Here’s another Tidal Wave Sketchbook drawing, another Tidal Wave Sketchbook #2 drawing. I think that more of these that we’ve done than others have been sketchbook number two, they’re all the same number of pages, I’m pretty certain. But so far, a lot of sketchbook 2s.

I like this. There’s a lot going on. This is energized and sort of baroque or something. Um… Clearly, thoughts, anyway, of… the House of Teriyaki, which is where we would have been going to for breakfast very often, and where a lot of these drawings were done. The coffee pot up in the top, and there’s a cup there, and there we are, embracing. It says… “It’s not the sex you know. It’s the sleeping and waking your arms.” Which is a nice thought, and true, certainly, I can recall having that sentiment, anyway.

It says February 3rd, and… You know, it says February 3rd, and then that 2 dash underneath it is because I was cleaning up an edge when I was cleaning up the original scan, and that’s what happened. I was clone stamping a bit of the edge, and did it sloppily, and that, too, got repeated. Um, that’s… Oh, and you can see, I sloppily… I, uh, the top of it also has a repeated little arc there that would have been from sloppy cleanup after the scan.

These were tough to scan. These pages in the sketchbooks, I mean, sketchbooks are always difficult to scan, because you’ve gotta lay them flat against the screen, and then try to avoid the shadows. And this particular kind of paper was somewhat thin and got a little wrinkly, and would get irregularly shadowed. And the thinness of it, since they’re all drawn on both sides, the drawing from the other side would leave indentations. And so, these were rough to prepare for, you know, displaying – for documentation. So, um, they’re clearly not exactly perfect representations of the original, but a lot better than you would think.

Anyway, good drawing. I like this. A lot going on. Like I said, colored pencil, 1996, early 96, February 3rd. That’s what the 2 3 means. Okay, that’s it.

This is a nice drawing. I like this. When I first looked at it, I had no idea where it came from, but then I saw the file name, and realized that it’s one of the Nudes and Études. And this one is clearly an étude, because, um, it’s not a nude. And, it’s a good drawing. I like it.

You know, I’ve been working the past number of years. Well, I wouldn’t say working, but I’ve been drawing more clothed figures than I previously did, and, you know, I enjoy it. It’s good. There are a lot of instances where you want to have a clothed figure. I still prefer the nude just through habit or inclination, or practice, or background, or something. I mean, you know, when you start drawing, the nude is sort of the ultimate challenge, I guess. Although, ironically, I find clothing to be somewhat more challenging – the way that it conceals the figure, I struggle with, you know, just not having those markers of nipples and navel and, pubic hair and things, that you get with a nude, they are sort of, you know, markers, I guess, is the best way to put it. You know, they’re identifiers, but this is a nice drawing. I like it a lot. I think… Yeah, I think that’s all I can say about this right now. It’s a good drawing. I like it. I should do more things like this, I think, and see what happens. That’s it.

Well, this is just not really a great drawing, and, you know, sometimes that happens. I’m not sure what was up with it. I’m sure that I didn’t spend much time, and I think that, I think that what was happening is that I was using ink. I think I was using a Tombow pen, which I generally like, but I think that something about it was not quite responding to the paper, as well as I would have liked. And so, the marks end up being sort of clumsy and awkward. I’m not quite sure what experiment wasn’t happening there successfully.

• Note: I think the paper had a bit of a gloss to it and the liquidy ink was sitting on top and not entering the paper the way I expected, so I was awkwardly trying to not smudge. Whatever it was, you’d think I would have had the sense to not scan this, but I don’t always pay attention to such things, you know.

But, you know, maybe the pose wasn’t great, or I just was missing at that moment. But this is what came out of it. And the AI chose it for me, so here I am talking about it.

But it’s interesting. I was thinking earlier today, I’m tempted to say that all drawings and all paintings are really experiments, and every thing that I do is an experiment, but I check myself on that, I realize it’s not really true, but a lot of them are. A lot of what you do as an artist is that you just keep exploring and experimenting. Now, there are times when you just are using what you know and kind of, um, showing off or, um, or utilizing the things that you’ve discovered. I know that I used to notice that when I would work on a group of paintings, I would work on them, sort of, simultaneously, because if I worked on them sequentially, there would be quite a distinction between what I was doing at the beginning of the group and what I was doing at the end of the period of painting – just because I would have figured things out along the way. But if I was working them up simultaneously, then I would be able to finish them all off, sort of, within a brief period after I had figured out whatever it was that I was learning about painting during the accomplishment of that group.

So, I don’t know what led me to that thought other than the fact that I don’t really have a darn thing to say about this terrible little drawing. And so, I’ll cut it off there.

This seems like a cheerful sort of figure drawing. I don’t know why I particularly find it cheerful. I don’t think the expression on the face is necessarily cheerful. It’s not, not cheerful, but maybe it’s just the round curviness of it that appeals to me. I like this drawing. I like a lot of these drawings from the YWCA that I did 20 years ago now. It was a nice period of drawing. I should really find a good situation like that where there’s a community of drawers to go and draw with. There’s a difference between drawing with a group and drawing just on your own.

But this is a nice drawing, I like it. This was done in crayon as a lot of these drawings were. And it would have been on, uh, 18 by 24 paper, 24 by 18, depending on how you think of it – vertically oriented here. And probably pretty quick, probably a minute, maybe. It looks like I had long enough to do a preliminary drawing, and then go back in, and change the hand and the face a little bit, and emphasize that. So probably more than 30 seconds, more than a minute? Maybe it’s a couple minutes. Hard to tell.

But I like it. I like these drawings. I like figure drawings. This one’s… pleasant and brings back nice memories of those days.

This is sort of a stock Saint image, unlike the other Saints images, this isn’t from a particular person or a particular photograph. This would have just been drawn, and not intentionally any particular person, as far as I recall.

I was probably just playing around with what I could do, drawing digitally, maybe, on an early Wacom tablet, and I’m not sure if it would have even been Wacom, but some kind of a tablet (not a tablet like an iPad, but a tablet like a drawing mousepad adapted for a stylus, this was very early 2000’s after all).

I can remember in 2001, or maybe in 2002, getting a tablet with a stylus that I could draw on. And I can remember playing around with it, and I suspect that that’s what I was doing here. I was drawing on that, and then taking that drawing into Photoshop and manipulating it, and then probably taking that Photoshop, JPEG, into Adobe Illustrator and vectorizing it, and playing around with it some more. Those were the sorts of explorations and experiments that I was doing in those days during the period that I was working on these Saints images. And the Saints images were largely that, you know, working between digital drawing and Photoshop manipulation, and Adobe Illustrator, vectorizing, and further manipulation – just learning the tools and seeing what I could do.

And that’s what I recall about this.

Wow, this is an old one and not a great photo of it, but it’s just a little blurry. It looks like… but this is on a board. And I think that what it might be is canvas that’s then mounted on a board, glued onto the board, probably with gel medium. Because part of that is wood, like plywood. And yet, I think part of it is canvas, and I can see sort of the edge of the canvas, at the upper part of it there. And I sort of remember that that’s what this was.

This is from 1990. And that’s all I can say. It was painted behind Desire of London, and it’s sort of a forlorn kind of lamenting couple. It’s clearly coming as a response to the sadness of a breakup that would have happened in 1990, or late ’89, I guess, really. And that’s what I was painting about there, behind Desire of London, in Venice, California. Cheery colors, but, um, but dismal expressions on these hopeless, despondent figures.

The red outfit of the male figure references the Flying Man. So this is, um, this is the flying man, although in his foolish phase – come down to Earth. The Fool and the Flying man were the, um, sort of autobiographical mythic/alter-ego characters I was playing around with, as far as theme goes back in those days.

Okay, well, the PPN in the file name stands for Printer Paper Nudes, I know that much. This was a series that I did, um, Gee, not that long ago – Maybe 2021 (I say 2001 in the audio file, but I meant 2021) or so. Let me see if I look over here. Oh, that’s not where to look… um, I’ve got the website here. Printer Paper Nudes, 2021. It’s really, it’s just another one of these series, like the Nudes and Études, just drawings on printer paper, mostly in pen or colored pencil.

If I look over at the gallery here, they’re mostly ink, mostly ballpoint pen. It looks like with some colored pencil – yeah. And there’s a bunch of them. It’s just stuff that I was drawing and I put it together into a series. More to just have something to put up on the website than anything else. I scanned them and put them up. It’s a pretty nice group. I like these drawings.

I tend to, as I’ve mentioned elsewhere, just draw for not any particular reason, just to keep exploring and seeing what happens and that’s what this is. It’s a couple of attempts at a pose, with arms akimbo, I notice, back when I was doing these drawings, I wouldn’t have thought about it. But over the past couple months, I’ve been drawn to poses with arms akimbo. If I ever get around to doing a series of things with akimbo arms, you heard it here first. The idea has been floating around in my mind for the past couple months. And I’ve been collecting some source images and playing around with that. I just, more than anything else, am always sort of looking for interesting poses, and you can’t help but enjoy the word akimbo.

Here’s another Tidal Wave Sketchbook drawing. This is another one from Sketchbook 2, except this one says February 15th. Oh, maybe that last one that we did was from Sketchbook One. I guess that’s right. But this is from February 15th. So I would’ve been back in Venice for, you know, it looks like four and a half months or so, or, well, 4 months maybe. October, November, December, January, February, yeah. 4 months,

• Note: I’m pretty sure – and I think I’ve mentioned elsewhere – that I arrived back in Venice on October 12th, 1995. I don’t know why that date sticks with me, and it could be wrong. I think I could find the answer in one of these sketchbooks – the first one – if I bothered to look.

and we’ve had time to get back together and break up and probably get back together and break up again. And this Goodbye or Maybe Farewell is chronicling that and letting go and, you know, spoiler alert, we got back together a couple more times before we, um, finally ended things.

But this is from February 15th (1996). This is a breakup sort of thing. I look sad. She looks less sad. And, um, and, you know, it’s an all right drawing. I liked that last drawing. I got so distracted just talking about other things. I didn’t really talk about that last drawing, but that Last Tidal Wave Sketchbook, the Sketchbook 1, drawing, that I did a few posts back. I liked that. I think I ended up just talking about the fact that there are a lot of these Tidal Wave Sketchbook drawings, and I don’t know how many, but, um, it’s not too surprising that even, or especially, in a random selection from the things that I’ve done, that these would show up quite often.

So here we are. Not a bad drawing. I like these Tidal Wave Sketchbook drawings. They’re very unique for what they are. It was a good period of sketchbook drawing back then.

This is a good drawing, but that one from a few posts back with us happy on the beach, I really liked that – I guess maybe I just like it because it’s more cheerful!

Okay, here’s another one of these Nudes and Études. This one says number 65. Um, I honestly don’t remember how many of them there were. I know there was a stack of them, and I know that almost as soon as I put them up, there were more that I didn’t put up. And there’s a box, and I can’t remember which ones I posted, which ones I haven’t. I think they’re roughly in order, and if I ever want to go through there and do some more scanning, I can do that. But that’s probably a project that I’ll put off until retirement.

Um, This is a nice little page of drawings. I like what I’ve done here. It’s a perfectly nice little sheet. I enjoy drawing and enjoy the drawings that I do. I’ve been thinking about these blog posts and realizing that there’s going to be some repetitiveness just because the drawings, you know of the Nudes and Études series, for instance, will all be about the Nudes and Études series. So I don’t quite know. What I’ll get into. I imagine that eventually I’ll get better at speaking, and that means that the transcriptions will need less editing. And it probably also means that with the repetition, I’ll start talking about things beyond just whatever the drawing happens to be. You know, I guess ideally, I’ll get so accomplished at making these recordings that I’ll have something more interesting to say than just an immediate reaction to the drawings. But I really don’t know. I mean, I think that is part of the charm or intrigue of this project is that I can say anything that I want to. I can just sort of ramble on. I try to keep them kind of short because who wants to read or listen to an excessively long sort of spiel. But if I’m doing these at the pace of one a day, and if that means I do 365 a year, which barely puts a dent in the 5000 images that are on the website, which presumably will be growing at a rate, you know, maybe not keeping pace with these blog posts, but at least keeping a good enough pace that I can probably keep doing these blog posts well into my retirement. It’s going to take 12 or 13 years just to get through the 5000 images that are on the website. So, and that’s assuming that I stick with this.

Nevertheless, this is a nice little sheet of drawings. I like this Nudes and Études series. I am glad I put it up on the website, even though on the last one, I mentioned that it was really just, you know, to let anybody that is looking at the website know that I’m still, you know, still got my hand in the game. And really that is exactly what these nudes and études are – is, um, just drawing for the sake of maintaining and developing and learning drawing. I feel that, you know, you can’t really draw and be a drawer if you’re not drawing, I guess that is kind of my thought. And I don’t really agree with that. I think you could take some time off and be just fine. But I do think that the act of drawing is one that benefits from a certain amount of maintenance. I guess that’s the way to say that.

Well, okay, this one is from the 1st Tidal Wave Sketchbook, and the numbering system is complicated, but it must be fairly early on in the series, but not too early on in the series. This first sketchbook was begun in October (1995). I think on my way back to LA. And, um, for some reason, I think I remember getting back to LA on October 12th that year. And this is after I had gotten back. And this is sort of as this relationship was picking back up, I guess after I’d been gone painting in Ohio for the better part of that year.

And, uh, you can see, there’s the little rhyming poem there, which is the type of thing I was definitely inclined to include in these sketchbooks. There were a lot of those that I’d write and play around with back in those days.

I was thinking about this, because the very first drawing that was randomly selected for these Random Dailies was a Tidal Wave Sketchbook drawing, and I realized, I don’t know how many of these pages of drawings there are, but proportionally, to the other drawings, probably a lot of them are from these Tidal Wave Sketchbooks, because I was pretty prolific in drawing in these every day, and doing, I don’t know, um, several pages worth of drawings every morning at breakfast at the HOT (House of Teriyaki, in Venice, CA).

So, that’s what this is. Here we are, you know, by the ocean, which is, you know, pretty accurate, all told. There’s a palm tree there, there’s the ocean there, those are waves off in the ocean in the background. There are the two of us, and there’s some sand. Oh, this is from November 10th. Look at that. I just scrolled down and realized that the date is down there at the bottom, as it often is, on these drawings. So November 10th, so I had been back for just under a month, it looks like.