The Go-Aheadness of It All

Here is another thing I like

about a good friendship,

the go-aheadness of it all.

You don’t have to knock

to come in the door.

You don’t have to ask

to look in the refrigerator.

You want coffee?

Pour some.

    —Elizabeth Berg, 

       Range of Motion

Two weeks ago, we headed to downeast Maine to hang out with can't-find-better friends John and Mary for a weekend of non-stop talk, lotsa laugh-out-loud, and lively long walks hither and yon. Sunday morning, early hours, I pulled out my sketchbook and got rolling with a mostly blind-contour drawing of a reading sofa and cushioned wicker chair in our guest accommodations. Blind contour is so deliciously wonky and satisfying.

early hours sketch

Want Coffee? Pour Some
7.5 x 8.5"; ink and watercolor pencils on paper
blind contour drawing
2023

Redirection

You know how we don't talk about retirement anymore? We talk about redirection?

I'm ready to redirect as a distortionist. I'm already having grand fun spiffing up my résumé.

First, a teaser before the actual reveal—art every which way I turn:

back side of sketchbook page—love it!

Now, the flip side:

The Whole Thing Was Slung a Little Askew
Like a Dog Half-Minded to Lie Down
9x12"; ink, dry-erase marker, and oil pastel on sketchbook paper
blind contour still life
2022

Musical

Gigi, My Fair Lady, Kiss Me Kate, Pajama Game, Fiddler on the Roof. 

Many musicals have won their way into my heart over the years, starting when I was maybe nine years old.

The past few months have felt artistically musical to me. 

As in: muse-ical. 

I've been open to letting muses lead me where they will.

And they are leading me all over the place. To no place I would have thought of on my own.

To my delight.

Over the weekend we visited friends John and Mary in the magical bit of land they call home along the coast of Maine. I woke Saturday morning, early hours, when a muse invited me to do a down-and-dirty-done-in-five-minutes blind contour sketch of a chair and large potted floor plant in our sweet guest accommodations. This is the blindest blind contour of my recent work. Footloose and fancy free.

blind contour wonkiness and wonder

Basic sketch in place, I then began rounding all the corners where lines intersected. I am fascinated by the alchemy that comes from combining blind contour sketching and neurographic smoothing. 

blind contour neurographic alchemy

Back at home I added a few lines, tried something that felt like a mistake, introduced color to resolve the misstep, found myself humming show tunes. 

work in progress

Off to the Races

Late afternoon rolls around and I find myself antsy, itching to create something.

Anything. 

I grab a sketchbook last used in February 2019 and tape off the edges of a page to form a border. Then I grab a pen, park myself in front of my bedroom dresser, and impulsively start blind-contour drawing a ceramic bowl and carafe that sit on the dresser-top. 

In no time, I'm off to the races, running full tilt, shifting from one location to another in my bedroom and office, simultaneously rotating the sketchbook as I go. I draw whatever catches my eye: a ceramic pencil holder, a timer, plants in a tin container, a notebook's spiral binding, a bottle of body lotion, part of a postcard—all on the same page. I look at the page only to give myself starting points. I'm a whirling dervish!

Until     I     slow    way    down.

I pivot from impulsive and improvisational to deliberate and focused, fusing all the linework from the frenetic blind-contour drawing with neurographic smoothing.

Eventually I step back, fascinated to see an abstract "circuit board" capturing on paper the pure pleasure of fully engaged process.

---

Now what?

No idea.

work in progress
9 x 12"; ink on drawing paper

Amblyopic-Neurographic Playtime

Following Emmy's lead of last week, I have in mind to create a blind contour drawing, so I carry that intention along with a sheet of drawing paper and an ink pen to a still-life bottlescape I've arranged in my studio. 

My eye, however, seems to move of its own accord which, I learn, is a symptom of a condition called amblyopia. I suspect, though, that instead of having a physiologically-based medically-diagnosable 'lazy' eye, I have a willful mind that wants to sneak an occasional peek at my drawing paper. The nonmedical term for this condition: cheating!

In any case, I am the boss of my own creative explorations, and this one combines a partially blind contour drawing and the neurographic smoothing of corners. I'm thinking of my sketch, at this stage, as amblyopic-neurographic.

dry-run warm-up exercise,
pencil on the back of used copy paper

detail, partially blind contour drawing,
ink on drawing paper

detail, amblyopic neurographic exploration,
work in progress

Blind-sided Still Life

While Emmy was in residence earlier this week, in addition to populating a watercolor-and-ink barnyard, we gathered vases from a kitchen shelf, snipped flowers and greenery from Dave's gardens, cleared a space on top of a file cabinet, and set up a still life. Emmy then perched on a stool and followed the example of a member of Amanda Evanston's Insider Studio.

The exploration exercise: create a blind contour drawing of an arrangement of vases and garden clippings; add pops of color.

Emmy went home with a spectacular portfolio, I tell ya!

Basket Case

Those of you who are My Fair Lady aficionados might be familiar with Hymn to Him, the lyrics of which never failed to get active appreciation from my dad. The words from one line bubble up to capture the way I'm feeling in this moment—not for the first time this year, I might add, and not for the first time when posting here, my head is stuffed with cotton, hay, and rags. 

I am worn to a frazzle, at risk of becoming nothing but [an] exasperating, irritating, vacillating, calculating, agitating, maddening and infuriating hag! 

And that is all I have to say about my response to challenges today. 

---

About the art: I sat down yesterday and plonked out this part-blind-contour part-neurographic drawing exercise and felt all the better for its wonkinesses.

Be Curious but Not Invested or Hellbent
5 x 6"; ink, watercolor, acrylic, and oil pastel on card stock
floral
2022

Afternoon Fix

I reach a point nearly every day now where I feel a hankering to get my creative fix via restorative neuroart.

Today:

Grabbed a piece of unsolicited mail printed on good card stock. Turned it to its blank side.

Reached for my container of ink pens.

Cast my eyes about for something I could use as a reference for a sketch, wondering how blind contour drawing and the rounding-the-corners nature of neuroart might marry.

Way fun.

Love the organic unavoidable imprecision of blind contour drawing.

Love the inner hush that comes from the neuroart practice of smoothing all the linear intersections.

Love this little sketch.

A Kind of Miracle, I'd Say
3.25 x 8"; ink on card stock
abstract blind contour sketch
2022

Backstage

I love backstories, the stuff that goes on behind the scenes—or behind the seens—in art.

Also, I love thinking about where to start the telling of a story.

For this story—the story of a new painting in process—I'm going to begin with a blogpost of mine from June 2016. 

What was I doing poking around old blogposts from 2016, you ask? Well, maybe my story needs to start there.

I recently set out to weed my email to free up some space on my computer and declutter my mind. I have multiple tidy, well-organized email folders where I save messages of importance to me. Within those multiple tidy, well-organized folders sit thousands of messages, a huge number of which (a) are no longer of importance, or (b) I never reference because I no longer have any idea they're there. 

I was able to delete a bunch of folders without a backward glance.

Then I bumped into the folder that contains the nightly emails my dad sent to my sisters and me for nearly six years, starting when my mom had a stroke six months before she died and continuing until my dad's death just shy of a year ago. Those emails I am rereading (and mostly saving), usually in one-week clusters at any one reading. Because I started my art blog a few weeks after my mom's stroke, I am also rereading the blogposts whose dates correspond with whatever cluster of emails I'm revisiting.

Yesterday, I bumped into a post in response to which my muses woke up and took note. I loved the quiet application of neutrals I'd used to start a painting, followed by an overlay of blind contour drawing. Two posts later, I bumped into the very inviting what-if-I-did-this mindset that is always a gift when I paint, and my muses perked up even more.

I thought, what if I started a new neurographic painting with a neutral atmospheric background like this rather than on plain white drawing paper?

To be continued …

Mark Making

The Bible is a collection of religious texts sacred to Christians, Jews, and others. It contains 66 books, one of which is the book of Psalms. 

The book of Psalms contains 150 Psalms, one of which is Psalm 23.

Psalm 23 consists of six verses, the last of which rose to the surface of my mind several days ago in reference to my writing about mondegreens.

Yesterday, words from Psalm 23, line 5—my cup runneth over—came to my attention in a text message from my daughter.

Psalm 23 is thought to have been written some three thousand years ago (three thousand!), in Hebrew, by King David of Israel, though most of what is known of David comes from biblical literature, the historical authenticity of which is uncertain. There is little detail about David that is concrete and undisputed by historians.

But someone felt called to create, to put into form, and to share this sacred song, without knowing if or how making the marks of it would 'make a mark,' so to speak.

And so it is with all of us; we are called to create, called to make marks. 

I Shall Not Want
4.5 x 5.25" postcard; acrylic and ink on paper
abstract floral
2021

I Pick Up This Little

Even though I wake 

feeling hemmed in 

and crowded by 

the schedule of tasks 

enumerated for the day, 

I choose to lengthen my spine

and open my heart.

I pick up this little 

rectangle of paper, 

with its mark-making 

and light washes of color, 

place a paint pen in my hand,

begin to make new marks,

add more color,

and step completely out of 

time into 

grand spaciousness.

Be Joyful Though You Have Considered All the Facts
4.5 x 5.5" postcard; acrylic and ink on paper
abstract floral
2021

All By

Today I'm mindful of my older granddaughter Caroline's former oft-used toddler assertion of independence, all by! 

In cahoots, I think, with the same part of me that wanted to assert its independence yesterday, All-By yammers at me this morning. I go to my studio again with the idea of creating a multi-layered intuitive organic piece on paper from which I'll cut found compositions to use as postcards. My thought is to start with random mark-making.

All-By gets her own idea and wrests the paper from me insisting, all by! What emerges is of course not at all what I'd planned but I put up no resistance. All-By wanders from spot to spot in the house adding snippets of blind contour drawing and patches of doodles. Ends up with this:

work in progress,
9 x 12"; blind contour and doodles on paper

All-By looks at me; I look at All-By. 

All-By keeps the reins. No way is she going to add layers that cover the blind contour mark-making. Cut this into six rectangles, she states. Then go outdoors for a walk. I've got this.

Pulling Out a Slim Volume of Poetry
4 x 5.5" postcard; acrylic and ink on paper,
mounted on card stock
abstract floral
2021

Faces 21

Good thing Jen Jovan posts on her blog regularly, so as to blow life into me when I've lost my blogging steam. Today she reminds me, via poet Mary Oliver, to stand still and learn to be astonished.

I am so in need of this reminder, this reminder to practice.

Every moment is a moment to stand still and be astonished.

In one such moment I notice the village vicar in a novel set in post-World War I English countryside. He refers to his work as being called to hatch, match, and dispatch.

Delight and astonishment! Hatch, match, dispatch!

The Friend Who Teaches Me How to Knot Thread
9 x 12"; acrylic, ink, pastel, and collage on drawing paper
abstract face
2021
$70

back story:
chaos layers, blind contour drawing,
and tissue collage

Faces 19

For the past few days, woven into the spaces between daily activities—making the bed, taking walks in the great outdoors, chopping vegetables, tutoring, reading, paying bills, shopping for groceries, resolving a glitch with an online order—I've had chances to hang out with this guy, often chatting companionably, sometimes lost in our separate thoughts, periodically venturing into artistic tomfoolery, and more than once exploring differences of opinion. 

He has strong integrity, a clear way of being in the world, a reliable compass guiding him. 

The Friend Who Isn't Afraid to Hold a Fierce Optnion
and Later Change His Mind
9 x 12"; acrylic and pastels on drawing paper
abstract face
2021
$70

Faces 18

Today, I just want to create in my visual diary an in-process record of the mark-and-response going on with a new abstract face. 

My attention to illumination and shadow as part of the Rembrandt lighting exploration has led somehow with this particular face to a more highly representational mode than with other faces recently. My inner guide is telling me to get my need for a somewhat photographically-faithful rendering out of my system first. 

Then, let's see what else I might want to do. Or not. 

I'm thinking more playful and pranky and improbable is a distinct possibility.

Faces 17

When I'm ten years old, my family moves to the Netherlands for two years as part of my dad's job. More than once we drive to Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam to pick up family or friends who come to visit. On at least one of those occasions, when a flight is significantly delayed, my folks opt to visit the Rijksmuseum to fill the interim before we return to Schiphol. This might be my first visit to an art museum. 

What a place to begin! I have vivid memories of the paintings of the Dutch masters whose works hang in the galleries there, dark dark backgrounds but with strong light illuminating faces and other details. I remember being drawn in to those paintings to explore them.

Now, all these years later, I am taking an Amanda Evanston art-of-abstract-faces course, and lesson 2 turns attention to what has become known as "Rembrandt lighting." 

Way cool idea, but I study my chaos-layer-plus-blind-contour-drawing-start and think, Rembrandt?, really?

I can't imagine how I will complete this painting.

chaos-layer-plus-blind-contour-drawing-start

But I don't need to imagine its completion. I need to make a mark. So I do. I let it inform my eye, then make another mark, and another, and then—awesome!—I'm totally in flow.

The Friend Who Takes the Bus from NYC
to Surprise Me With a Visit in College
9 x 12"; acrylic, ink, and oil pastel on drawing paper
abstract face
2021
$70

I'm guessing Rembrandt had to start by making marks of some sort also.

Faces 16

Two more new friends in the making. 

I'm setting up four starts for the second lesson in the self-paced The Art of Abstract Faces course I'm adventuring through with artist/instructor Amanda Evanston blazing the way. She's doing her darnedest to move me past my hesitations, my tightnesses, my discomforts. 

Working on multiple pieces at once or in a series is such a good idea. Grateful to have Amanda encouraging me to do so.

face in progress

face in progress

Faces 15

So funny to observe the hesitation, the nervousness, the maybe-I-need-to-do-something-in-the-kitchen-first angst that can—and does—often precede my undertaking a next step in my studio. Today, it was picking up a marker and doing some new blind contour drawings that had me feeling unduly timid.

Eventually took the plunge:

face in progress
(this guy is making me look relaxed!)

face in progress
(can you see the stalker in the background?!)

More Sweet Chaos

Activating Canvases

This, then, just before five a.m.—

Like confectioner's sugar

sifted lightly on gingerbread,

a dusting of snow on the ground.

I am the first 

to walk my street.

Well, the first in shoes.

Unobserved earlier, a rabbit

has tracked up the gessoed canvas

of our driveway to

pass between the corner

of the garage and the corner

of the back deck.

Another left the safety

of Dale's leafless raspberry canes

to dart across Prospect Street

for the safety 

of the leafless canes 

of our red-twig dogwood shrub.

So, too, no one observed 

the cluster of deer who

ignored social distancing

guidelines to walk flank to flank

up and down the length 

of our hushed street 

before I stepped outdoors

into the velvet dark of predawn

to make my own Thursday morning story

with quiet marks.

---

Later the same day I head to my studio for some indoor mark-making using paint, ink, and collage. Four new chaos layers ready to play with.

Faces 14

I have a fierce urge to shove this guy out in high winds to rough up that mop on his head—he is in desperate need of a hair out of place!

I'm laughing to myself as I realize this is not the first time I've had an urge to take charge of someone else's hair. Years ago I tutored an engaging bright boy who was middle school age. For the two or three years I worked with him he sported a 'rattail' hairstyle, a style characterized by a long thin braid growing downward from the back of his head. Can't tell you how many times I fantasized pulling out a pair of shears and snipping off that 10" braid! It was just begging me to make mischief!

The Friend Who Signs Every Single Photo
of Himself in My Senior Yearbook
9 x 12"; acrylic, ink, oil pastel, pencil, and collage
on drawing paper
abstract face
2021
$45

messy middle flashback:

blind contour drawing 
on top of cool-colors chaos layer