I drew the drawing and wrote the commentary 6 years ago today. Still true.
Signs of Life
My post yesterday showed a woman watching TV in the dark, pretty much unmotivated and inactive in life. She was leading a mediocre life and I illustrated it by showing her being idle while the world passed her by. But the truth is being idle is not necessarily a sign of mediocrity. It’s mostly a sign of nothing. It’s just something we all do. We all have times we are idle, not pursuing some grand goal. We just sit and read a light novel, or watch a funny TV show, or listen to frothy infectious pop music. If you have a drive to achieve something, a drive to be excellent at something, then that idle time is good. It is needed to rejuvenate your ideas, your creativity, your energy.
Signs of Death
But if you are living a mediocre life, a life unmotivated and without a flame of excellence then that same idleness is a killer. It is not rejuvenating you, it is burying you. It is helping you to die while you are still alive. So ask yourself – Are you taking a breather at the end of a long day? Then you are in good company, most of us like to do that. Or are you taking a breather from life? Then you might want to slap yourself awake and see if you might not want to pursue something greater than the killing mediocrity of never ending idleness.
Real Life
When I mentioned on twitter this morning that I was drawing a woman with curlers in her hair my friend and fellow running coach Theresa thought I might need some inspiration so she sent me a photo of herself in curlers. She says she sometimes will even stop at a convenience store to get something while in her curlers AND has been hit on a number of times. She says it has to do with her confidence, that she is who she is and likes it, curlers or not! I have to agree, that’s what confidence is all about!
Trivia Question from yesterday answered
Question: A man known to many as ‘The most hated man in America’ was suppose to be on the Titanic but missed the boat. Who was he and why did he miss it?
Answer: Henry Clay Frick. He was the chairman of Andrew Carnegie’s steel company and was the man in charge of the violent response to a worker’s strike in 1892 at the Homestead Steel Plant. As a result of that he became widely hated in the US. He and his wife, Adelaide, were ticketed to be aboard the Titanic but she sprained her ankle in Italy shortly before the voyage and they were not able to make the crossing.
Drawing in church (or anywhere) is not restricted to drawing something or someone I am looking at. Here are 5 examples of the range, from starting with a real person but adding a made-up background to doing something abstract that has no connection to a world outside itself.
The Violinist’s Hand
The drawing is of a real person…sorta. She is the violinist in church that I draw frequently. But I am not being hired to draw her portrait so I am not particularly concerned about it looking exactly like her. I have certain parts that I hope I get right and I work at that, but just like an author will tell you, sometimes the character takes on a life of their own. In the artist’s case, the lines made and the colors chosen have reasons, some known some unknown, that go beyond a likeness to the individual and into an idea, feeling or mood.
The background obviously isn’t from church. I created it to build on the idea of her looking off in the distance and hoping for help. After I drew the background I came up with what she might be thinking. I penned that in and was going to leave the last word off but then thought it would be interesting to finish the quote with a visual instead of a word.
The Stained Glass Singer
Here is another example of starting with a person, in this case a choir member. This time it looks like I went even further away from a standard portrait but it didn’t start that way.
That happened later, when I was in my studio studying the drawing. That is when I started to see the facets in her face and thought about defining them. I have done that many times before over the decades and it’s always a fun exercise to work on.
But what made it special this time was realizing that building those up could turn her into a stained glass window. It seems like a perfect thing to do.
Sad Girl
The only thing remotely connected to a real person here is a general shape of the face, but even that is exaggerated. It was just a shape I saw and remembered as I passed someone in the hall of the church.
The rest of the drawing I wasn’t looking at anybody or thinking about anyone in particular. The initial line drawing of the shape gave me a melancholy feeling so I drew the rest of the portrait to match that.
I chose the blue and yellow stripes of the hair first. The shirt was a solid at that point but I felt one solid block of color would be too heavy at the bottom. I liked the idea of something bridging the two sides of her so I added stripes to the shirt. It also allowed me to create a sense of volume to her body.
Sometimes a situation arises that causes you to make a decision you otherwise would not make. I started filling in the pink background on the left and slowly realized the marker was running out of ink. In most cases I would just refill but I didn’t have any refill ink. So, I had to consider what could I do on the opposite side if I wasn’t going to use the same color. I liked the idea of using a cool color to break up the symmetry of the image and to cast a different mood to the two different sides so I went with a pale green.
At the very end I did not like the big blank space between her eyes and her mouth so I decided to add her blushing. It seemed just the right finishing touch to the image and her melancholy.
The Aliens
Sometimes the distance between what you start with and what you end with is light years away. I ended with a couple of goofy aliens landing on earth. But what I started with was a breast.
I had this idea, yes while in church, of a nude woman floating in the air. So, I drew a breast to start. I realize two things at this point. One, I made the breast too big to make my idea of a whole person floating feasible and two, church might not be the best place to draw this image even if it did fit.
So, what to do? I contemplated what I had and saw a possible space ship. One shaped like a flying breast it’s true but I figured I could make that not so apparent.
And of course a space ship has to have aliens so I decided to make them look like bumbling boobs, just for fun.
Spiral #7
Sometimes I am completely in my head at church, not looking at anything. This is the case with this drawing of spirals, one of a series I have been doing lately.
While it is completely abstract (meaning no reference to anything beyond itself) that does not mean I am not considering the possible ideas that might come from the drawing.
In this case I was very deliberate about having the four quadrants be mirror images of the diagonal quadrant and to have the colors be the same. At this point my thoughts are about how the colors are reflecting groups of people and how they interact – tribes, colonies, and yes churches.
That doesn’t mean I expect someone looking at this drawing to see that, or to see anything at all. It’s just where my mind meanders as I am creating these sorts of images.
The great thing about art, and in particular abstract art, is that everyone is right in their opinion. There is no absolute truth in art. What you want it to mean, it means.
In 2017 I drew this in the cafe of the church I attend. I finished the drawing today, just about 2 years later.
When I made all the thought bubbles in the drawing I as thinking of what they could all be thinking that would make them unique and similar at the same time and the idea of numbers came to mind. We frequently think in numbers, even if we don’t realize it so I started writing down various numbers that we get attached to and sometimes obsess about; money, age, time, distance, size, temperature are just a few.
I showed this on my live stream as I was drawing it and one person commented, ‘Eternity isn’t a number.’ And he is right. But it is a concept of time and time is all about numbers so it still fits. Plus I did the drawing at a church, where the idea of eternity is talked about probably more than any other place.
I drew this 9 years ago. I was thinking about my wife Linda when I drew it and wrote the commentary. I am still thinking about her and her happiness this Valentine’s Week.
Yes, compatibility matters and mutual interests matter and attraction matters.
But nothing matters like wanting your partner’s happiness.
Nothing brings joy like realizing that what brings your partner happiness is something within your grasp to give.
Back when I was single (pre-2006) I used to go to Barnes & Noble regularly to read and draw. I don’t remember anything about this woman now except that she was intensely writing, oblivious to her surroundings. 16 years later I unexpectedly received a large collection of colored pencils so I went back to this drawing I had always loved and finished it.
‘Cafe View’ Tulsa, OK, Marker on Paper, 2017-2018
Once a month Linda takes care of babies in the nursery of our church instead of attending the service. Often I will sit in the cafe on those days instead of in the service and draw. These two men were trying to keep cool by coming indoors on a very hot July morning. I don’t often have the opportunity to do a true city view with large buildings close up so after I had drawn the men I focused on that.
‘The Song Made Them Cry’ San Francisco, CA, Marker on Paper, 2018 – 2019
I was in the Bay Area to run the Oakland Marathon and was attending my daughter Chelsea’s cafe concert in the Mission District of San Francisco the evening before the race. I saw these two women in rapt attention to a particular song and took advantage of the moment to draw them. They both were actually crying.
‘The Grey Day’ Tulsa, OK., Marker on Paper, 2019
I was at a Starbucks waiting for my car to be repaired and I noticed a very striking woman dressed in shades of grey. She was in high contrast, with dark eyes, lips, hair and nails set off against the palest of pale skin and paper. I did the line drawing quickly and used my color imagination later to create the feeling I had looking at her.
Here is a partial list of the things that might enslave you or me (if you think of others, feel free to let me know in the comments).
Alcohol / Drugs
Insecurity
Depression / Anxiety
Phone / Social Media
Change
The scale
Rules / Society standards
Perfection
Control
Shopping
Work
Guilt
Sex / Porn
Expectations
Responsibilities
Sugar
I have personally have dealt with or still deal with at least 5 on this list and if I include my family and close friends then I have dealt indirectly with almost every single one to some degree. I expect if you are old enough you have too.
The Hard Part
Here is the hard part. Knowing we are enslaved isn’t enough. If we are more interested in overcoming than polishing then we must ask and seek the answer to this question:
Why do we polish our chains?
Here’s why we need to ask this question. Saying you hate something about yourself or your situation is only looking at half the issue. The other question we have to ask is:
What do we gain from it?
Because knowing what we gain from it is key to figuring out how to let it go and pick up something else that isn’t as destructive.
What are your answers?
Drawing and Commentary @ 2019 Marty Coleman | napkindad.com
Quote by Marcel Mariën, 1920-1993, Belgian Surrealist
Ten years ago today I started what is now ‘The Napkin’. My first post on the website introduced my readers to why. The original post ends with events of 2009. Since then ‘The Napkin’ has been seen and read all around the world and as a result I have gained many true and wonderful friends from my home town all the way to the most distant of lands. Something I will forever treasure.
The Napkin Dad Daily began as a series of drawings and quotes on napkins that I put in my daughters’ lunches during their middle and high school years, most every day from 1998 -2004.
I started doing the napkins while I was unemployed and making their lunches for school. I did 3 a day, one for each daughter. After many months I felt sort of depressed because, as funny as it sounds, it was the my main creative outlet, the only artwork I was doing at the time, and they were all being thrown away every day. ‘Oh well’ I said, and went about doing them until the end of the year.
My wife at the time was not happy in the marriage (we later divorced) and took the girls to California to visit her family in the summer, and I was not invited. I was home alone on Father’s day when the girls called to tell me they had hid their presents for me around the house. I walked around the house following their hints and found my oldest’s and my youngest’s presents.
My middle daughter directed me to a bottom drawer somewhere and there I found a napkin she had drawn for me …
and below it…there were all the napkins from the entire year! She had saved every one and given them back to me for Father’s Day. It truly was the best present I ever got, I cried when I found them. She really didn’t, and couldn’t, understand how much it meant to me to have her do that, and to have them still in existence. I continued to draw the napkins for 4 more years, almost every day, until my youngest graduated from High School.
In 2005 I started scanning them little by little and posting them to my flickr.com site, which I had set up for my photographic work but had been posting drawings to as well. The napkins got a great response and I started to consider ways I could get them out to a larger audience. In 2008 I started the blog you see here, the Napkin Dad Daily, and started posting a napkin a day. Eventually I added commentary below some of the napkins, in response to conversations that were going on in the comments, or on flickr.
In November of 2008 I was enthusiastic over the exciting presidential campaign and glad that Obama had won. I went looking through my napkin collection to see if I could find one that would be reflective of my feelings the morning after the election. I could not and so decided to draw a new napkin, the first in almost 4 years at that point. I posted the napkin on my blog and on flickr and had an incredible response. Hundreds of hits and comments came in, as they did on many other images people posted that day.
A few weeks later I got an email from flickr stating that Time Magazine was interested in one of my ‘photos’ for inclusion in an upcoming issue. They said if I was interested to contact Time for further information, which I did. I found out they were interested in using that napkin drawing in their ‘Person of the Year’ issue about the President-elect Barack Obama.
When the issue came out the local media in Tulsa took notice and I started to do some print and TV interviews. In anticipation of that I made my first self-published book, a t-shirt with the Obama napkin on it, and a series of coffee mugs. You can see those at my website. A number of companies and individuals saw the various segments and articles and as a result drawing, web design and graphic design work has come my way.
A local gallery & coffee house expressed interest in having a show of the napkins. In May of 2009 I opened the show, title ‘Absorbent Ideas’.
To keep up to date with the napkin story subscribe to The Napkin Dad Daily. you will get a napkin a day AND find out when anything new and exciting happens.
