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The Drawing Board Blog:
"My World Is Round."
part II - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
POSTED: Jan. 07, 2013 | ART PICT: Jan. 06, 2013
One pencil stroke at a time.
This weekend didn't start out so good. Strange things just kept happening and life went weird for a bit. BUT, I kept going back into the studio and picking up my pencil. In the past, there have been weekends when I just threw my hands UP in disgust and said that I didn't want to ruin the (current) drawing with my completely JANGLED state of mind... AND... I am super busy AND... I don't really have time to waste ...dawdling, loitering, RE-focusing, ...whatever you want to call NOT doing what you SHOULD be doing because of something incredibly STUPID. So, I would go into the OTHER studio, sit down at the computer and get busy doing something with an undo button. LOL. Capitulate. Surrender to "reality". You know... That SOUNDS logical. It sounds like The BEST Use Of Time. But, by the time Monday would roll around...I would just feel out of sorts and not quite right. For me, computer stuff is something you do during the WEEK, not the weekend. BIGtime. Sooo, during this particular spell of weirdness, ...I decided to follow Gary's example. I just kept picking up my pencil(s) and going into the studio. He says that you have to go into the studio before something can happen. That's crazy talk. Anyway, I started fixing this and that. Stepping away from the drawing. Looking at the artwork and then picking the pencil back up to fix another thing that had caught my eye. I didn't feel like I got a whole lot done but I did feel okay about wrestling this beast DOWN. Mountain climbed. No bruises. Cussing slooowly simmering down. Good. Then Sunday evening I went to put the animation together (for the website) and realized that the drawing had progressed further than I thought. Wow. These lessons I keep learning sound SO FRIGGIN' SIMPLE when typed out. Me artist. Me draw. Good. NEXT
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POSTED: Jan. 15, 2013 | ART PICT: Jan. 13, 2013
A VERY hard thing to do...
I have to admit that putting the graffiti on the wall was a VERY hard thing to do. ALL of Saturday's allotted drawing time was spent drawing the rest of THAT wall. It seemed like the EASIEST way to get this done RIGHT was to draw the wall in FIRST and then use the kneaded eraser to draw in the graffiti (this part of the wall is a negative so anything written in black would be...white). I got a small headache trying to figure out HOW to make THIS part of the Art REAL. Ugh. My subconscious DEFinitely does NOT believe in taking the easy route. The vision is EVERYTHING. Sooo, Saturday was spent building the wall (so to speak). And THEN, the last twenty minutes of the night were spent, using the trusty kneaded eraser, ...to erase almost half of what the day had been spent ...creating. Yes. Really. Doing this allowed me to really look at the shadows and make sure they were proportionately correct AND I wasn't too happy with some of the stroke lines from the pencil (but only so much of THAT would erase). Anyway. Sunday morning the mid level shadows of the wall were re-drawn and put BACK in place. Erasing and re-drawing is not as pointless of an endeavor as it sounds. LOL. At some point, the graphite begins to take on a painterly air. It's the layers. They DO add up. And, it's beautiful. Crazy but true, there's an alchemy baby. I try to capture the drawing for the display on the site, but it's tuff. There are SO MANY layers of pencil...that the camera just can't seem to capture. Or maybe it's the photographer (me). LOL. Anyway. I had FINALLY gotten the wall to a point where I was REALLY happy with the result. The drawing of the wall was DONE. Now, this was the really hard part. After ALL of that work... I needed to start erasing in the graffiti. I had about five sketches in front of me. The only part that I was really happy with was the "WXYZ" and the arrow pointing down the stairs. Everything else was up for grabs.... and now I was going to wing it on top of ALL OF THAT WORK. Wing it with an eraser. UGH. I almost convinced myself that I REALLY didn't need the graffiti. It wasn't REALLY necessary.... right? The REAL answer? No. The drawing just looks too damn sterile without it AND the graffiti portion of the wall helps illustrate the negative perspective aspect of the drawing tooooo beautifully.
Sooooo, after about twenty minutes of pacing around the table, around the room, etc. ....I picked up the eraser and started erasing the graffiti into the drawing... NEXT -
POSTED: Jan. 21, 2013 | ART PICT: Jan. 20, 2013
WXYZ $ $ $ QHI SA...
I'm not a super big fan of seeing words in surreal/symbolic artwork. For me, words are just too limiting because they direct the mind in a certain direction and that limits the audience AND the Artwork. I'd prefer NOT to go thataways with ANY of the symbols that I use in my artwork including words. BIGtime. Usually a symbol, or connotation/extra layer, gets dropped if it is TOO one-dimensional. For example, at one point I considered adding a red carpet to the right-hand side of the stairway... but that was a VERY fleeting thought. To put a red carpet there would LIMIT the drawing to a very simple sort of statement AND the drawing would then head down a one-way street at 1,000 mph. Ummmm. Never mind. Consider THAT idea discarded. LOL. The ironic thing is that the I like the idea of words in my drawings. There are places were words are VERY important, I am just NOT going to tell you what words are being used because it is The Idea of The Word that I am interested in at that point. Think of it thisaways: a word can mean a very Bad thing to one person and be somewhat comical to another. I would prefer to put the Idea of A Bad Word ...graphically portrayed... in place. I would also rather NOT talk down to the audience by using simple words that translate easily from language to language to language. LOL. Symbols as a Universal Language... that is what I am interested in.
Artist note: using a "$" sign in a drawing would seem to contradict the above concept...however, I feel that the ideas symbolized by that dollar sign are so deep and far reaching AND basic to the ENTIRE human condition that one-dimensional is not an applicable label. LOL. PLUS, in today's worldwide society...the dollar symbol (as currency, etc.) is very well known. AND, the ultimate litmus test..., if you don't know what the dollar sign IS (literally)... the graphical presentation lends itself to an interpretation... (aka you don't have to know the actual meaning of the symbol to get an idea about it). The thing to keep in mind... I'm human and feeling my way through this step-by-step, in a very blind sort of way. This is what I am trying to do.... NEXT
...MORE Surreal Artwork by
Chris Eisenbraun.
