I’ve been waiting for a warm sunny day to do this… draw tree bark. And utility poles. Blow them up and do fine pen drawings, just for the textures.
5″ x 4″ Metalpoint (silver, copper), ink, watercolor. Learning by doing… little by little.

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Texture & Planes. 4″x 4″ Metalpoint: silver & copper, ink wash, acrylic white. Experimenting on how I want to use this medium.
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This is what I see as after image, working on those textured drawings.
17″x 14″ India ink wash, Higgins water soluble brown on Bristol, Sakura .01 and Crow Quill. Fine as it is, the Sakura is too blunt to use stippling. Nothing like a crow quill.
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I’ve posted before on how important drawing is for me (HERE, and HERE). It’s an exercise, what a pianist might do when no one is listening. Sometimes I’ll set a drawing aside, as something worth keeping, but mostly, I put the sketch books on a shelf when they’re full, or in a portfolio in a closet. Seldom look at them again.
It’s not about “representation;” they are exercises in seeing: in double vision–seeing what is there, and seeing, and translating that to what I see within. It’s what I see within that matters. I like to draw things with textures: tree bark, rocks, broken pavement. Here is a photo of some things I found on a walk yesterday, and a drawing I made from them. The scanner did a poor job of catching the detail; pencil doesn’t take as well as ink. When I’m working with crow-quill, or a new Sacura .01 ultrafine pen, … I can spend hours at this… like meditation.
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17″x 14″ Charcoal, acrylic, pastel 5th in this series. Not quite what I wanted… but close enough to give me an idea of where I’m heading. (a better photo than what I posted yesterday)


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Obama would have been a great president in another America, of another time. An America that never existed and a time that never was. But he believes in that America. He believes in its essential decency, in the fairness of its rules. He believes whatever problems and failures exist are best remedied by following those rules, that in the end, we all really want the same thing, and if you are willing to give and take, give and take, it will all work out for the best. Obama believes with all his heart that he is in a Frank Capra movie.
That if you persist–all those bad Senators will eventually see that Mr. Smith was right all along, and Mr. Potter, like Scrooge in A Christmas Carol, will carry Tiny Tim on his shoulders and give poor Bob Cratchit the fattest Christmas goose in London…er, America.
Obama lives in an impermeable bubble made of money. Made of people with money. Nothing will ever pop it. But he is a good and honest man. Really, he is.
Ms Clinton, on the other hand–has no illusions about what that bubble that protects her, that has lofted her to power, is made of. Otherwise–she will do pretty much what Obama has done.
Preside over a country ruled by a tiny elite, overseeing the perpetual flow of wealth from the bottom to the top.
Senator Sanders, however, has glasses, with one glass sort-of clear, and the other (the far-seeing glass–the one sees across the wide wide seas that surround us)… with the same movie playing as all the rest of them… the American Exceptionalism movie, with John Wayne saving the world for Democracy…er.. for American investment. The other eye, the Roosevelt eyeglass, understands, that to save Capitalism, you have to be brave, you have shuck off the taunts of “Socialist!” … just like Franklin did.
Oh and there’s a little Eleanor in him too! He has a fierce belief in justice! There are some Bad Things about America, like racism. He did what was right when he was young (and I say this with all due respect… no irony here), but of course, the way to fix it is to put those Bad Bad Bankers in their place! To get the economy turned around and money in the hands of those who actually work for it. That will take care of that Bad Racism for sure! The racists… once they see they have equal access to the American Pie, will become as pure in heart as Young Bernie ever was!
And there we have it… the American Hologram. Which projection do YOU live in? Whose happy delusion make YOU happy, when you think — how wonderful it is to be able to vote for your very own Moviedream!
17″x 14″ Mixed Media: Charcoal, Ink, Acrylic, Collage on Bristol Paper. This makes the 4th in this series. I like the sense of depth I get from the multiple layers. Laying down areas of charcoal, rubbing over to blur the lines, create gray areas, than dark lines on top of that, repeating, than brushing in white acrylic. In the 3rd piece, (#475) I tore up a photo of women factory workers from early in the 20th Century, glued them to the sheet of paper, and worked around and over them. The curled edges added greatly to that sense of depth. In the piece below, I glued on some pieces of a water color that I thought had failed, but it didn’t work. I had to cover almost all of it over, leaving just a hint of color. I added some red to draw attention to it and give the piece a focal point.
I have 11 more sheets of paper in that pad. I don’t know that I’ll end up with 15 of them, but I’ll keep working along these lines until I feel like I’m repeating myself… as long as I can keep them evolving. They make a strong impression, lined up together on the wall.
The titles are just words I find running through my head as I’m working.
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17″x 14″ The Curtain Torn, We See! Mixed media, charcoal, acrylic, collage on Bristol paper.