Joan, Kit, And Stony

Liberatianism: Greatest Idea Of The Nineteenth Century

Maybe a little too tendentious. Since the captions are there: Drivers don't know what they're doing, and when they do -- and the cops aren't around -- they cheat.

Hardin's Tragedy of the Commons makes a case against libertarianism that deserves attention: Eventually a society of individuals who -- even marginally -- rationally maximize their own benefits exceeds carrying capacity.

Portrait of Donna

Donna, from Monday night. I modeled during the second to hours, so this is it. I made two false starts, confused by the sweater opening. The scallops finally misfired, but the shape is right. After the two dud beginnings, I started looking around to see if any of my colleagues was in possession of a simple Ticonderoga #2. No such luck, and I had to suck it up and draw the thing directly.

Modeling, I put Jonathan Richman's Action Packed on Lisa's Colwell's sound system, and had to leave it behind so everybody could put it on their thingummies.

Jill From Tuesday Night

I'm getting more confidant, and minding clumsinesses like the hands in the bottom study less. The humanoid smudge is a fifteen-minute blind contour, using the same pen as the other drawing on the page.

Discovered with Patrica at Drawing Group that we both have spent time following the instructions of Kimon Niccolaides' The Natural Way to Draw, she more than I, and with a student of Niccolaides, and at the Art Students' League.

I rediscovered Marshall McLuhan a few weeks ago, and thinking about media as environments and massages has been really juicy. It's been a no-brainer (snicker) to sort of map McLuhan onto more recent brain research: f'rinstance, Germans got volunteers to learn to juggle, and found that they started making new brain tissue. We're tripping across similar info frequently these days. So that's how the massage works. Anything you do is a skill, including understanding a television commercial.

Now I need to map that onto ecology, limits to growth, sexual liberty, etc., etcetera being Teilhard's and Soleri's notion that we will take conscious, somatic control of evolution.

Portrait of Jan

One of two drawings from Monday night. Let's just write the other one off to exercise.

Portrait of Liz

There were more drawings from my Tuesday night co-op, but this was the best page. Two two-minute poses, one okay and one clumsy, plus a nice little vignette.

Monday I was either playing at the top of my game, or over my head. With drawing -- as with everything -- I'm training my nervous system. There's a slippery medium.

Portrait of Lisa

The second of two Monday night drawings. This is a better likeness than the drawing of Emma.

I'm beginning to draw with assurance, which is good, because my hand doesn't have a lot of fine control. The brain's gotta do it. I'm starting to keep track of relationships: "This is on a vertical line with that, and a horizontal line with this other thing;" "If I extend that line, it will hit that;" "That's about as long as this." I'd like to speed the process up, so that I just see those things instead of having to look for them. I'm training my nervous system.

An interesting thing happened: I got the distance from the seat to the floor way wrong, but was able to correct it, and camouflage the bad marks.

Portrait Of Emma

The first of two drawings from Monday night. This is the co-op in which we rotate modeling duties. Two forty-five minute sittings per pose. I usually work with Sharpies on a 9x12 sketchbook.

This one is of Emma, and only those who know who it is will recognize her, but I like the melancholy--giantess look. I thought of putting in a horizon, about the level of the trouser cuff, maybe some surf too, but there isn't room, and that would be kind of fakey.

Monday and Tuesday Drawing Groups

Drawings from Monday and Tuesday, the gestures from Tuesday. Tuesday was a problem I didn't solve, and still don't understand. There were a lot of us in a member's living room, and crammed close to the model. In the longer poses, I didn't get the proportions right, while thinking that I was doing a good job measuring. Do we have a zoom function in our vision that rationalizes close up distortion? Or was I measuring wrong?

The more finished drawing is of Laura from Monday night. That group was talking for a while about deep stuff: heaven, hell, belief, doubt, Christianity, and Buddhism (both American and Asian). I was surprised to hear someone express her deeply felt belief that the early deaths of worthy people argue against the existence of God.

Mark Dayton For Governor

In Minnesota's three-way race for governor, my candidate is Mark Dayton, the Democrat.

The Republican, Tom Emmer seems a little dim and thuggish.

Tom Horner, the Independent, is bright and fair-minded, but adamantly centrist. Born in 1950, his career has been as reporter for suburban shopper-stoppers, press flack for former Republican Senator Dave Durenberger, press agent, and university communications perfesser. Eschewing radical solutions, and groomed as somebody who could run for governor, he represents the discredited, square paradigm. I never got high with this guy.

Dayton, a department store heir, formerly married to a Pillsbury, is a child of privilege who wants to increase taxes on the privileged. He recognizes that the money -- and a lot of it -- has to come from somewhere, but the thing that persuades me is his privilege. This guy has had the leisure to think about something besides a political career. Usually, I'd be happy to send the richest candidate to Terra Haute for the Indiana hot shot, but if one of these characters understands the Whole Earth/CoEvolution take on intervening in the system we laughingly call our society, it's Mark Dayton. And he's been State Auditor.

Five gestures of Jill. I used a brush, which had the contrary effect of making these quick studies less elegant.

From My Sketchbook

Sketchbook Drawing

Peace-38

Two Sketchbook Drawings

Sketches From The Morning After Drawing Group

Another sketchbook page, and some drawings from my Tuesday drawing co-op. The five scratchy figure/portrait drawings are each from two-minute poses in a figure-dedicated sketchbook. I used an ultra-fine Sharpie, as I did in my free association. The other life drawings are charcoal pencil on Strathmore charcoal paper. Both papers are 9x12, with minimal cropping in PhotoShop.

My Sketchbook And Pablo's

More sketchbook. I've been reading Picasso and Portratiture: Representation and Transformation, published by the Museum of Modern Art. Cool book with lots of reproductions of pictures by the best draftsman of the last century. Ken, if you can read this where you are, Picasso wasn't cheating. I'd give my teeth (but not my soul) to be able to draw the way he could. His paintings ranged from fevered Lautrecean naturalism, through the flickering transmutations of Cubism, to smooth and cool Neoclassicism, then nightmarish distortion. Picasso was into Tarot, and his drawings were populated by stock characters, illustrating their creator's inner life with little improvised plays.