What I'm working on

I'm currently playing with the alligator images from Ossabaw. this is a mostly done charcoal drawing I made using some of the things I learned at the Arrowmont workshop on experimental drawing I took. One helpful thing we did was mess up the paper before we started. In the field we rubbed earth, moss, and plants on it, in the studio, we splattered and daubed it with dilute ink washes. This made an interesting surface to work on, and got rid of the dread, scary white paper. With the paper already being messed up, we were freer to draw with abandon. We also did a lot of subtractive drawing with erasers. In this drawing, I splattered dilute burnt sienna and violet ink on the paper first, then worked both positively and subtractively with charcoal, and erasers. I've just started using some pastels on it, trying to decide if I like it. If I don't like it, I might do as my teacher, Susan Davidoff, does and paint over it with dilute gesso. The still visible underdrawing again makes an interesting surface to work on, and the whole process encourages one not to think of anything too precious. I am also working on a big oil version of this alligator using colors borrowed from a Wayne Thiebaud painting, but that I'll save for another post.

And You Thought I'd Died

So I have joined a group on facebook, "Everyday Matters", devoted to keeping daily sketchbooks. They post themes if one needs a bit of help getting started. This week it was, "Summer Joys", so here are some of mine. I had a lot of fun with this, stayed very mellow and loose, and enjoyed the whole thing. However, I find that my 11 X 14 sketchbook is too big for my scanner, and I must photograph my work to post it. Yikes! Me getting a decent image is about as likely as me (to use a recent political euphemism) "hiking the Appalachian Trail." Here is my best effort.