i go down to the shore in the morning
and depending on the hour the waves
are rolling in or moving out,
and I say, oh, I am miserable,
what shall—
what should I do? And the sea says
in its lovely voice:
Excuse me, I have work to do.
--Mary Oliver, A Thousand Mornings
"Hidey Hole" 10" x 8" oil on canvas. I think I've posted this before but I recently noticed it was coming apart, and I just "restored" it (back in April).
The leaves, where they're painted over the lighter areas, didn't have enough oil so they dried faster than the layers underneath. That made 'em crack, bad. You can see in the other three pics.
I used walnut oil in the medium this time, for its slower drying time; which has to be fairly moot at this point - 14 years later - but it somewhat unnerved me to see it cracked up like that, so I guess I overreacted a bit. Couldn't hurt though ...
Hence the old axiom, "fat over lean." Maybe I've learned it now. 🤦♂️
My first outing with the Staedtler Mars Lumograph black drawing pencils. They're really darker than regular graphite; this is just the HB and a straight scan, no digital enhancement.
Found this uprooted stump down by the creek, where they're putting in a new jogging/biking/walking path. It was 95F and I'm 70 yr, old and out of shape, or I might have gotten more of this done. Was fun though.
“On the exoteric level the traditions are irreconcilable. On the esoteric, experiential level of the heart reigns an eloquent, reverential silence.”
― Frederick Franck, A Little Compendium on That Which Matters
6b pencil in 3.5x5" sketchbook
Oil on canvas, 20" x 16", 2/16/2022
I was trying to write "wipeout" and made a typo, liked it better and left it; that's somewhat in keeping with the process of how this piece went. I didn't like the initial painting so I scraped it off with a knife, and this is what was already too dry or tacky to come off. A lot of my abstracts proceed that way: I dislike it and go to wipe it out, and wind up liking the wipeout better.
Plus it looks (to me) like it's throwing parts of itself "up in the air" so, "Hey-ey!"
I like, to an extent at least, that it reminds me of old wallpaper that's been scraped off. Maybe I should call it, Tracks of a Disaster.
~
Screen grab cropping of a photo I took too early one morning while waiting for the coffee to brew, of water splatters in the kitchen sink. I wanted to draw this at the time, but it got filed away and I forgot about it.
Now that it's out, I don't know ... It would be a challenge, no? Conte crayon or colored pencil ...
The shot itself is 1080 x 1920 pixels, you can click to see it bigger.
~
~
Ball point pen sketch in an 11x8.5" sketchbook. This pictures what was on the location where my apartment now sits - well actually I'm off to the right, in the corner - but out on the corner of West Main and 16th, back in 1980, was this stump.
I guess I looked rather suspicious, wearing scruffy clothes and long hair and carrying a backpack(they weren't that common in 1980), roaming around like I was "casing" the neighborhood - although I was just looking for something to draw - because about the time I was nearing the finish a cop pulled up, said one of the locals called in and would I please move on as soon as I was done.
He was nice about it, and I did. And now I live there. Hee-haw.
~
