3 drawings, 4 details

Two Beet Juice Drawings

I’ve had a jar of beet juice in my fridge for a couple years – I’ve saved it with the intention of using it for drawing, but haven’t really ever gotten around to using it. It had sort of gotten pushed to the back and forgotten, the way things do in the refrigerator sometimes. I remembered it yesterday and pulled it out and gave it a try – I’m pleased with the results – although, I might need to explore how it reacts to a few different kinds of paper.  The color degrades pretty quickly, but I like degradation, you know. Here they are:

Pretension

noun

• the laying of a claim to something.
• a claim or title to something.
• a claim to dignity, importance, or merit.
• Often, pretensions. a claim made, especially indirectly or by implication, to some quality, merit, or the like.
• a claim to dignity, importance, or merit.
• the act of pretending or alleging.
• an allegation of doubtful veracity.

So, here they are:

conceit

noun

• something that is conceived in the mind; a thought; idea:
• imagination; fancy.
• a fancy; whim; fanciful notion.
• an elaborate, fanciful metaphor, especially of a strained or far-fetched nature.

from dictionary.com

I found a red pen – a PaperMate® medium red ballpoint – the other day. I don’t know where it came from; I don’t ever use red pens. I suspect I picked it up at school; things like that appear in my pockets in the evening when I get undressed – less kleptomanic than inattentive, really. They pile up on horizontal surfaces and sometimes in decorative bowls or glass jars. Eventually, I tend to return them – I lean more towards less-clutter than acquisition.

I decided to see what it would be like to draw with it. I like drawing with ballpoint pens – especially medium point PaperMates®, especially on certain surfaces – white 28lb bond copier paper, and newsprint in a stack (not a single sheet on a hard surface, it must be at least a few sheets to create a certain give – a softness, a receptiveness) are two of the best.  I like the way these surfaces receive the mark. I like the smooth gliding feeling of drawing the pen across the sheet.

I have a prejudice, I’ve long been aware of – I greatly prefer black pens to blue. Just the other day, a friend needed a pen – I happened to have two with me (acquired, I’m certain, in the same manner as the red one), one blue – the other black. I handed her the blue one and felt a rush of guilt for my lack of generosity. I appeased myself with an assuring conviction that she probably didn’t have a preference, but kept the black one for myself.

I had never really given any thought to my feelings about red pens. The idea of trying one out was exciting. I’ve been exploring it’s possibilities ever since. I’m developing quite a stack of these – some more successful than others.  Here are just five for now, that I like. I’ll have to scan  the set eventually, these are just quick iPhone photos – which seems to be the way I do documentation anymore, but I think they’d be better scanned… or maybe not.

A dozen recent iPad drawings

Drawings on the Declaration of Independence

This little diversion of combining drawings and historical documents is turning into an ongoing project. Here are the latest additions. Happy Independence day!

an iPad drawing on gray

I sometimes think I don’t use gray often enough. Here’s a drawing on gray. Oh, and by the way, that uploading straight from the iPad is neat, but I think if I were going to do it all the time, I’d have to find an app that would resize the images for me, I think the big size is too big… I suppose I could just resize it later… hmm.

An iPad drawing

I haven’t very often – ever? – posted one of these drawings straight from my iPad. So this is a test to see how that works. Anyway, here’s what I think is a pretty good drawing. I’m very happy with it. And this posting from the iPad thing works pretty well. I’m curious to find out what resolution the drawing will end up being though.

Council District 11 Map

I’ve been playing around with a little project over the past couple weeks, adding some vectorized nudes to a Westside map I came across. Here are a few of them. Click here to see the rest – it’s a group of twenty.