This copy of Rafael's famous study shows much inking promise. Or so I thought when I first uncovered the old thing this morning. But on closer examination I understand that copying is not drawing. These lines are not mine. I'm just a half-assed Xerox, yet to internalize the cross contour hatching taught by this master. Let that be a lesson to you, Cavedweller.
Synchronicity Event:
This morning I listened to Jordan Peterson's first Q and A of 2019. In it he goes into detail explaining that parroting is not learning. To learn something you must take it and make it your own, say it in your own words. If you cannot do this, it isn't yours and you have not learned.
I tried to explain that concept to a fundamentalist Christian once. She accused me of trying to confuse her. My point was merely that speaking the argot of the culture surrounding you does not make you spiritual. The same goes for artists; Jargon spewing does not make you an artist or creative.
So own it.
Own up to it.
Grow out of the shadow.
But let me begin.
My drawing Kung-fu is pretty good.
That is, it's not too shabby.
While rifling through a pile of drawings today, looking for a specific illustration for a zine that I'm finishing, I discovered that all my early student work had received water damage and was growing mold.
Synchronicity Event:
Yesterday I finished reading Nausicaa Of the Valley of the Wind for the first time. It's an excellent read. Miyazaki Hayao has a great way of writing stories that side step the shallow binary of good guy versus bag guy.
Nausicaa is beautiful with a fully realized world and delightful characters that make surprising choices. One of the things that I enjoyed in this masterwork was the Miyazaki depicted machines.
His flying contraptions, otherworldly flying machines are made out of ceramic. They're rough and chitinous mirroring the gargantuan insect life that has taken over the Earth. Part bug, part ship, part WWII; it's like magic the way he depicts this with just ink. He definitely owns the inked line.
Mold has defeated the Nausicaa's world. The mold forest is so vast that it's called The Sea of Corruption. And the mold, too is drawn with perfectly descriptive lines. It's one thing to draw things that exist, and another to make tangible what has no counter reference in reality. Any hack can draw something that exists in all our shared experiences. See below.
Mold corruption had touched my primary drawings and as I mourned the loss of all those hours of work, and the record of that time of my life when the sky was bright with possibility, I decided that I must archive them. I must write about them, preserve them in the ever-shifting ether of the interconnectedness of all things, the web. Thus will my first efforts attain immortality. Half-assed immortality; the only believable kind. The only magical kind.
The first self portrait.
Classes begin with a self portrait and end with a self portrait. It helps students guage their progress. The proportions are off. They're totally out of whack. I understood that the eyes belong in the center of the head, but didn't understand that the hair is not a hat resting on the head's tippy top. But what this drawing lacks in understanding it makes up in zeal. Shirtless cocked head pose, off center composition, and the horizontal orientation were all unusual choices. They were bold.
This view no longer exists. The community college where I drew these pastoral scenes is now surrounded, subdivided, and conquered. It's in a sea of sprawl, another kind of corruption.
Taking a swing at cross contour hatching.
I drew the piano at Mayfair Mall. I drew it twice. I thought of it like a moulting insect.
An enlargement (all of these drawings are on 18X22 inch bond paper) of a photograph that I took of myself while in the navy. I used the ship's boat hook to snap the shutter.
You can see that I'm struggling with the use of ink and lines. What is that weird bubble on my pants? It's not in the original photograph. If it wasn't wrong, I would call it Miyazakian.
A close up. What is that?
The week we learned perspective.
Collage assignment.
I enjoyed this. I cut the two images arbitrarily and interspliced them before drawing them. It's a fun technique. Looking at this drawing reduced here to 2 inches by 1 inch, I'm shocked at how photographic it is.
Final self portrait.
I drew this by looking into two mirrors, one on the ground and one on the wall. I wanted to depict the sea and confuse my hair as a storm. I loved being at sea, but the Navy was a lonely antagonistic place for me.
You see that I showed early promise. I don't know if I've lived up to it. At one point in my life, fifteen years after this final drawing, while in graduate school, the same professor called me into his office and ripped me a new one. "I'm disappointed in you," he told me.
Maybe he had a reason to be. Here I am now completely unknown, invisible, and I don't own the lines. Not only do I not own the lines, but my copy sources have tumbled down the respectability stairwell.
Pep no.285, 1974, no artist credited.
Thank you, Cavedweller, for joining me in this eulogy. I can now burn these in peace.