Art

I have this t-shirt that says "Art is one of the few things left worth doing" ... and another that says "Go to your studio and make something". Sadly, I have done VERY very little of that lately, and it's wearing heavily on me.

In the last week I sat down and made two drawings... one called "Bad Mood" and onc called "Out Of The Darkness". The first started out with the intent of being something light hearted... but as usually happens, what comes out on the paper is not under my control. What appears there is a combination of my state of mind, and the particular spirit that speaks to me that day... And since I was in a particularly bad mood and had just bitched at my girlfriends kids at the dinner table... well, what came out was a bust of a horned, 4-eyed, black demon. Really pretty good stuff... the shading was quite good. But not what I expected. The second was what I intended... but as often happens when I direct the pencil, the quality was not as good. "Out Of The Darkness" is a fairy coming through the page and stepping from the "dark side" of the page onto the "light side". It's not bad, but it reminded me that I need practice... the head is a little too large, the legs a little too short... and I never did really get the hang of hands.

I guess both of them reminded me of that... looking at "Bad Mood", the horns aren't quite symmetrical (yea yea... but the left horn starts at the wrong point of the head, makes it look completely off.... IMHO). The eyes don't sit quite right for me... and there's a thing kind of like gills on the visible side of the head (it's a 3/4 profile) that I know doesn't belong there. It fits ok... it just felt like a cop-out when I drew it... as if I couldn't quite see what really belonged there.

It's a strange feeling... but lately I've had the feeling that there are things in my head that need to be drawn. Not so much that I feel like drawing... which I do, but that's different.... more that I haven't been drawing in a long time, and there are things in there that need to be put on paper. Like they've been collecting up in the cobwebs or something. I dunno... like I said, it's a strange feeling.

A friend of mine asked me to do a drawing for her, a phoenix. It should be interesting... Controlling what goes to paper is not always the most productive for me, and color is generally not my friend. I've been working a lot in pencil lately... single color, penned over with extra-fine point sharpie afterward. That seems to work best for me, seems to flow most naturally. But hey, I need to work with pencil and paper more... and maybe this will help some. I figure it shouldn't take more than three tries... of course that assumes that I have time to start it. Maybe Thursday...

I'll try and scan the other two and post them!