...

...hence the chain.