52 Fridays - Doodle Dan

 

I don't doodle enough, but I did this week. Doodles are generally idly done while thinking about something else, so they are, I believe, a connection to the subconscious. With my other, more formal drawings, I can be too conscious at times, thinking too much about the drawing and how I am doing it and that it had better be good. Doodles are the opposite of that. I'm just playing, making marks and not trying to make a "good drawing". I often throw them away. I saved this guy because I like it. It's on a scrap of paper I used for my daily To-Do list. The back of this note was filled with small tasks that have been marked through. There's one task at the top of the drawing, "LATVIAN", my reminder to take an online Latvian lesson and next to that, WALK, which I also did. Then I noodled up this little guy in a couple of minutes. I like the looseness and energy of the line. It has a bit of a 1980s feel to it. Do you doodle? If so, do you ever save them?

Happy Friday again and welcome to June!

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52 Fridays - Unknown and Toothless

 

Greetings and Happy Friday! Have you ever felt like a toothless unknown? I know I have, so when I saw this toothless fellow, well he's missing one tooth, I had to draw him. He's another find from Instagram, this one came from the account of artsafricains.bakongo. Unfortunately there is no listed information about where or what tribe or anything, hence the "unknown" factor. If anyone out there can tell me anything about him, drop a comment below. I used a basic black ballpoint pen to sketch him out and finished with colored pencils.

Thanks' for stopping by and have a good week!

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52 Fridays - M-78 a.k.a. MoonFace

 

This week's drawing is from a miniature carving (less than two inches tall) I did called "M-78". It's carved from a Hickory Nut husk and was part of a series I was working on called "Lo-Fi-Ga" which I have posted about many times before. I also wrote specifically about "M-78" back in August 2015 (ye gods has it really been almost six years?!). My fav quote from that post is:

Is he a secret agent? Is he a wrestler? Maybe a secret wrestler? He is marked and mysterious and blind.

 My girlfriend Ieva thought a good name for him would be "MoonFace", so maybe that's what the "M" stands for. What do you think he might be?

Happy Friday. Keep smiling and don't let the bastards grind you down.

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52 Fridays - Acorn Head - Ibibio

 It's week twenty of this fifty-two Fridays drawing project and this week's subject is an African mask from Nigeria of the Ibibio people. Another wonderful image harvested from the seemingly endless treasures to be found on Instagram. Sidebar - I'm no fan of Zuckerberg and don't like that Facebook (also don't like Facebook) now owns Instagram, but it's tough to find a better place to look at such a wide variety of different kinds of art easily. Maybe Pinterest? (What's your favorite site to browse art?) I'm constantly adding new images to a saved collection in my IG account, so there's always several things ready to draw.

I found this Ibibio mask on "afrikaria" and it is the third image in a collection of masks depicting disease and deformities. I will likely draw the other two masks sometime in the future as I find them all to be fascinating. My immediate response to this mask was "Acorn Head" and I intentionally exaggerated the shape of the top of the head to convey this. It also reminded me of a series of tiny carvings I worked on for a time called the "Lo-Fi Gods" that were carved from Hickory Nut Husks. Maybe I'll do a drawing from one of those next.

I've mentioned in the past that I sometimes struggle with my inner critic as I draw, but this week I tricked it by telling myself this was just going to be a "warm-up" drawing before I started the real thing. The critic was silent and I did my work. Truly, all art is just "practice"; a ritual of creation that exercises the soul. That inner critic is also the voice that tries to talk me out of going for a run or eating healthier food. This voice is not my friend.

See you next week.

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