52 Fridays - Is It Magic? Or Is It Crap?

Happy Friday! Here is my third drawing of this “52 Fridays” drawing project. It is of a wooden figure of the Chimu African tribe from 1000-1470 AD. I worked from a photo found in a book called "Art of Oceania, Africa, and the Americas from The Museum of Primitive Art" that I found on The Metropolitan Museum of Art web site. They have made available over five hundred art books for free, as PDF files. It is a treasure trove for any art lover, so if you are looking to be inspired, pay them a visit and download a few (dozen) books. You will feel better, I promise you.

I choose this figure because I liked his shape and for the strong wood grain texture. There is also an "x-factor" there, something that I connected with that I can't articulate and don't want to spoil by thinking too much about it. 

I roughed out the basic shape in pencil and did the final drawing with a cheap, black Bic ballpoint pen. I like to draw, but always have to fight through the resistance of my critic and doubting mind to get to the fun part. That shitty voice is always telling me that whatever marks I am making are crap, that it's wrong, why am I bothering, and, of course, "you are a fraud". I've learned to fight through this, nodding my head and mentally agreeing in a patronizing way, "Yes, yes, you are right", but I continue on anyways. I always give myself an out that I don't have to show anyone if it really is that bad. I find drawing to be meditative and always, at some point, fall into a shallow trance and wake up when the the sketch is close to being done. That's when I often find that the marks I had so recently had no confidence in, now have magically become something. Mere marks now  have become wood or metal or bone and the the thing looks back at me. If I can get a little bit of my soul in there, then I have won. That is always a feeling worth the effort.

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52 Fridays - Drawing #2 - The Egyptian Museum

    Happy Friday! So, I missed posting on here last Friday, but I did post this on Instagram on the 8th, so I am covered. That means I will do a double posting on here today!

   Last  week I drew from a photo I took at The Egyptian Museum in Cairo, Egypt in the #BeforeTimes when I was literally traveling around the world. The Egyptian Museum is a sprawling, causally maintained facility, full of what seems to be millions of artifacts in dusty display cases with cracked glass and yellowing typewritten description tags. I loved it. I skipped the lines for King Tut to hang out with the more neglected displays such as these exquisite figurines. Unfortunately, I don’t have any historical details about this about this piece, but looks to be carved from Malachite and it was 3-4 cms. high.

    I hope wherever you are at and whatever your situation you can find something that brings you joy.

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52 Fridays - A Drawing Project

Greetings and Happy New Year! Here's wishing that 2021 is a better year than 2020, which is a pretty low bar to cross. I'm not one for setting "New Year's Resolutions" (sidebar shout out to my pal Neil's podcast where he recently ruminated on this very topic), but I do love to set goals for the year. S.M.A.R.T. (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-based) goals, stuff like, log 1,200 miles walking/running/hiking. I hit 1,972 miles last year. This year I decided to set an art-based goal that will motivate me to draw more often. Inspired by my prolific friend (same guy with the mentioned podcast) Neil Bruce's "52 Fridays" music video project from last year, that I contributed some video clips to, I have decided to do an art version of that project and will post a drawing every Friday through 2021. I will primarily be posting new drawings, but there might also be the occasional blast-from-the-past. 

This week's drawing was done today and was taken from an image I found on Instagram posted by "@johngrahamtribalart". It's an interesting woodcarving of a simple, primitive style face from the Lobi tribe according to the info from the original post. I used a cheap Bic ball-point pen and drew it in a little travel sketchbook that doesn't lie flat, so I get to be a hand model. 

Only fifty-one to go! 

See you next week,

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Another "Off-World" Birthday

This is the fourth birthday that my wife Janet will celebrate "off-world". She left this Earthly realm a few years ago and I miss her terribly, always will. Janet's hands were always busy drawing, knitting, baking; she was an artist and creator of many things. We were fortunate to live in Ireland for a couple of years where Janet earned her MFA at the Burren College of Art. She had Irish roots and loved living in Ireland as I did. We returned for visits as often as we could. While looking through photos and video of our life together, I found this snippet from our last trip there in December 2016. It's so strange, sad and wonderful to get this glimpse of Irish pub life (courtesy of Connolly's Pub, Kinvara) and hear Janet's laugh again. I'm grateful for all the time I had with Janet. She was a beautifully formidable wife and friend and I am a better man for having been with her. 

Cheers my sweet baby,

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