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067:365 Sunburst

067:365 Sunburst

Today the sun was shining, and the icy remains of snow piles are melting. Some boxes of things arrived including my beautiful Shibori-dyed floor pillows that I bought in Japan Town, San Francisco.

So I decided to do a paper-folded drawing experiment. Maybe I’ll do another tomorrow, since this one was so interesting. Although I folded it to block out areas, not all of the areas with color were done by blocking. Some I went back through and worked on again.

I’ve done prints this way, but not really done any drawings. It gives me some more ideas about how to play with shapes.

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066:365 Clouds

Ypsi in the morning

Today another drawing from a photo, attempting in a slightly abstract way, to capture the glow and the shadow of a bright midwestern morning.

066:365 Clouds

The dynamic nature of clouds, the surface of water, and the motion of cloth along the body are fascinating. They are hard to see, hard to transcribe. Maybe that is why as I get older, abstraction in thought and in form attract me more.

Why do people make art? What are we seeking?

Maybe these almost epistemological questions are why we keep making art. We keep making visual representations of things real and imagined to figure out why we make abstractions of what we see and feel in much the same way that we keep writing about perception, society, and cosmos; biology, mathematics, and physics.

Seeking is perhaps the answer to its own question, as the oft-repeated adage: Life is a journey, not a destination.

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064:365 Sunrise

062:365 Sunrise

Today more play with recession of form into space purely by changing the size of geometric forms, and using diamonds to effect the illusion of light, shadow, and reflection on choppy water.

It feels strained, too bright, yet I chose these colors on purpose.

Many times in art school teachers told me that I should try to use form and function to intentionally manipulate visual content in a drawing. But my strongest work has always had a larger dose of intuition incorporated than intentionality, instantiated by how much tension is created by the contrast between the colors and the ground in this picture.

The bright hopefulness feels right, but it is striking against the dull grey. Perhaps this is a seasonal occurrence, but lately I’ve noticed myself drawn to these bright pastels, as in my rag rug and many of these daily drawings.

I’m also noticing the theme of expanding or depleting forms such as stripes or diamonds to create distance. Maybe I’m thinking like a weaver and knitter. That the fluidity of a rectangle of cloth would add a certain kind of mind-bending flexible dynamism to these motives in the larger body of work that is emerging.

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061:365 Sunset

061:365 Sunset
I love water. Many of my abstract drawings are various attempts at cornering the way it looks and feels. I don’t just mean the photographic sense of it, but how it makes one feel.

This drawing is a play with waves and light at sunset in autumn. Nostalgia for long afternoons with golden sunsets as now the grey and blue cold and bright winter ones wane.

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060:365 Gracie on a Summer Evening

060:365 Gracie on a Summer Evening

Here’s a pic from last summer of Gracie surreptitiously pretending to take a bath after chasing a squirrel who dashed away too fast for him to catch. He looked up as if to say, “See, I’m just taking a bath!” Typical feline nonchalance.

Again this is that new recycled toned paper from Strathmore. I’m a big fan of paper that isn’t white, especially with pastels. It has a glow about it that doesn’t come through with white paper, and it makes you look at hue, tone, and color differently. This tan doesn’t hit you over the head, but sets a nice neutral background for achieving that glow. And as you might have guessed, I love environmentally conscious products. Although it doesn’t have as high a percentage of recycled content as some papers, it still has 30%!

Say goodnight Gracie!

This is the Instagram photo that the drawing is based on. Although I like to draw from life, I’m feeling nostalgic for warmer weather. We are still covered under several inches of snow, and though it’s pretty, it’s also wet, cold, and hazardous. Hopefully March will be kinder than February!