T.B.T.: Stormy Funday, 20x16" oil on canvas panel, 1978-79

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"Regardant par la fenêtre de salle de bains." According to Google Translate that's French for "Looking out the bathroom window," which is what this painting should be classified, instead of "en plein air," as it was based on sketches made from said window, then running back and forth from my work station, two or three rooms over, to the window again for reference while I worked on it. Then apparently it was touched up about a year later; I noted this on the back but don't remember what I did then.
This was back when I was shuttling back and forth between here and Fayetteville, AR, at least part of the time in that blue Mercury Comet you can see the top of in the lower left. Good car. Ugly, but good.
It was storming the day I composed this piece, and I felt the influence of El Greco in the effort. Everything looked so abnormal being buffeted about in the wind and swirling rain; that was a lot of fun.

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R mode

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Sans Barn, 3.5x5.0" ballpoint in sketchpad

Sometimes I'm amazed by how little difference (none, exactly) it makes what thoughts are going through my head when I get to the point of putting pen (pencil, whatever) to paper. All that jibber-jabber goes out to the edge somewhere - I still know they're there, but - for the duration my conscious focus fills with shapes, lines, textures... How can I put it into words? The drawing is what I was thinking.
They used to call it "R Mode," (don't know if "they" still do) because it's the type of mentation characterized by more activity in the right hemisphere of the brain than in the left. Best I recollect, some controversy arose over just how physically lateralized this activity turned out to be, each of us being different and all. All I do know is, when I'm "in it," speech and all its worries are somewhere else.
Kinda like Frederick Franck said in The Zen of Seeing, "It establishes an island of silence, an oasis of undivided attention, an environment to recover in..."

Oh yeah, regarding the title of this little sketch: When I first looked up on this little hill and thought, "Draw it!" there was a barn. I put it off because it was late summer and all the foliage was so thick I couldn't get the view I wanted. I resolved to come back in winter, when the trees were bare. Too cold, my car heater wasn't working. "Spring," I thought, and when I finally got around to it, they'd razed the damn barn. Cue laughter at self, procrastination. So today the sun was just right and they've put up one of those orange construction site fences that caught the light so bright, it was like it was mocking me for missing the barn. So I put it in the drawing, that whitish bar across the whole top of the hill there.

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Overlooking the Overlook, Wishing Well, Crowley's Ridge State Park

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"It isn't easy. Nobody has ever done it consistently. Those who try
hardest, scare it off into the woods. Those who turn their backs and
saunter along, whistling softly between their teeth, hear it treading
quietly behind them, lured by a carefully acquired disdain.
 We are of course speaking of The Muse.
 The Feeding of the Muse seems to me to be the continual running after
loves, the checking of these loves against one's present and future
needs, the moving on from simple textures to more complex ones, from
naive ones to more informed ones, from nonintellectual to intellectual
ones. Nothing is ever lost. If you have moved over vast territories and
dared to love silly things, you will have learned even from the most
primitive items collected and put aside in your life. From an ever-
roaming curiosity in all the arts, from bad radio to good theatre, from
nursery rhyme to symphony, from jungle compound to Kafka's Castle, there
is basic excellence to be winnowed out, truths found, kept, savored, and
used on some later day. To be a child of one's time is to do all these
things."
 - Ray Bradbury (via http://whiskeyriver.blogspot.com)

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What is aware of this...?

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I awe of the reality
of awareness
the least thing
is a miracle
Dogs barking
echoes

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Rear views

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The first one is the first "rear view" I ever did, and proves that boredom leads to creativity. Nothing else looked interesting, and then I happened to glance at the mirror. Suddenly the Home Depot was a motif.

I then began to make it a "thing" by continuing the 'rear view' approach at a Dallas area Starbucks.

 

And again at the White Rock Coffee Shop...

 

 

 

Then one day on lunch break at a place in Farmers Branch, this actually happened. Of course Bud The Crow did not stick around and pose for me, so the mirror and door frame are from life, but Bud had to be extrapolated from internet images. He(she? I can't tell) really did look that cool though.

 

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Small sketches...

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...from a recent outing. 3.5x5.0 sketchpad, ballpoint, all from the front seat of the van. One ok, one barely ok, and one unfinished. I had a rider during that last one, who finished her business inside before I did mine outside. My Mom. I didn't figure she wanted to sit there and wait while I doodled, and even if she did, she was blocking the view.

I prefer to go out sketching alone.
And without time constraints, if possible. That way you can lose yourself in it, really see what your looking at.
The first one was like that; nowhere to be and a fresh mocha in the cupholder. I lived a few minutes in that one.
Second one, the day was wearing on and I thought a little more about time. Just wanted to hurry and grab those clouds; didn't really sink in to it.
I guess I'm trying to find meditation in the act of sketching.

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SONIA

then

[caption id="attachment_60" align="alignnone" width="774"] Business Cards Are FREE[/caption] "The more horrible this world (as today, for instance), the more abstract our art, whereas a happy world brings forth an art of the here and now." -- Paul Klee

WPA

This one is my first foray into the territory of "whiskey painting." Yes, that is a 'thing.' There's an association, the Whiskey Painters of America, based in Ohio, I believe, with their own charter and rules and 150 members, and you only get in by being sponsored by a current member. Which I'm not, as yet (I think I got on the waiting list though), but it was such a wild idea I thought I'd give it a go anyway. The rules are like this: Max. size is 4x5", must be watercolor but with whiskey, or whatever spirit you prefer, instead of water. So since I'm not a member, it ain't bonafide, but it's still a whiskey painting. Following is documentation of my adventure and the results.


The painter takes up his brush


Close-up of the work station

 
Genuine simulated field conditions                                                                                                       

 Little House or Tree Trinket, whiskey/watercolor on 4x5" 140# Canson

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Toodles, me hearties.