November Fog 1

Looking across west Court St. into Paragould High School (or whatever they call it now) parking lot. Nov.1 just after midnight. Digital photo.

Winders Tin

http://www.infoworld.com/article/2972298/microsoft-windows/10-reasons-you-shouldnt-upgrade-to-windows-10.html#slide1

or HERE

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Crazy in the coconut

Thanks to Stephanie Blake.

Missing White Rock Lake, Dallas TX

Live 11x8.5" pencil sketchbook drawing; just inside the southeast entrance at Lawther and Garland Rd.

Pen sketch, 8.5x11" of the spillway.

White Rock Pump Station, 16x20" oil on canvas

Pen sketch, 8.5x5.5" sketchbook; East Lawther.

Second sketch from same day as previous. Over by the baseball field, on Emerald Isle Drive.

5.5x8.5" ballpoint sketch, looking over at Winfrey Point.
I'm almost sure it has nothing to do with Oprah.

Another 5.5x8.5" ballpoint. From over by the Bathhouse, I think. I got a $200+ ticket that day for having a case of UNOPENED beer in the car. From a cop on a bicycle. How you doin', Officer Dethloff?

5.5x8.5" ballpoint, sketchbook, under Mockingbird, surrounded by kayakers.

4x6" pencil of Winfrey Point.

One of the few sketches here made from a photo. 6x4" pencil painting of the old bike path just north of the spillway.

Ballpoint in a 3.5x5.0" sketchbook. I don't remember where exactly this was, but the wind was cold that day.

4x6" pencil, from a photo. Pump Station from East Lawther.

5x7" oil on canvas panel, from the same photo and sketch as above.

3.5x5.0" ballpoint from the ball field.

3.5x5.0" ballpoint overlooking the old boathouse. Middle of September and it was raining a warm drizzle, so warm and light nobody even seemed to notice. Mmm...north Texas weather...

4x6" ballpoint, from Lawther up near Winfrey Point.

Ah, I sat at a picnic table on T.P.Hill, in direct July sun, gettin' burned. A family was bar-b-queing at the pavilion about 100 feet to my right and a slight breeze brought the aroma right under my nose. Tantalizing. I wanted to stay longer, put some background, sniff some more q-fumes, but I could feel my skin burning and had to walk away, slightly light headed. Maybe next time...

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Recent Sketches

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Backside Blurry, 5x7"oil on canvas panel. Photo-referenced, zoomed in to obscure details, just to get the juices flowing, since I haven't painted in a while. "Backside" of Uptown P'gould.

Dinosaurs At Reynold's Park, 5x3.5" sketchpad, ballpoint. Overworked. Some kind of grey crane with black and white on the underside of its wings, which were at least 3 feet across.

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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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