I just wanted to draw the things I found too beautiful to not inspect further. The things I couldn’t throw away. The towel still looks too much like I painted it with fruit punch. I like the darks. I like things next to drawings of things. It stresses me out to draw too many objects carefully on one page, but I haven’t been wanting to cut drawings out because I like the spill marks lately. I would like once again to find a huge piece of paper and make it feel like a wall. I currently don’t like to draw shadows, I don’t know why.

April 2nd, 2009 | Category: drawing | Leave a comment

I am really loving the complexity of color I can achieve with gouache. But it doesn’t retain its brilliance after it dries like the ink does. Sometimes if I go back in and touch it up I can get the intensity of color I want.

I am also playing with forms of installation. One of our friends used a jigsaw to cut out the shape of the shadow of the rotten orange, to make a sort of canvas / paper on board.

March 24th, 2009 | Category: drawing | Comments (1)

I worked today with gouache. After three years of working almost exclusively with inks, I suddenly feel my color choices limited. It’s not that I want color to be more true, but I want it to be more complex. I think at first I chose inks because it reminded me of writing, but gouache just has more chances for mixing and making the exact color I want. I suppose I could mix inks, and I may try that, but right now I am deep into enjoying gouache.

(note: these blurry photos were taken with my iphone — my camera had run out of batteries.)

March 19th, 2009 | Category: drawing | Leave a comment

- compositions that travel across a wall instead of a page

- mini-compositions inside non-quadrangles: the aura of paper around objects

- color!

- but not too much color not too much color

- drawing something that no one can say i drew wrong because they never saw it

- stress-free drawing, carefulness without anxiety

- the periphery of paper

- when something is both specific and abstract, both part of this world and unnameable

March 13th, 2009 | Category: drawing | Leave a comment

i finally found a lucky penny today after a drought. once i found them all the time, and then the book wouldn’t sell and the baby wouldn’t start and i stopped looking. but i could divine them, i swear. and i was sure that the end of winter would mean a jackpot — all those pennies that have been buried all winter, i thought they were waiting for me, but we’ve found almost none. today it was over sixty degrees and there was my penny waiting for me in the middle of an unpaved parking lot.

..

silhouettes: like shadows. fabric: a chance to have color inside shadows. color and its symbolism. i like muted color, but i can’t seem to get enough saffron or chamomile.

March 6th, 2009 | Category: drawing | Leave a comment

i’ve been thinking about shadows as objects. shadows cut out and put on the wall create their own shadows. many shadows are simple gradations of color inside a fading shape. some shadows fall on cloth, and then they get more complex inside. i like the idea that light falling on an object creates a new object. and i like the idea of very carefully looking at shadows, which is something, though i’ve drawn a lot, i’ve not actually studied as much as i would have liked to. jennifer came to the studio last week and she said that shadows are sometimes the most complicated thing to paint — translating something intangible on a two-dimensional surface can end up making the shadow look like its own object, or like someone smeared grease on the countertop. the subtlety can get lost, and the evidence of the brushwork circling the shadow can give away its process–then the illusion hiccups. i like the idea of giving into that mis-translation.

March 5th, 2009 | Category: drawing | Leave a comment

recent drawings. drawing old quilts which feel like maps. and cloth which maybe functions as a backdrop or as a way to have a bigger visual chunk next to all the small pieces. cloth is something that is big overall but its details are still small and lend themselves to abstraction. and those rotten oranges with their oblong shadows, i can’t draw them enough it seems. plus ribbon which becomes a snake and also becomes a way to tie the smaller pieces together.

February 27th, 2009 | Category: drawing | Leave a comment

after two days unable to draw because of the pain shooting up my neck, i got to go to the studio today. it still hurts, but tylenol is this miracle i just learned about.

i had a dream last night about these drawings i did, but i had never done them in reality, and they were all these cut-out drawings all connected with string, and some things that weren’t drawings but more remnants of drawings, and shadows of drawings, and some of the drawings were inserted into the wall. a ton of string spun around everything and connected it perfectly. it was a beautiful mess. so today i cut out some drawings. i only wrote string on my hand. also on my hand, a reminder so that i can continue to do this art thing: trust.

February 20th, 2009 | Category: drawing | Comments (1)

a drawing of a piece of science jewelry, dna untwisted.

(and what if it worked, what if i put it in my body and it made dna.)

February 12th, 2009 | Category: drawing | Leave a comment