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The Drawing Board Blog:
"My World Is Round."
part VI - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
POSTED: June 18, 2013 | ART PICT: June 16, 2013
The subconscious is directing the conversation...
Have you ever witnessed a situation where someone is forced to communicate ... one letter of a word at a time, until a thought is ...EXPRESSED? When DIRECT communication is not possible, that is how you do it. I feel like THAT right now. My subconscious is directing the conversation... one image at a time. AND..., I must quite abashedly confess... that I have NOT been cooperating as well as I could have been. I'll try to explain what happened....
I've had a feeling for quite a while, that I NEEDed to put flowers on the blonde bombshell's coverlet. I've tossed different ideas around, but it all kept coming back to flowers. Ok. So it sounds simple in retrospect. Why would I argue the point this late in the game? Well, you know ...flowers? Really? Ok. Sooooo, Friday I ran a Google search and came up with a number of ways to present the Idea Of Flowers. One sample was pulled, almost in jest.... a very Brady Bunch, sixties, simplistic flower pattern. Can you guess which one felt like the missing puzzle piece to the drawing? I'll give you a clue, it wasn't the elegant, pretty or even Art Nouveau style flowers. Argh. I went BACK to the computer Saturday night. Apparently I was feeling argumentative because I pulled six or seven MORE flowery layouts off the internet, picked up my pencils and... wasted a lot of time. LOL. Wow. THAT's where the whole idea of picking out a conversation one letter at a time came to mind. The other samples were really nice... BUT, every time that one sample got anywhere NEAR the drawing... I could FEEL the rightness like a sigh across my soul. DAMNIT. How do you argue with something like that?? I looked past the Brady Bunch-i-ness of the sample to SEE the symbol: A FIELD OF FLOWERS. Wow. I get it. The subconscious and I are going down a conversational alley that keeps getting bigger, deeper and MORE complex. Jeez. Just when I get all cocky about how well I'm doing, I run into The Wall Called ME. Argh. Yes, I could have drawn those other flowers.... but that would have been a very empty pretty. I'm not here to draw pretty pictures. You can get THOSE anywhere. This is about SYMBOLS and the DREAM LANGUAGE and COMMUNICATION. BTW: I have to admit that I NEVER saw this part of the drawing before THAT MINUTE. One letter / symbol / image at a time. Just added: A FIELD OF FLOWERS. As a symbol, it really is The Perfect Choice for that spot. I see that now. A very deeply layered symbol (the kind I REALLY like). LOL. I'm completely flabbergasted baby. Who knew we were going this way? This is So Cool. And, I am such an idiot sometimes. How long have I been doing this subconscious communication thing???? FOR YEARS. Ugh. I hope this drawing comes together ok...., right now... it looks a tad busy.... LOL. Busy? Me? Arguing? .... NEXT -
POSTED: July 08, 2013 | ART PICT: July 07, 2013
My eyes were crossing just thinking about it.
Gary and I cleared off NINE days JUST for Art (no "normal" allowed) and the end result is one VERY relaxed artist sitting at a computer, typing. You can SEE that the pencil and kneaded eraser wuz BUSY working the drawing paper while simultaneously, "normalcy" was erased from my very bones (albeit temporarily). There is a LOT to be REALLY happy about at this stage of the drawing. I will admit that SOMETIMES I get just a tad nervous about what my pencil is doing to the paper. No way you say. Way. Way. WAY.
I am particularly (artistically) excited about what happened with the blonde bombshell's coverlet. Can you believe that I ACTUALLY turned the computer ON during the time off??? That is virtually unheard of. BIGtime. BUT... I took a photo of the drawing and stuck it in Photoshop. I was starting to freak. MAYBE my subconscious had gotten a tad ambitious, in regards to the flowers symbol and the coverlet. But NO, apparently... it was just me... freaking, not listening... as usual. Go figure. The subconscious RULES baby. Ok. So I was a tad worried. It seems like the photographer might have done a bit of photoshopping on this image and something about the lines of the blankets just didn't seem quite right. PLUS, there was a potential problem brewing that needed to be nipped in the bud (pun intended). Between the MANY flowers AND the lines of the blonde's body (under the cover)...it looked like the artwork was going to get REALLY busy down there. Jeeeeez. My eyes were crossing just thinking about it. Soooo, I did some advance faux penciling in Photoshop :) In the final cut, about 60% of the wrinkle lines were dropped and a couple combined (my artistic license is up-to-date baby so I'm allowed). LOL. Get this. It REALLY sucked at first because I had JUST gotten the coverlet's field of flowers ALL DRAWN IN.... when I realized that there were too many lines, it was going to be Toooo Busy and that I needed to Photoshop the whole drawing to SEE my answer. THAT meant that I spent the NEXT DAY (post Photoshop) ...erasing all those extra (very VERY visible) wrinkle lines and RE-DRAWING... the flowery symbol back in place ...in all of it's graphite gray glory. ARGH. You MUST laugh sometimes. Anyway. NOW I have a symbol (field of flowers) AND a coverlet and no problem. It's AWESOME when the subconscious sees a way out of a potential problem... and you are able to tune in enough to HEAR that little voice whispering a GREAT answer. After all, the subconscious picked the doggone photo. I'm glad id had an answer. Now I have TWO DISTINCT images in ONE surreal space. Yowza. How super cool. Did ANY of this make sense??? NEXT -
POSTED: July 16, 2013 | ART PICT: July 14, 2013
It's a fact that this could ruin the entire drawing...
This weekend almost became a complete ART DISASTER. It all began innocently enough... It's a fact that I have NOT been satisfied with the fireman's eyes. They were cock-eyed. THIS is REALLY hard to see online, with such a small image BUT, it's something I've been working on ...slowly making small changes with the pencil to the shape of the eye..., the shadows around the eye, etc. ...since May. Nothing was working. It FINALLY came down to realizing that the two pupils were different sizes (by QUITE a bit). That meant that it was time to get serious with the kneaded eraser. BECAUSE this paper is SO HEAVY (100 lb.)... I never considered that it might tear. That's why I invested in a more expensive Art Paper (so it wouldn't wrinkle or tear). I'm OVER that wrinkling paper thing. Well guess what, the paper tore. I did NOT tear a hole completely through it... but the drawing surface was torn OFF in micro increments. That means that when the pencil touched the newly exposed paper fiber...the graphite went to COMPLETE BLACK and this is a gray figure. There could NOT be any black here. None. OMG. I freaked. Really bad. It's a fact that this could ruin the entire drawing... because YOU ARE GOING TO LOOK AT HIS EYES. This was HIS PUPIL. That's where the paper tore. UGH. I had to talk a walk around the block just to calm my energies down enough that I could approach the paper with a steady hand. Gary is AWESOME. He was in middle of working on a new song and he dropped everything to help a fellow artist out of A Horrible Mess. Argh. During the walk, I actually come to the conclusion that if I could NOT fix this... I would re-start the entire drawing all over... regardless of effort. I feel that the message the subconscious/the muse/whatever ....is sending via this particular work of art is coming through so CLEARLY and SO BEAUTIFULLY that I would not let it go. I like it THAT much. THAT decision took a lot of stress off the moment. NOW, I needed to REALLY avoid that reality with some VERY careful pencil work. I was only going to get one real try at this. I pulled out some tweezers and pulled the teeney bits of scrap paper off of the drawing, pulled out my lightest (VERY sharpened) pencil and iota-by-iota began to carefully stroke the paper. Hours later, after a million minute artistic adjustments ....I came up for air. I believe that the drawing has been saved. I'm not sure if the eyeball is perfect but it IS way better than it has been. I kept second guessing myself and finally pulled away and said, "ENOUGH. It's ok. I'll come back later if I need to." After that, I went to work on the blonde to calm myself down. LOL. You know... it's always something. Always. NEXT
...MORE Surreal Artwork by
Chris Eisenbraun.
