A page from the sketchbook - az

 This is a page from my many sketchbooks. I started with the face first in 2014. I came back to it as I always do and decided it needed to be changed up a bit. I added a the horse. I wanted the horse to be smaller, but I didn't like the proportions so the horse got bigger as I corrected it. The work needed more intensity than my pencil could offer so I digitally altered it with the contrast and  'cartoon' filter in my camera. The upside of the filters is it gives you a chance to experiment without the commitment. The work now looks like it was done in black pen.

 So the mystery is what I should do next?

12x16 pencil on sketch paper

The process of an artist -az

I remember a time of being amazed at the amount of artwork that Karin and Sarah produced. At the time, Karin had many colorful and textural mono prints and Sarah was crafting all these unusual objects . At the time, I produced slowly and little. I hoped that someday I could create at that level but knew it was unlikely. Later, I learned how to amass a quantity. Simply to do what you do a lot. I draw whenever on whatever. I draw on good paper, bad paper, scraps,and scrapbook paper.  Some of my favorite works have been on the back of envelopes that I drew while waiting on hold on the phone. And I amassed all this art work just like my blog mates. Now, I am amazed at myself as a go through my sketchbooks, journals, and bags of loose works. The below of one of many, many works. 

Decades ago, I started this drawing, got bored, came back and started another.Years ago, I unearthed it. I didn't like the drawing, so  I practiced a warm up technique in charcoal, so there are lines of charcoal over and in the drawings. Then at some point in the last couple of years, I decided the faces were salvageable and somewhat finished it with black pen and watercolor. Later, I cut one drawing out and if you look at the figure on the left, there is an eye on the headdress from a figure I didn't like and erased. In what I think was surely a good plan, I painted the middle figure's eyes red. I then digitally altered the piece as a whole.  

None of the individual drawings are great. Composition-wise, the work is fair if that. It simply tells  a story of doing, producing, experimenting, and accepting the outcome which is part of the process of an artist. 

do you feed yourself? -kes

its the most basic question.
before answering consider the following

• do you yearn?
• do you wish?
• do you dream?

is a 'yes' answer somewhere in that list? i confess i am no different.
if i do everything i'm supposed to, why is the state of yearning, wishing, & dreaming so perpetual and often intolerable, like a rat in a cage?

i want to change my art. how does that happen? taking classes & buying books are both sensible, educational attempts. but art is a wild animal. it does what it wants. elusive wild animals rarely parade down Main Street at rush hour. [i will concede its possible.]

what i am trying out are new 'eating habits'.
richard dreyfuss in Close encounters of the 3rd kind is a poignant illustration.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yecJLI-GRuU
devil's tower doesn't come to the front door of the house like a polite neighbor coming to tea.
dreyfuss's character observes, gives his time, and eventually goes to the source of something important.
i am observing & giving my time in new ways lately.

this isn't a defense of alien obsessions. consider some therapy for that, if applicable.
it's about inviting in that which makes one want get out of bed, to not play in traffic.
it demands, deserves, & needs airtime.
what is it? like dreyfuss i don't know and honestly i prefer the mystery.
i just know it's calling and i am picking up the phone.
wheels and dead vegetation completely seduce me. answering the call makes my life better.
this is the close encounters mashed potato phase of my life.

adopting wayward hubcaps during dog walks

pulling up roadside reeds that bite

https://youtu.be/AEIcSNs4IQE

a video document of hours spent in subfreezing temperatures arranging the inanimate

carpe diem and pass the potatoes.

I Make My Own Company (SKF)

 Hello,

Last night Fox showed an episode of the X Files about a street artist whose creations developed a life of their own and reeked havok as an expression of his anger towards mainstream society's perceptions that the homeless are throw away people. As a result his creature, "Band Aid Man" was on a bloodlust rampage( so Fox). The moral of the story is directed towards all of us to examine our creations. What kind of  feelings do we wish to illicit by the telling of stories? It does not matter if it's real or not. For if it lives in the mind of another do you have the right to benefit by telling stories that create harm? A little election year prophecy.
    When I was a child I used  to tell my little sister scary stories as we lay in bed in the dark . She would go peacefully to sleep and I would lie awake all night long with my eyes wide open, terrified all night long.
And that's the nature of most tales. When all is said and done, it's the authors that suffer the most from their own dark imaginings. For the rest of us it's just another story on a planet full of storytellers.This is where we can develop a better relationship to ourselves by changing  our minds and believing in a more positive narrative.

 Here are some of my "critters" that compose a strange company as I go about my studio business.

Let me introduce my "Warrior Worms", " Drunken Spider", "The Momma Caterpillar and Her Nests",
" Fuzzy Penguin", and " Curious Possum".
We all make our own little realities but let's not make others suffer for our beliefs, then we're no better than the radical whatsoevers, who can't keep it to themselves. What's that old saying about the meek?

Have a heart...........az

Terminally uninspired by the holidays, I try to avoid this type of theme in my artwork. Occasionally, sentimentality slips through the razor wire of my creative mind. When I do slap a heart in my artwork I am usually not this overt in the placement. But my creative muse was in a tender mood and this is what happened. 

This watercolor are started out as 4" x 10" strip of paper. If your friends are artists, crafty, or tasteful hoarders, sometimes you will get neat little cast offs.  In this case, I got a bunch of watercolor paper strips from Sarah.  They were host to a thousand little sketched figures and experiments with Graphitints pencils.

This drawing was one such experiment.