Redraw…

Sunday Night: Drawings are in my head, crying to be let out, much like the Golden Retriever who then stands at the doorway, staring at me as if I have asked her to sacrifice her dinner. “I don’t really want to go out, mom. I just want attention.” I carry my sketchbooks around, two of them, for two days straight, thinking that will help me, but I can’t draw around people. The drawings are shy; they don’t want attention like that. Just mine, like needy two-year-olds, clinging to mom. Fuckers.

I had an art meeting yesterday afternoon, so I didn’t have a chance to work on art stuff all day Saturday or Sunday until about 9:30 PM. And then this happened.

And I’m negotiating with a cat. Look, Midnight, it’s bad enough that I have to have Friends on while I’m trying to do this, when I really need something dark and evil like Orphan Black or Helix, but when you repeatedly claw at the paper when I’m trying to get it out from under you? More attention-seekers.

I finally got everything out from under the cat and pulled this drawing from a few months back…

Which was a redraw of this drawing…

and which I liked, but…ran out of paper. Whoops. And wasn’t sure about the tree. Or the drumstick. (The top drawing, which is the second one. The first one? Has some things going for it…but…I don’t know.) So I have a deadline coming up with this idea of oasis, and I’m sure some people go straight to palm trees or a pool of water, a place where we go to escape. So I’m working with that, but the place is mental. Because when I get my brain all tied up in knots, that is what I need…a method to get away from that crazy.

I’m working with a prescribed size though. And it doesn’t work with how the drawing was in my brain on this, the third iteration…but I thought I could start by drawing the top and then I could figure it out from there…

And oh my god, that was a clusterfuck. OK, not completely. But I needed more liquid paper than I really like to use, because I’m drawing this one to size, not enlarging it, so when I’m tracing from the back, I will still be able to see the lines I covered up, and it gets really confusing. Plus I was just fucking it up all over the place, so I walked the fuck away from it. Because the lines weren’t going where I wanted them to. The pen was fighting me.

Because if I can’t draw. Bloody hell. I thought about doing some quilting or just going to bed, but I really wanted to make this work. I didn’t want to let the drawing win. So I cut another piece of paper, measured the appropriate size, and laid it on top…

Because some parts were OK. The eyes were fucked up. The right hand was a bloody mess. I don’t even know what was going on with the neckline, but the man’s head was good. And things were in generally the right place. Do over.

You can see on the right what I thought was OK enough to copy. Then the sketchbook is what I’m drawing from…well, sort of. And then under the sketchbook was the rejected drawing.

At that point, it was 11:30 PM. I could stop. Maybe I should stop.

Fuck that. I kept going…got the face done…

And the hand that bugged me before, and the outline of the torso. Much better. Deep sigh. So I guess this is really version number 4. Fighting this one out, seriously. It’s just messing with me. I think some of that is that I’m used to drawing smaller, in a sketchbook I can hold on my lap, sitting on the couch, and this is standing at the light table and it’s big and I’m trying to reach across AND make sure the pieces aren’t too small. So I needed to persuade my hand it could do all of that.

And now, when I’d really rather stay home and draw this, I need to go to work. Sigh. Deep sigh. Art brain goes off to sulk in the corner.

Finished these yesterday at the art meeting…

They were almost done at soccer last weekend. But that’s July. Now on to August. Don’t ask what year.

Note to self: We have enough conditioner until the end of time. Don’t buy more.

Mood is better. Body is in revolution. Uterus is conducting volcanic studies. Tired. Iron depletion? Ugh.