Monday, January 2, 2012

Snow and Colored Pencils


We finally got some Christmas snow here in Chicago.  It's hardly a dusting but Ellis is pretty excited, planning to make the "Biggest snowman ever!" Clearly he is spending too much time in Busytown.

I'm happy to report that the mold smell was successfully removed from my Estate Sale textiles.  I did lose the edges of some of the pieces.  This is a reasonable sacrifice.  Mold is bad news.




Meanwhile, my darling partner took the kid out of the house for most of the day, which gave me some valuable solitary time to work.  After a cursory cleaning, I spent some good time drawing.


Yes.  I draw with my son's Crayola colored pencils.  Yes, I'm sure I should get my own, mostly because if he sees me using his, he's gonna be pissed.  "That's not nice, mama!  You need to ask first," he's gonna scream.  It'll get ugly.


Hmm.  Too small.


Better.


At any rate, I had a really productive session.  First, I want to note that drawing is freaking fast.  I mostly work with textiles.  Embroidery, for example, is 60 billion times slower than drawing.  A person can just take a pencil and make a line in, like, one nanosecond.  To embroider that very same line?  Six days.  Drawing is pretty cool.  And I'm really working on not being totally horrified by what I draw.

I have a hard time reconciling what I see with what I am capable of reproducing.  I think part of of my struggle is over how to reconcile the bazillion bits of information my eyes can take in with what my hand can actually capture.  Which lines to pick out? Which images to include?  How to make it clear what I am drawing without drawing ever single detail?  That's what I'm working on.  And really, I suppose that is what making art is all about. What to include.

You always include the dog.

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