Friday, September 18, 2009

Drawing with Edna

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (74cm x 58cm), charcoal pencil and pastel on Strathmore 2 ply rag Bristol

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (74cm x 58cm), charcoal pencil and pastel on Strathmore 2 ply rag Bristol

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (74cm x 58cm), charcoal pencil and pastel on Strathmore 2 ply rag Bristol

joint-drawings-193-blog

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (74cm x 58cm), charcoal pencil and pastel on Strathmore 2 ply rag Bristol

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (74cm x 58cm), charcoal pencil and pastel on Strathmore 2 ply rag Bristol

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (74cm x 58cm), charcoal pencil and pastel on Strathmore 2 ply rag Bristol

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (74cm x 58cm), charcoal pencil and pastel on Strathmore 2 ply rag Bristol

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (74cm x 58cm), charcoal pencil and pastel on Strathmore 2 ply rag Bristol

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (74cm x 58cm), charcoal pencil and pastel on Strathmore 2 ply rag Bristol

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (74cm x 58cm), charcoal pencil and pastel on Strathmore 2 ply rag Bristol

EDNA Casman and I did the ten drawings above over our last three sessions, September 3, 8 and 15.  The first three represent more efforts to have the focus of the drawing toward a side edge.  The first two have a composition that amounts to a triangle pointing into the picture.  This gives the feeling that the empty space is about to be occupied.  The third is a little different.  Here the figure appears to be walking into or being pushed into the empty space.  The last drawing is an interesting attempt to salvage an unsatisfactory drawing by mostly covering it up.  The lower right triangle and the oval were part to the original drawing.  Here, we conducted the search for the drawing by erasing it with color, very low chroma colors, but color still.  By controlling the amount of color pastel in the coloring-out layer or erasing into the coloring-out layer, or fixing some of the underlying passages, we arrived at this solution.  In nearly all our previous drawings, except for the silver drawings, we have been content to leave the white of the paper as background.  In this drawing the uncovered paper could be read as foreground to the action in the drawing.  The uncovered paper could also be background to the drawing, which descends from above like a curtain, although we left the upper right uncovered to make that interpretation less certain.  We are very fond of uncertain interpretations.

Posted by Chuck at 04:24:13 | Permalink | No Comments »

Tuesday, September 1, 2009

Drawing with Edna

Untitled

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (74cm x 58cm), charcoal pencil & pastel on Strathmore 2ply rag Bristol

Untitled Drawing

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (74cm x 58cm), charcoal pencil & pastel on Strathmore 2ply rag Bristol

Untitled Drawing

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (74cm x 58cm), charcoal pencil & pastel on Strathmore 2ply rag Bristol

Untitled Drawing

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (74cm x 58cm), charcoal pencil & pastel on Strathmore 2ply rag Bristol

Untitled Drawing

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (74cm x 58cm), charcoal pencil & pastel on Strathmore 2ply rag Bristol

Untitled Drawing

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (74cm x 58cm), charcoal pencil & pastel on Strathmore 2ply rag Bristol

Untitled Drawing

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (74cm x 58cm), charcoal pencil & pastel on Strathmore 2ply rag Bristol

Untitled Drawing

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (74cm x 58cm), charcoal pencil & pastel on Strathmore 2ply rag Bristol

Untitled Drawing

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (74cm x 58cm), charcoal pencil & pastel on Strathmore 2ply rag Bristol

Untitled Drawing

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (74cm x 58cm), charcoal pencil & pastel on Strathmore 2ply rag Bristol

Untitled Drawing

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (74cm x 58cm), charcoal pencil & pastel on Strathmore 2ply rag Bristol

Untitled Drawing

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (74cm x 58cm), charcoal pencil & pastel on Strathmore 2ply rag Bristol

THESE  are the drawings from the last two drawing session, 20 and 27 August.  Well not quite.  Usually there are drawings that we are not sure about, at least not sure enough about to sign.  We take another look at these drawings the following week.  We decide to sign them or not.  The first drawing is one of the drawings with a delayed signature of approval.  So the first drawing above is from early August, not that it makes any difference, but, when we sign it later, we ask ourselves, “What was not to like?”  In this case - the first drawing above - we may have thought that it was too busy, that the three areas were not connected, that there were too many different colors.  But we signed it without altering or adding anything.

Sometimes we do a series.  If a sketch or finished drawing seems to be an image snatched from an ongoing event, a frame from a mental film, or something from a distinct series, we try to add more drawings to give it context or a story.  The last three drawings form a series.  The first was based on a sketch from the morning the week before.  We felt the Big Guy on the right was harshly addressing the Little Guy on theleft.  The Big Guy’s sudden angry outburst totally takes the Little Guy by surprise.  After Little Guy regains his emotional footing, he gets angry at Big Guy.  Little Guy’s anger at Big Guy grows more intense.  At these point Big Guy wishes he hadn’t said anything at all.

Edna and I are surprised at how little drawing is needed to suggest something specific.  What is just as interesting is how the specific thing varies from viewer to viewer.  To one person a round shape may suggest an eye, to another an ear.  It seems - and this is borne out by what I’ve read about how the signals from the eye are processed by the brain - the brain is determined to make sense of what it sees.  The brain wants to establish what the signals are signalling as quickly as possible.  That’s understandable.  “Is what I’m being signalled about dangerous (to me) or not?” says the brain.  This tendency can lead to some fun as in the work of M. C. Escher.  In the first of three drawings, the viewer can easily accept that the our intention that Big Guy’s attention is directed toward Little Guy.  We smeared some color and lines to connect the two.  What does that make the two circles in Big Guy?  The circle to the left is then an eye, and the circle to the right is an ear.  That makes the two figures stand in the same plane, as if they are both the same distance from the viewer.  If the two circles are both eyes, then, Little Guy is closer to the viewer, because the viewer sees both eyes of Big Guy.  (There is no doubt that the two circles in Little Guy are eyes, because they are so close together.)  This perception makes the illusional space in the drawing deeper.  It’s the viewer, then Little Guy, then Big Guy.  We made Little Guy bend backward to reflect the force of Big Guy’s what?  His words, his bad breath, his emotion?  If Big Guy faces the viewer and then viewer looks over Little Guy’s shoulder. The viewer then  may feel the force of Big Guy’s agression.  By ashifting the viewer’s point of view in a single image, we have involved the viewer in whatever is happening in the drawing.  When each of us interacts with the environment around us, we constantly shift our position to better triangulate the object of interest.

Posted by Chuck at 19:56:44 | Permalink | No Comments »

Saturday, August 15, 2009

Drawing with Edna

joint-drawings-171-blog3

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″  (74cm x 58cm), charcoal pencil & pastel on Strathmore 2 ply rag Bristol

joint-drawings-174-blog

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″  (74cm x 58cm), charcoal pencil & pastel on Strathmore 2 ply rag Bristol

joint-drawings-173-blog

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″  (74cm x 58cm), charcoal pencil & pastel on Strathmore 2 ply rag Bristol

joint-drawings-172-blog2

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″  (74cm x 58cm), charcoal pencil & pastel on Strathmore 2 ply rag Bristol

joint-drawings-167-blog

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″  (74cm x 58cm), charcoal pencil & pastel on Strathmore 2 ply rag Bristol

joint-drawings-170-blog1

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″  (74cm x 58cm), charcoal pencil & pastel on Strathmore 2 ply rag Bristol

joint-drawings-169-blog3

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″  (74cm x 58cm), charcoal pencil & pastel on Strathmore 2 ply rag Bristol

joint-drawings-168-blog3

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″  (74cm x 58cm), charcoal pencil & pastel on Strathmore 2 ply rag Bristol

joint-drawings-165-blog

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″  (74cm x 58cm), charcoal pencil & pastel on Strathmore 2 ply rag Bristol

joint-drawings-164-blog

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″  (74cm x 58cm), charcoal pencil & pastel on Strathmore 2 ply rag Bristol

joint-drawings-166-blog

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″  (74cm x 58cm), charcoal pencil & pastel on Strathmore 2 ply rag Bristol

In July Edna Casman and I met to draw the 2nd in my studio and the 30th in her studio.  August 6th we met again in her studio.  The drawings above are from these sessions.  They do not appear in the order we did them.  I’ve forgotten what order they appeared.  As we draw and the drawing reveals itself to us line by smear, we often attach an amusing situation or story, which, in turn, suggests additions to the drawing.  The drawing just above began in a warm-up effort in the morning as a lazy moon lying at the bottom of the sheet of paper.  A few more lines made it a boat.   In the afternoon, on the “good” paper (which, by the way, has risen in price by more than a dollar a sheet the last several months)  a dragon menaces the boat, now occupied by two figures, one of whom shows a distressing nonchalance, considering the nearness and size of the writhing threat.  This all happens under a rainy, cloud covered sky.

Posted by Chuck at 04:49:18 | Permalink | No Comments »

Monday, June 29, 2009

Drawing with Edna

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (74cm x 58cm), charcoal pencil and pastel on Strathmore 2ply rag Bristol

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (74cm x 58cm), charcoal pencil and pastel on Strathmore 2ply rag Bristol

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (74cm x 58cm), charcoal pencil and pastel on Strathmore 2ply rag Bristol

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (74cm x 58cm), charcoal pencil and pastel on Strathmore 2ply rag Bristol

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (74cm x 58cm), charcoal pencil and pastel on Strathmore 2ply rag Bristol

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (74cm x 58cm), charcoal pencil and pastel on Strathmore 2ply rag Bristol

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (74cm x 58cm), charcoal pencil and pastel on Strathmore 2ply rag Bristol

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (74cm x 58cm), charcoal pencil and pastel on Strathmore 2ply rag Bristol

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (74cm x 58cm), charcoal pencil and pastel on Strathmore 2ply rag Bristol

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (74cm x 58cm), charcoal pencil and pastel on Strathmore 2ply rag Bristol

Edna Casman and I got together to draw at her studio the last two weeks.  We felt the sessions were very productive.  The first five drawings are from June 18, and second five are from June 25.  Is more color showing itself? 

I remind the rare reader once again, there is no premeditation here.  We alternate first moves.  For example, in the last drawing, Edna led with a pink sigmoid curve over the left side.  I added some black marks, and I followed up with an erasure through the marks to keep the line of pink motion.  Edna replied with some blue tadpoles at the top left corner.  This left an open field on the right.  Into that field I marched some lines of varying length making for Edna’s tadpoles trapped or hidden by the red sigmoid ridge.  Seeing my advancing lines, Edna reinforced the tadpoles, giving their heads a color, which revealed their allegiance to the left side, but more toward blue.  In a brilliant flanking move, Edna then added reinforcements to the tadpoles in the lower left.  I had no choice.  To hold my position in front of the reinforced red ridge, I added some circles in front of my marching lines to take the brunt of her return fire.  She supplemented the lower left with menacing, small sharp shapes turning her red ridge into a waiting serpent.  I countered by camouflaging my circles with blue and head faking with some empty blue circles.  Then we signed it.  It was all over in about eight minutes.

Posted by Chuck at 05:09:53 | Permalink | No Comments »

Sunday, May 31, 2009

Drawing with Edna

Fig. 1 
Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (74cm x 58cm), charcoal pencil and pastel on Strathmore 2 ply all rag Bristol


Fig. 2 
Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (74cm x 58cm), charcoal pencil and pastel on Strathmore 2 ply all rag Bristol

Fig. 3
Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (74cm x 58cm), charcoal pencil and pastel on Strathmore 2 ply all rag Bristol

Fig. 4
Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (74cm x 58cm), charcoal pencil and pastel on Strathmore 2 ply all rag Bristol

Fig. 5
Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (74cm x 58cm), charcoal pencil and pastel on Strathmore 2 ply all rag Bristol

Fig. 6
Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (74cm x 58cm), charcoal pencil and pastel on Strathmore 2 ply all rag Bristol

Fig. 7
Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (74cm x 58cm), charcoal pencil and pastel on Strathmore 2 ply all rag Bristol

Fig. 8
Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (74cm x 58cm), charcoal pencil and pastel on Strathmore 2 ply all rag Bristol

Fig. 9
Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (74cm x 58cm), charcoal pencil and pastel on Strathmore 2 ply all rag Bristol

Edna and I did the drawings above May 19 and May 28.  I thought I would add some brief comments about each.  As I have written earlier, Edna and I get together once a week at her studio or mine.  The day starts at 9:30 AM.  We usually spend a few minutes catching up and looking over the previous week’s work, particularly the drawings we did not sign.  Then, on cheap paper we begin to warm up, drawing anything that comes to mind.  There is rarely any premeditation.  We take turns soiling the paper first.  An empty sheet of paper is so pristine.  The blankness is so inviting.  I understand taggers who cannot resist underpass walls and paved arroyos.  A virgin sheet demands besmirching.  Clean calls for dirtying.  Empty invites filling.  The sparkling says tarnish me, baby.  This marking, smearing, erasing, remarking, smudging, figurating, symbolifying, delineating, scribbling and composing goes on until 12 noon.  We eat - one of us makes lunch.  Back to the studio.  We get out the good paper, Strathmore vellum surface 2 ply all rag Bristol, which now goes for about $4.25 a sheet.  Maybe we use an idea from the morning, maybe not.  In the afternoon our drawing is no more premeditated than in the AM.  We call a halt to the whole business between 3 and 3:30 PM.  For those of you who think this kind of thinking is easy and effortless, it’s not.  A few years ago when I had a small art school, several students told me how mentally demanding painting and drawing were for them.  One student, a retired air force colonel, said that after class he had to go home and rest after a morning spent painting. 

The drawings don’t take long to do.  Some take as little as five minutes.  Some take as long as a half hour.  When the drawing goes on too long, the risk is that it loses its spontaneity or becomes over worked. 

The drawings.

Figure 1.  This is a drawing from the May 19.  I think the orangy lines on the upper right are Edna’s, but they may have been added towards the end of the drawing.  The tooth shape and the lines trailing from its roots are Edna’s.  These lines may have been made early in the drawing.  We both contributed to the smudging going on.  The two erased shapes on the left are mine for sure as well as the little series of lines in the lower left, maybe.  Both of us may have viewed the smudgy area as the figure or center of activity.  Toward the end I added the gray marks in the smudge where it makes a squarish “bite” in the long tilting shape.

Figure 2.  Done on May 28th, we really like these kinds of drawings.  It’s kinda of like a funny throw-away line.  I went to relieve my bladder.  When I got back to the studio, Edna had already done the pink and violet shape.  I just can’t leave her alone one minute.  I don’t remember who did what after that.  I think Edna did the “udder” shapes.  I may have erased into them and then darkened some of the lines.

Figure 3.  This is from May 19.  I don’t remember this drawing too well or who did what.  The little erased shapes at the bottom I think are Edna’s.  This drawing, like many of our drawings, gives the impression of some things interacting.  The erasures provide movement and a temporal element.

Figure 4.  A May 19 drawing, I probably started this drawing with the light smudges.  I’m pretty sure Edna did most of the round shape in the upper right.  I worked on the “raised fist” shapes on the right.  I may have put them there originally.  I don’t remember.  Those are Edna’s purple diagonal dashes in the lower middle.  I put in some of the lines in the dark area.  I wanted a light line to be on top of the dark area to answer the dark lines “under” the dark area nearby.  Toward the end I put a little orange in the dark area where the two shapes overlap to make a connection to the orange in the “moon” and “raised fists.”

Figure 5.  This is a drawing from May 28.  This is based on a drawing from the morning - lots of sharp things with a welling up thing in a cool context.  One thing we both agreed on, was the morning drawing had too much of a horizontal feeling.  One possible effect of a strong horizontal is to make feeling in the drawing too calm and stable.  What could possibly be a horizon tilts down to the left, and Edna’s light blue and green has an indefinite edge to further mute the perception of a horizon line.  The preliminary drawing for me had the feel of an arctic sea scape with a leaping whale.  It reminds me of Caspar David Friedrich’s romantic painting, The Polar Sea.  That’s a cold pokey painting and this a cold pokey drawing.  However, our life form in the lower right is positive, in its element.  In Friedrich’s work nature is crushing the ship, which is the foundering dark spot to right just above the midpoint of the painting.  Yew!  Enough of that goppy romanticism.

Figure 6.  This is one of a number of intestinally themed drawings with the added thrill of something running off  the edges.  In this May 19 drawing I forget who did what except that is Edna’s thing running off the right edge, which I answered with the other thing running off the left edge.  Whoever darkened the central peristaltic central shape, we both would have agreed it needed darkening to weigh it down and give the drawing a little focus.  This is definitely a drawing for a medical textbook.  Surgery is indicated. 

Figure 7.  This drawing from May 28 has a basis in fact.  I had taken a walk at sunset a couple evenings before.  The sky was overcast, except for broken clouds around the setting sun.  The fading sunlight lent some of the clouds above the Sandia Peak a low chroma pink orange the same dark value as the clouds.  The mountain below had already fallen into a blue gray shadow.  I watched until it faded.  In this drawing the mountains to the east flair to red orange  just as the sun’s disk touches the opposite horizon.  My twinge of pink tinge is in the gray above.  I started with the gray on top.  The basic mountain shapes are Edna’s.  Minutes later in the life of this drawing I added a little outline to the mountain shapes to help them stand out better and relate to the dark areas above and below.  I also erased some of the orange color in the mountains to give them a bigger value range and a hint of three dimensional shape.  The dark shape at the bottom is mostly Edna’s.  It sandwiches the illuminated “mountain range” between the darks adding to the drama, and it conveys an idea of the image that is actually to be seen.

Figure 8.  This drawing has been hanging unsigned on my studio wall for at least a month.  Well over half an hour is invested in making this image, but we couldn’t let it go.  Over the months and years we’ve been drawing, we have come to partially erase and redraw on purpose.  When we redraw over the partially erased area or shape we often redraw out of register with the underlying shape.  This adds density to simple shapes and gives the impression of movement or agitation.  I don’t remember who did what in this drawing, but at some point we turned it upside down and liked it much better.  At our last session we could not recall what we were so uncertain about here.  We signed it.  There are a drawings we just can’t decide on right away.  They look unfamiliar.   They take more time to form an opinion about.

Figure 9.  We ended the session on May 28 laughing over this one.  Edna started with the shape in the lower left.  She was using a morning drawing as an inspiration.  I wasn’t paying attention, and I didn’t know this.  I copied her shape twice more rather than refer to the morning drawing, which suggested something else.  She embellished.  I embellished her embellishments.  Edna’s polka dots make this funny.  Why are polka dots fun?

Posted by Chuck at 05:24:35 | Permalink | No Comments »

Monday, April 6, 2009

Drawing with Edna

Untitled Drawing, personage, 29″ x 23″ (74cm  x 58cm), pastel and charcoal pencil on Strathmore 2 ply Bristol

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (74cm  x 58cm), pastel and charcoal pencil on Strathmore 2 ply Bristol

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (74cm  x 58cm), pastel and charcoal pencil on Strathmore 2 ply Bristol

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (74cm  x 58cm), pastel and charcoal pencil on Strathmore 2 ply Bristol

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (74cm  x 58cm), pastel and charcoal pencil on Strathmore 2 ply Bristol

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (74cm  x 58cm), pastel and charcoal pencil on Strathmore 2 ply Bristol

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (74cm  x 58cm), pastel and charcoal pencil on Strathmore 2 ply Bristol

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (74cm  x 58cm), pastel and charcoal pencil on Strathmore 2 ply Bristol

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (74cm  x 58cm), pastel and charcoal pencil on Strathmore 2 ply Bristol

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (74cm  x 58cm), pastel and charcoal pencil on Strathmore 2 ply Bristol

Edna and I got together at her studio last Thursday, April 2.  We only got together to draw once in March.  From the March session and the one before in February, we had six drawings.  We did four last Thursday.  The ten drawings are above. The April 2 drawings are the last four.  For several months we have put off signing some works until the following session.  When we’re done with a drawing we’re not always sure about it.  The image is “strange” or “unfamiliar.”  The following session we look at the drawing again.  Occasionally we make a very minor adjustment or two like lengthening a line or erasing into an area.   We wonder what made us hesitate to sign the drawing.  The drawings, we think, are coming from a deeper (?) place, whatever that means.  For my part, after the first mark is on the paper, I don’t “think” anymore.  I just react to what’s already there.  I put a mark where I understand the other marks on the paper tell me to put a mark.

Monday, tomorrow, Cathy and I drive down to Las Cruces to pick up the flower drawings from the Las Cruces Museum.  We are taking plenty to read and the book on tape we didn’t finish listening to when we took the work down a couple of months ago.  Ugh.

Posted by Chuck at 04:55:31 | Permalink | No Comments »

Friday, February 20, 2009

Drawing with Edna

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (24cm x 58cm), charcoal pencil and pastel on Strathmore 2 ply rag Bristol

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (24cm x 58cm), charcoal pencil and pastel on Strathmore 2 ply rag Bristol

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (24cm x 58cm), charcoal pencil and pastel on Strathmore 2 ply rag Bristol

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (24cm x 58cm), charcoal pencil and pastel on Strathmore 2 ply rag Bristol

We made the four drawings above on February 12.  We are a little restless with the drawing.  We are probing, looking to expand the imagery.
Posted by Chuck at 03:11:35 | Permalink | Comments (2)

Monday, February 2, 2009

Drawing with Edna

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (74cm x 58cm), charcoal pencil & pastel on Strathmore 2 ply rag Bristol

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (74cm x 58cm), charcoal pencil & pastel on Strathmore 2 ply rag Bristol

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (74cm x 58cm), charcoal pencil & pastel on Strathmore 2 ply rag Bristol

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (74cm x 58cm), charcoal pencil & pastel on Strathmore 2 ply rag Bristol

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (74cm x 58cm), charcoal pencil & pastel on Strathmore 2 ply rag Bristol

The first two drawings above are from the January 15th drawing session.  The next three drawings are from January 29th.  These three drawings are a variation on a theme from the morning.

On January 27th Edna and I spent the day putting the drawings and frames together for the exhibit at Las Cruces Museum.

Posted by Chuck at 17:18:23 | Permalink | No Comments »

Monday, January 12, 2009

Drawing with Edna

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″(74cm x 58cm), charcoal pencil and pastel on Strathmore 2 ply Bristol

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″(74cm x 58cm), charcoal pencil and pastel on Strathmore 2 ply Bristol

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″(74cm x 58cm), charcoal pencil and pastel on Strathmore 2 ply Bristol

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″(74cm x 58cm), charcoal pencil and pastel on Strathmore 2 ply Bristol

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″(74cm x 58cm), charcoal pencil and pastel on Strathmore 2 ply Bristol

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″(74cm x 58cm), charcoal pencil and pastel on Strathmore 2 ply Bristol

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″(74cm x 58cm), charcoal pencil and pastel on Strathmore 2 ply Bristol

Edna and I drew together January 1 and 8 at my studio.  The last three drawings we did on New Year’s day.  The first three on the 8th.  The first three drawings are variations on a theme we liked from the morning warm up.

We received notice from the Las Cruces Museum that we will have more space for our exhibit of flower drawings, UFO: Unidentified Flower Objects, than we had originally thought.  I will make a few more frames for that show, which we hang on February 5.

Posted by Chuck at 04:48:00 | Permalink | Comments (1) »

Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Drawing with Edna

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (74cm x 58cm), pastel and charcoal pencil on Strathmore 2 ply Bristol

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (74cm x 58cm), pastel and charcoal pencil on Strathmore 2 ply Bristol

Edna and I did the drawings above on December 11.  We are looking for something new to emerge.

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (74cm x 58cm), pastel and charcoal pencil on Strathmore 2 ply Bristol

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (74cm x 58cm), pastel and charcoal pencil on Strathmore 2 ply Bristol

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (74cm x 58cm), pastel and charcoal pencil on Strathmore 2 ply Bristol

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (74cm x 58cm), pastel and charcoal pencil on Strathmore 2 ply Bristol

Untitled Drawing, 29″ x 23″ (74cm x 58cm), pastel and charcoal pencil on Strathmore 2 ply Bristol

    We did these five drawings on December 18.  We rarely get out five drawings in an afternoon.  This productive day was even more remarkable because neither of us was on our usual caffeine drip, or, more accurately, on our caffeine sip, since that is the typical format for our caffeine delivery systems - Edna with her sugar free and me with my Coke Classic.  Please don’t think of this as endorsement for soft drinks or caffeine.  I’ve had to lay off caffeine entirely because of nasty headaches.  Edna has given up her sugar frees because she’s not sure they’re healthy. 
    The last drawing appeared a week or two before as a warm up. This is a version on good paper.  We like its almost face like look, a little Jim Nutty, but freer.  We guess that’s a bloody lip or lipstick applied in a car on a bumpy road without a mirror.
Posted by Chuck at 22:30:36 | Permalink | Comments (1) »