Some WIP shots from today:

The book’s got information about facial expressions an the muscles that dictate them, and I’m at the part with the brow and how the frontalis muscles are like venetian blinds on the skull that pull the brow back and wrinkle the forehead.

As a note I love high shiny foreheads and side parts.  The mobile picture that I did yesterday (I didn’t post it here but through my instagram account) was also from lessons in the book, that one dealing with how movements of the eyebrow effect the folds of the eyelid.

If you have an instagram account look me up.  I’ve been doing digital painting on my ipod and uploading it to there.  It’s extremely satisfying, even with the tiny tiny screen, to be able to draw right onto the medium.  It feels closer to the work than my tablet does, and the results are surprising me.

The universe has been kind enough to send a little birdie telling me that an ipad is on the way to me, so that I will be able to do my sketching on a larger screen!

I push my hair around until it’s sticking off in strange fuzzy angles. My tongue and teeth pull my lips into all kinds of ugly expressions of concentration.  My feet hate the floor and I hunch my back into a slinky slouch. Downcast eyes and a head that pivots left. down. right. further right. left again.  Like some kind of giant confused chicken.  I am an unkempt and ugly girl but a passionate one, completely consumed and blind to the world and myself.  (And I lived happily ever after, the end.)

Who else is entirely unselfconscious?  Playing children, maybe.  Is it merely concentration?  Do scientists doing their science look like absurd rounded-back squishy-faced chickens?  In some way do they put the same investment of personality and style into their work as an artist does, even if interpretation would be obtuse?

As soon as I put down the pen the reality that I exist comes tumbling back to me.  This is the trouble with it. And then I think my god, I must have looked quite ugly and strange. And I think what is this thing I’ve created? And I suspect that it must look ugly and strange as well. This spiral into self doubt has been well described by friends of mine, it appears to be nearly universal although poorly understood by artists, it’s passed off as the occupational crazy.  But I think I’ve figured it out.  It’s the rediscovery of self, the surfacing from unselfconsciousness, and the realization of how totally dorky unselfconsciousness is.

I think I read that Picasso would paint for days in a frenzy and then pass out into a deep sleep when exhaustion finally caught up with him. His wife had to sneak into the room and steal the paintings away so they would be out of his reach, because when he woke up and discovered himself he would destroy all of the work he had done.

Another artist friend, when I was young and dreaming of making a living with my meager talents, explained to me that there was no point pursuing commercial art if I loved the product and not the process. That this notion of finding it difficult to part with the work itself was unproductive and self absorbed.  Serious art, he said, is in the process of making it. Once it’s done you could just throw it away. Selling it is just more practical, but the principle is the same. This is embracing the dorky unselfconsciousness.   This is comfort with the failure that hits you like a bucket of cold water, when you suddenly become aware of every flaw that others will see and probably the ones they won’t.  It’s also the reason to start over and make another one.  And the reason to push harder to become better, weird faces and chicken twitches be damned.

My favorites so far:

Selkie of the Floor

A wing without a bird.

Apr 3, 2010

Last night, while I was having dinner and getting ready to make the 12 hour pilgrimage out to see her in the hospital, my grandmother died. I cannot easily describe to strangers how deeply important this woman was in my life and how close we were, and this morning I couldn’t find the will to get out of bed until this image, one that has already been slowly developing in my mind during the last days of Actaeon, leapt into view in my mind’s eye.

I am also writing for the funeral, but this is for me.  Drawing it is soothing. It fills the space around me.

Apr 4, 2010

The art of stealing moments.

Apr 5, 2010

My grandmother had a wrought iron wall piece for hanging pots and pans, that has very much inspired the way I’m rendering the cage.

Apr 6, 2010

I just really wish I could give her a call.

Apr 11, 2010

Her eye coloring was really special, and this doesn’t even begin to capture it. Blue ring around a brown center. The blue ring was so shocking, and gave her a doe-eyed dilated look from far away, and a much more intense impression up close.