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.
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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.
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Here's a couple drawings by a 4 year old I found in an old sketchbook, from the 70's. I don't remember who she was but I loved her art. The earnest adventurousness of her lines is utterly fascinating. And if you flip the first one or hold up a mirror, you'll find that her apparently asemic text perfectly describes the childhood condition. 🤩
I wish I could remember her name and stuff. Kid was way ahead of her time and so what we need in the world today. She once gave me a couple of her drawings, then handed me some coins, actual money she had. I asked her, "What's this for?" She said, "'Cause you took my drawings." She was paying me for taking her art!
"Trying to understand is
like straining through muddy water.
Be still and allow the mud to settle."
Lao Tzu
“We have a belief that we need not believe in, no dogmas, no ritual, no mythology, no church, no priest, no holy book--what a relief!”
― Frederick Franck
5x7" oil over acrylic on canvas panel
3:20 AM June 30, approximately 18 hours after my first Moderna jab, and about 20 hours after my last dose of precious beautiful delicious coffee - to which I am powerfully 'addicted,' - (I mention both of these factors because, for all I know, either could be implicated) an ALARM went off in my mind, sounded like my malfunctioning doorbell, almost a ding-dong but garbled, more of an electric hum with tones trying to bubble up through it, like it's underwater, but this time it was LOUD and right through my head; at the same instant an image flashed, clear as if I was standing in front of it, but right in my eyes, like the sound was right through my ears. One second or less and I was wide awake.
I tried to reproduce the image, but I'm not that good with watercolor & ink wash, so that one failed, and I had to get it right. The green was very insistently definite. I finally got at least very close, had to resort to my trusty oil paint, and even that was on top of an attempt with acrylic.
I was in the process of weaning myself down from coffee, because of stomach problems, so I could have been well into withdrawal, which can get weirder than most imagine. But it's never been as psychedelic as this. It's been 2 weeks and nothing like that has happened again, and I've been even deeper into coffee withdrawal. The only new element in the mix is, um, the vaccine. Another week and a half I get jab #2...
What a time to be alive.
Oil on canvas 7" x 5"
"It is exactly the no-way-out situation in which the human being finds itself - that fundamental and unbridgeable inner cleavage of that being which is conscious of itself - that is said to be the way . . ."
- Shin'ichi
