ARTWORK UPDATE: Feb. 07, 2012.
Feel free to scroll down to read the artist notes at your leisure, or...click here to go BACK to the very beginning of this drawing detail blog thing....

Posted Feb. 07, 2012: Can you believe that the face is actually a LOT easier right now ...than the hair? With this friggin' gradient going through the ENTIRE drawing...it is making life a LOT more complicated than normal. Jeeeeeeeeeeeeez. But, hey. It's kinda interesting too. I curious to know if I can pull this off. LOL. Go figure. The way NOT to be bored and/or repetitious is to make life real DIFFICULT for yourself. Too friggin' funny baby. BTW: I do NOT believe that I am going to get this drawing done in time for the naked/nude art show coming up (in Tampa). Entry forms needed to be done/turned in sometime in January (I "think"). Oh well. Maybe next year. ROFLMAO. As for right now? My drawings and artwork are pretty much a private thing between you and me babe. I am just TOO BUSY to find a space to show. And, "yes" I DO know that THAT is kinda important. I'm working it (just not right now). ha ha ha ha ha ha.

Posted Jan. 09, 2012: The New Year. A time to cleanse and scrape off accumulated crap and bad ideas. LOL. I can DO that :) That being said, onto a SHOCKING note: a LOT of drawing was done this last weekend. Ha. Ha. Ha. Artist note: the drawing is DEFinitely at an awkward stage but that is ok. I'm only slightly worried at the moment, give me a day or two to get more so. Anyway. A LOT of graphite groundwork was laid and yes, there was (also) tons of re-finessing. More shocking stuff. I DO know that next weekend the focus is going to be on the girls. There are a LOT of decisions that can't really be made until those girls are in focus. Right now it looks like an anime cell, NOT a serious work of surrealness ...and that is distracting. Once the girls are surREAL, THEN I'll KNOW how to talleyho onwards. Maybe.

As this surreal work of Art steps out from the background, the blacks must get darker... which means I needed to dig out MORE pencils from the box. The newest additions to the current crop are: a 2 HB Mirado Woodtones 177-2, a 6B Design Drawing 3800 (Faber Castell) and a little yellow stub from the NightHawk Restaurant (?). I have no clue where that restaurant is located (I travelled a lot at one time) and I collect pencils from EVERYwhere. Too funny.

(Jan. 02, 2012) Posted Jan. 03, 2012: the computer efforting confirmed that a vastly simplified combo was the BEST way to go. Five more letters were added and the "M" darkened (a couple of times until the perfect hue was achieved). LOL. This gradient has a HUGE purpose but BOY is it a pain in the tush. And, you know what I'm going to say.... if it's done right ...how many people are not EVEN going to see it??? How do you miss THAT you say? It's a "seeing" thing (there's a LOT going on here)... hehehehe. Anyway. I'LL SEE IT. Here's another thing that will probably be missed for a bit... the font faces in the suit. Yes, there is also a REASON for those choices. I did not KNOW how cool this particular symbol was going to become. Really awesome. SO many layers of meaning so simply represented (at least from my perspective). LOL. An example? Ok. Here's just ONE of his layers: he changes his words as simply and quickly as he changes his clothes. AND, btw... the dollar symbol is not JUST/solely representing "greed". THAT would be too SIMPLE baby. Money is something that touches everyone and it touches in SO MANY different ways. There are LAYERS to the dollar symbol. There are LAYERS to everything. EVERYthing. Pencil. Symbols. Etc. Anyway. The artist retreat was FABULOUS. Gary laid out fourteen new songs. It took TWO WHOLE DAYS to get the apple (and knife) straight. That would have been FOREVER in "real" world time. We both had a BLAST. It was quite UN-real and super FANTASTIC. I am STILL relaxed. Every bone. AND, this was a good place to leave the drawing. I need to let my subconscious "think" on a few things. There are some BIG potential problems looming and I REALLY want to get the focus BACK onto the apple :) Anyway. Happy New Year!

(Dec. 27, 2011) Posted Jan. 03, 2012: this photo was actually taken DURING the artist retreat. YES, the computer was on JUST long enough to work my way through an artistic issue. AND, that was IT. The computer went right off for the rest of the retreat. BIGtime. LOL. No temptation (because YES I also ENJOY webwork too). Right brain. Left brain. Even Steven shit on this end. THAT's the problem. Anyway. Back to the ART >>> I had taken the photo (BELOW) and blown up the dude on the apple. Letters were running across my imagination and I really wanted to let my fingers work their way through the possibilities... so multiple copies were printed and the pencil went to work :) Two sketches evolved (background and foreground letters). Ok. THAT done, it was time to move all of this theoretical shit onto the drawing board (so to speak). Well... before THAT could happen, I really needed to lay in the gradient that went with the suit. This process started with the lightest part and worked on down to the darkest layer. Seventeen re-workings and constant re-finessing (via the thinnest possible layer of graphite)... and the board is SO soaked in graphite that REALLY fine detail work looked to be somewhat out the window. Jeez. You should have SEEN the complex pattern that had been laid out. It was INTENSE. My apologies, but there is NO way I am taking the time to add THAT to this time line too. LOL. Sorry Charlie. So anyway (AGAIN)... I started drawing in the big "M" that was supposed to be in the BACKGROUND of the suit jacket. Damn but it looked fine all by itself (without the intentioned "XYZ" on top). I was stuck. Go ahead with the original plans? Or VASTLY simplify everything (which looked to potentially be the probable BEST solution)... ???? Damnit. I needed to turn the computer on so my imagination could play around with the suit. Ok. So THIS photo (ABOVE) was taken right in the middle of the artistic dilemma >> the incredibly lovely moment when indecision was running amuck amuck amuck. As of the above second...MOSTLY background letters had been added as well as some of the super dooper favored frontline letters. Absolutely a-muck-up.

(Dec. 18, 2011) Posted Dec. 23, 2011: ok. It's time to get REAL baby. There won't be anymore updates until after the new year starts and the drawing should take one MIGHTY leap forwards at that point. I feel the lure growing because NOW I can let the artwork bring it on (like I CAN'T when I'm more anchored into the "real" world). However, don't get me wrong. This is no fantasy lala land of happiness with friggin' blue birds buzzing around contentedly and idiots skipping around blindly. It's NOT disney on this end. There ARE cusswords during the hard moments. And if you are doing it right and pushing the envelope (rather than sitting on laurels)... then there are going to be LOTS of hard moments and colorful phrases. It's a confrontational thing: if drawing REAListically wuz EASY ...people would be doing it right and left, eh? It's not EASY. It's do-able.

Anyway. Here's one for you right now: notice the upper right hand corner of the drawing. The pencil stroke has been turned into a blurry region (as in a fog, etc.). Things are blurring there. Disintegrating. As in, the farther one gets from the core/the truth, the blurry/foggier/more unreal. I REALLY hope that this is all pure goodness direct from the subconscious/muse/gut and NOT pure intellectual cleverness. There's a difference. And I'm NOT a big fan of super-dooper-in-it-just-for-the-cleverness-and-ego-gratification of THAT kind of Art. What? You say? There's a difference? I hope so. Plain ol' cleverness has no soul baby. Anyway. Merry, merry, happy, happy, happy, happy.

(Dec. 04, 2011) Posted Dec. 09, 2011: it feels SO GOOD to see the drawing coming out of the darkness. VERY interesting things are coming slowly to mind (re: words, letters and how I mean to color in his business suit). Sometimes I think that the very fact that I am SO BUSY and SO FRUSTRATED at my efforts to GET to my ART... adds an intensity that might otherwise be lacking (if I were complacently being even happier than I am now). LOL. I don't know. That's what I tell myself. Maybe I would be thinking even deeper if I could do ART all of the time. A very academic question. Anyway. This drawing is about to get VERY interesting (if I can pull this off). I am VERY worried about it getting to be too clever. UGH.

(Nov. 28, 2011) Posted Dec. 09, 2011: interesting things are happening to the business man. His box has become battered. A QUICK, preliminary thought on the battered box: Yes. That symbol works on many layers.* I can feel meanings accumulating in this drawing. Symbols feel right when I can "think" of a couple of different interpretations (without diving too deeply into the pool so to speak). Interpretations with elbow room... THAT means the symbol can work in this work of art. MORE layers of thought/meaning will come later. AND, even MORE will come when I hear what YOU think. LOL. The Artwork must be strong enough to carry the layers AND open enough that all thoughts aren't forced down a one way street. There IS a story and there IS a reason THESE symbols have been put in place...BUT, it's not about what I want it to be ...it's about what is being brought back from that other place (where the muse lives and the subconscious reigns supreme). It's ultra cool when layers of meaning are created by combining symbols. Argh. This is SO HARD to explain. I don't think I've gotten that right yet but my fingers are tired of typing and I've got too much to do. I'll try again another time... One dimensional art is NOT what I'm trying to create here. LOL. THIS is NOT about being clever. THAT is too easy. This is about ART.

*My (artist) facebook entries a couple of weeks back details symbolic thoughts on boxes. NOT the personal page (which has not been updated since day two, I believe). LOL. Oh well. Facebook is just too much fun (and you can never put enough water in a nuclear reactor).

(Nov. 07, 2011) Posted Dec. 09, 2011: ok. Technically the background is "done" (at least as of this moment). LOL. Take a good look at the skeleton. I have been playing with putting a shadow around him. The shadow has come, gone and taken a few different shapes. NOW, it is quite DEFinite. Which is the REAL one? The skeleton? Or, the shadow of the man that the skeleton is inside? I don't know right now. I'll KNOW later, when I have the time to actually do some DEEP thinking on the subject. Right now, I just know that it FITS just right.

(Sept. 26, 2011) Posted Dec. 09, 2011: still working the background. The funny thing? It's just like the boxes in the LAST drawing ("Just Passing Through... "). If I draw this correctly, it won't REALLY be noticed by most people.... It's ONLY when you do it WRONG, that EVERYONE notices "it". LOL.

(Sept. 12, 2011) Posted Dec. 02, 2011: look carefully and you can see one of the many re-layerings of pencil going down (the 6th layer out from the apple). The background is slooooowly getting darker and darker. I worry that it will be too dark here and there and not dark enough elsewhere... Yes, I worry about it constantly and YES, I keep on doing it. Fill the head with facts (symbols, mythologies, etc.), fill the heart with soulFULL thangs, and let the gut/muse interpret. Follow THAT blindly. BELIEVE.

(Aug. 21, 2011) Posted Dec. 02, 2011: this is terrible. I KNEW that it had been quite a while since the website had been updated. I KNEW it, but tried NOT to think about it. I KNEW that making ART had become a VERY sporadic and somewhat tenuous thing (recently)... but I ignored that fact until this very moment. ARGH. THIS is how it happens. One-step-at-a-time, you walk away (but REALLY mean to turn back any second). Before you know it you are MILES away from where you temporarily stopped. One step here, one there. $#@!!! BULLshit. Anyway. A LOT of Life happened between then and NOW. Stuff like... discovering that the NEW paper for my new drawing was SO nice and thick. This GREAT paper took to pencil SO well that I started adding even MORE layers of pencil to the mix. Guess what happened. I started (accidentally) BURNISHING the paper. This doesn't sound like a BIG deal but glare had accumulated... My eyes hurt. I had too much light in the wrong places, like...EVERYWHERE (the glass under the drawing, the location of my lights, etc. etc.). I knew that things had become somewhat uncomfortable when I realized that my enthusiasm was sub-par. I put this down to the seemingly over redundant layering. Yeah right. I was ....uncomfortable ...drawing? (NOT layering.) Are you kidding? This was SO WRONG! Sooooo... I decided to completely rearrange the drawing room. Completely. This involved several trips to the local home improvement warehouse to get Plexiglas sized to sit my drawings on (cutting glare down but also putting a working surface OVER the beautiful wood grain of my drawing table). Colored Plexiglas would have been BETTER, but more expensive. I'm just GLAD to get the glare down to a reasonable level. The temporary east side studio (aka dining room) has become The Permanent Art Studio. A very good thang, but unfortunately this = time spent not drawing. This was followed with Halloween costume making, setting up computers and figuring out the MANY side issues of music software, etc. etc.. I kept trying to draw a little bit here and there, but....neither Gary nor I have made much Art in the last couple of months. UGH. We are both OVER reality and super dooper ready for the annual artist retreat. BIGtime. Soooo, bear with me, I am trying to think back and reconstruct some of this drawing time line and put it in perspective (while beating myself over the head with this lesson re-learning bit). This is just awful. Between August and December only BITs and pieces of drawing. Teeney, ity bity tidbits. Step. Step. Baby step. Back to the beginning. Start over. Do not pass go. Jeeeez.

Ok. Details. Drawing in the background for this picture has been a real pain in the tush man. Trying to get the gradients even steven has seen incremental additions of complete craziness. Sometimes this involves going over a section with the lightest pencil (from the current arsenal) and using the very lightest of strokes ...only to realize THAT wasn't quite dark enough... and... re-going over the entire section in an extremely light way ...ONCE AGAIN. And THEN..., having to re-darken all sorts of other bits too (i.e. stars, etc.). I am going to be a stark raving looney before this is all done. I really think there are thirteen to twenty layers on some bits of this paper (MORE on other bits). Jeeeeeeez. It's my fault. I'm the one with the vision. I could fix this. I won't. I refuse. I'm NOT COMPROMISING. So there. (I hope the muse gives me credit for this one. LOL.) It is ALL GOING TO BE WORTH IT. Right?

This drawing is correctly named, "A Natural Pearl In My Careless Hand." Holy cow I need to be careful and re-effort my energies at keeping life in perspective and ART at the forefront. I appear to have gotten complacent. You CANNOT believe how ironic that statement is. Gary and I are ALWAYS efforting ART. ALWAYS. And still...there is NOT enough time in the day. Maybe I should buy a lotto ticket. Of course, then I'd have to remember to check the numbers (as IF). LOL.

(Aug. 14, 2011) Posted Aug. 21, 2011: it's funny...but I feel like I am JUST coloring in everything (no creativity just a LOT of technical stuff going down). UGH-O. There are, a minimum of three layers on EACH sketched in bit o' paper above. Some of the areas have seven layers, each a different pencil :) It's very tedious. You COULD call it relaxing if you were DETERMINEDLY optimistic. LOL. If I rush ANY of it, it shows. Soooo, little bitty, thick coats of graphite ...one-at-a-time ....it's onwards with patience at the fore... I'm glad Gary is making musical things happen on the other side of the house. I can hear it ALL and it is calming my turbulent beast. DOWN baby DOWN. LOL.

(Aug. 07, 2011) Posted Aug. 21, 2011: I am JUST going for it. So, step #1 is to set the background colors. Pencils have been picked, gradients chosen ...it's go time. NOTE: this photo (above) is DARK ...so YOU can see the lines.

Posted Aug. 21, 2011: part of the NEED to lay the background down first... getting from point A to point B. The DARKEST point (the layer nearest to the apple) needs to be a DARK shadow... but there are going to be things in front of IT that will (also) be dark. Anything in FRONT of THAT darkness... would need to be DARKER... which means: the bottom wave of the tree must be REALLY dark ...but not TOO DARK. Ditto with the reverse: the lightest point (the right side of the drawing) ...which holds the skeleton (the whitest point of the drawing). PLUS: if the right side of the drawing is TOO light, the viewer's eye will skid right OFF the drawing. The eye MUST be re-directed back INTO the drawing... Soooo, pencil combination experiments ensued: how to get from here to there. Sheesh. This is a REALLY complicated drawing for such a simple layout. Ugh. Any-friggin-way...

(July 31, 2011) Posted Aug. 21, 2011: this drawing is VERY bossy. Usually I draw from left to right, up to down (to keep from smudging the graphite as I draw). This drawing is REFUSING to let me work thataways. FIRST I had to flesh out the hair lines, now I HAVE to set the tonality of the background. A sort of sound wave action is coming off of the apple. The amount of fade out is dictated by this action. Add to this the variable of the darkness of the tree contrasted to the darkness of the night sky AND the fact that the skeleton is the whitest point in the drawing (which SHOULD be in the DARK)... and you have deep TROUBLE brewing. This is really heavy man and waaay complicated. The big doubts are creeping into my mind once again. LOL. Am I doing the right thing? Is this TOO intellectualized? How can it be? I'm not thinking about it. I'm following the little voice that comes direct from the gut. Right??? Ugh.

(Aug. 07, 2011) Posted Aug. 21, 2011: here are some of the more successful rope sketches. LOL. The REALLY funny thing about these??? I redirected the way the hands are working, and decided NOT to incorporate the lines from the photographed bikini's ...and that changed EVERYTHING. These are ALL (mostly) useless....

(July 25, 2011) Posted Aug. 21, 2011: Alfonse Mucha was famous for drawing beautifully patterned hair on graceful female figures. Very art deco/art nouveau. Very beautiful lines. I saw something by Mucha, or an imitator of his art, early on in life. I barely remember the moment but the impact was HUGE. I saw... a drawing/painting of a woman with beautiful hair flowing ALL OVER the place. It was the line that drew me. The art deco line. I saw this image on a mirror (?), in passing. Just a minute passing through, from here to there. This glimpse of something ELSE became fundamental to my (early) style. Later on I discovered Mucha and KNEW that I had found IT (the ghost in my machinery). Add this to living in Japan (outside Tokyo) during a few formulative years AND the resultant HEAVY exposure to anime at a tender age ...and you can SEE some of the fundamental influences running wildly through my artwork. BIGtime.

(July 18, 2011) Posted Aug. 21, 2011: If you've read many of these artist blogs, you KNOW that I've (recently) had PROBLEMS with my drawing paper. TOO much pencil and the drawing paper warps. Too much kneaded eraser and ditto again. Trying to mat a drawing with a pre-cut white mat made me realize that my paper was NOT REALLY white (as advertised). During the course of this ongoing argument (!@#$!!) with my drawing paper, sketch pad after sketch pad was purchased at the local art supermarket/franchise store (each featuring heavier and supposedly whiter paper). STILL NOT HAPPY and READY to draw, I hit the internet. Luckily for me, I found a local art store and a wonderful man who talked me off the ledge. He was a fount of information about artist drawing paper and this store carried a lot of choices. Who knew? I know this sounds stupid but I never thought about drawing paper until the last couple of years. I was MUCH more concerned with the act of drawing. THAT was my focus. I have to say, this new professional grade art paper (Canson) is WONDERFUL. It's more white than anything previously purchased AND because it is 100 lb. weight, it seems to really take the punishment. The right paper REALLY does make a world of difference and I am SO HAPPY. It's a luxurious experience. Yes, really. This is just blowing my mind. It's just PAPER and I feel like I bought myself a mink coat. You should have SEEN the smile on my face as I bought it home. Jeez. We're talking Paper here. Who frickin' knew it could make SUCH a difference? Only an artist could get SO EXCITED about drawing paper. I'm sure a teacher somewhere somehow talked about artist's drawing paper and I'm SURE I zoned it out ...'cause that was a BORING detail and I wanted to DRAW. LOL. Anyway. I paid for my paper and am NOT getting any money for saying this: if you live in St. Petersburg (FL)... check out the Central Art Supply Company on Central Avenue. Support the ARTS baby!

Posted Aug. 21, 2011: about 20 copies of the collage were printed out so I could draw hair and ropes around the girls. I wanted to experiment with the lines a bit. The problem was: interesting patterns would crop up but I wouldn't like the ENTIRE effort. In theory, the plan was to copy bits and pieces, ...merge the best of each and then take THAT to the paper. Instead, I would get carried away (over and over again) and loose focus somewhere along the line. This made for many, many sketches (and a LOT of man hours). Me and a cup of coffee, pencil and hardcopy would hit the chair. The fingers tried to work through the problem-o. It was fun at first. FINALLY, the idea of minimalizing the curves down to just ONE line each occurred. Simple lines were drawn for directional and design purposes. Details could be filled in later AND the final design would be MUCH easier to translate to the drawing paper. Too cool. It worked like a charm. Now I was READY to start drawing on the BIG picture...but... as for the drawing paper ... (awkward silence) ...

(July 11, 2011) Posted Aug. 21, 2011: I found the photo of the two girls shopping the closing of a Barnes and Nobles. This image (of the girls) came from a really cheesy calendar that I bought for $1. I don't know why I bought it, that's what I do: I collect pictures. I dont' judge them, I collect them. It's a COLLECTive subconscious thing. (What's that? Ask Jung.) LOL.

Anyway. The girls, the apple and the guy started this piece. I liked the guy for lots of reasons (symbolically speaking). There's the business suit, the not-so-normal behavior of dancing AND he is holding a box. I liked the box guy pict ...partially because I had just finished a drawing featuring boxes (where the subject of boxes is explored ...somewhat <lol>). I like to carry symbols throughout the collection. It is hard enough following what I am doing (artwise)...without forcing everyone to start COMPLETELY fresh (on the symbol side) each and every time. Onwards. The apple. A favorite symbol of mine. I really like the symbols that have MANY layers of meanings and this particular one crosses from the B.C. to the new millenium. Wow. Talk about LAYERS. At this point in the collage, I felt a need for something medieval (on the right side of the drawing). Death works well there. Death/change, etc. Another potent symbol. Especially when it is noted that both Death/change and the business man are in similiar positions and both are dancing. Hmmmm. I am NOT going to think about it at this stage. Right now it is JUST about capturing the Art wave and riding it through. Thinking is for later. The guy and the apple came from the local newspaper. Death/change came from the internet. You would not believe how many times this image popped up. VERY popular. Ironically, also VERY medieval. PLUS: VERY collective subconscious if I don't say so myself. ALL of THAT pretty much SCREAMED "use me!" LOL. The tree is from my neighborhood. These trees have wonderful lines. I noted this and hoped for a tree need to pop up. Well, it did and I have a camera so that worked out well :)