“In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is.”
Drawn 5/6/2016
Day 13
“Mothers are the gardeners of the human race.”
Drawn Mother’s Day 2016
Day 14
“It is a poor family that hath neither a whore nor a thief in it.”
Day 15
“It is hard to tell what brings happiness: poverty and wealth have both failed.” (I vote for art)
Drawn 5/18/2011
Day 16
“At twenty we worry about what others think of us; At forty we don’t care what others think of us; At sixty we realize they haven’t been thinking about us at all.”
Drawn 5/6/2011
Day 17
“You don’t think your way to creative work. You work your way to creative thinking.”
Drawn 5/3/2017
Day 18
“Perfection is achieved not when there is nothing more to add but when there is nothing left to take away.”
The first several days of this week were taken up with reintroducing myself to a new audience, explaining how I became the Napkin Dad. You can read that story at ‘Napkin Beginnings’ at the top menu.
Day 5
“Creativity is not the finding of a thing but the making of something after finding it.”
Drawn 5/17/2016
Day 6
“Being a woman is a terribly difficult trade since it consists primarily of dealings with men.”
Drawn 5/23/2016
Day 7
“The bible tells us to love our neighbors and also to love our enemies – probably because they are generally the same people!”
Drawn 5/19/2011
Day 8
“Mothers are the gardeners of the human race.”
Day 9
“If the world were perfect it wouldn’t be.”
Day 10
“If your morals make you dreary, depend on it, they are wrong.”
Day 11
“In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is.”
“I think it’s about time we vote for people with breasts. After all, we’ve been voting for boobs long enough.”
Drawn 4/16/2012
Day 2
“Do not mistake temptation for opportunity.”
This has been me too many times in my life. I rationalized it as an opportunity when it was just me being drawn to what I desired. Of course, both things can be true at the same time but even if it is an opportunity you might miss it if you are focused on the short term fulfillment of your desire. The long game is the hardest game to play.
Drawn 4/14/2016
Day 3
“If you want to kill a good idea, get a committee working on it.
Drawn 4/28/2016
Day 4
“Everybody, soon or late, sits down to a banquet of consequences.”
Drawn 4/12/2011
Day 5
“Don’t let imaginary dangers inflict real wounds.”
Drawn 4/14/2015
Day 6
“Depression is the inability to construct a future.”
Drawn 4/27/2009
Day 7
“You can be misunderstood once. After that, you are just communicating poorly.”
“History is a race between education and catastrophe.”
Drawn 3/15/2011
Day 16
“When calamity has been suffered, remember first how much has escaped.”
Drawn 3/16/2011
Day 17
“Few women admit their age, few men act theirs.”
Drawn 3/17/2013
Day 18
“What quarrel, what harshness, what unbelief in each other can subsist in the presence of a great calamity, when all the artificial vesture of our life is gone and we are all one with each other in primitive mortal needs.”
Drawn 3/18/2011
Day 19
“If you are naturally kind you attract a lot of people you don’t like.”
Drawn 3/18/2014
Day 20
“They say nobody’s perfect then they say practice makes perfect. I wish they would make up their mind.”
Drawn 3/20/2012
Day 21
“The only nice thing about being imperfect is the joy it it brings others.”
I am continuing to post on social media a napkin drawing every day. Here on my site I am posting them weekly. This month i’ve decided to include the commentary I wrote with the napkin on the date originally posted.
Day 1
“Spring, summer, fall fill us with hope; Winter alone reminds us of the human condition.”
Drawn 2/1/2011
Day 2
“Behold the turtle. He only makes progress when he sticks his neck out.”
Drawn 2/2/2010
Day 3
“Artists who seek perfection in everything are those who can’t attain it in anything.”
Drawn on 2/3/2009
Day 4
“I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.”
Confucius
Drawn 2/4/2009
Day 5
“Effort and Courage are not enough without purpose and direction.”
Drawn 2/5/2015
Day 6
“here is a test to find out whether your mission in life is complete: If you are alive, it isn’t.”
Drawn on 2/2/2015
Day 7
“Those who want to imitate anything produce nothing.” – Salvador Dali
“If you don’t know history then you don’t know anything. You are a leaf that doesn’t know it is part of a tree.”
Drawn 1/30/2014
Day 12
“Loving your body only when it’s in perfect shape is like loving your kids only when they’re well-behaved.”
Drawn 1/28/2016
Day 13
“It’s a strange world of language in which skating on thin ice can get you in hot water.”
drawn 1/31/2012
Day 14
“If your compassion does not include yourself, it is incomplete.”
Drawn 1/31/2010
Day 15
“Justice requires us to remember that when any citizen denies his fellow saying, ‘his color is not mine’ or ‘his beliefs are strange’, in that moment he betrays America.” – LBJ
Drawn 1/21/2013
Day 16
“The Napkin’s Guide to Happy Living: Forego judgment for enjoyment”
Drawn 1/22/2014
Day 17
“The Napkin’s Guide to Happy Living: Expression Defeats Depression”
This woman is a worship leader at our church. She sings on stage but when not singing she sits on side row with her family. Today her son was intensely interested in a stretchy rope that he brought with him and spent a while sitting in front of her playing with it. She did a great job parenting him, using a nice combination of letting him do his thing with reminders to behave and pay attention. She didn’t enforce, just reminded.
Natalie in Church
I found myself in church sitting next to Natalie and her family from my community group. I usually don’t sit right next to people and if I do I certainly don’t usually draw them. But I know Natalie and I know that her whole family are church doodlers so I felt comfortable drawing her. When I painted the drawing later I didn’t remember the exact color scheme except she was in light clothes and there was pink here and there. So, that is what i imagined and I chose the colors.
Eight Angry Saints
When I am sitting in church, cafe and waiting room and have finished a drawing I often will not start a new one from observation. I will just start making something up and draw that. I will often just start with a long line and then let that tell me where to go. The woman’s hair in the front was the first long line. I did that one then just started repeating the shape of the face and the hair, adding in variations just to see what expressions and looks I could come up with. I added halos and all of a sudden they were saints.
Scene in a Museum
Sometimes I see someone’s face and something stands out that I am attracted to. In this case I just happened to glimpse a woman with a very distinct nose. I wasn’t able to see much more of her so instead of trying to draw her from life I just started with the curve of her nose as I remembered it and made up most the rest. I also remembered her hair style and incorporated an stylized version of that as well. When I draw from memory and with no exact reference I will often turn the person into a museum piece of some sort. In this case she became a sculptural bust. But she was on the right side face left and that left a big blank space on the right. So I thought it would be fun to draw her looking at a painting of the rest of herself.
Preacherman
We had a guest preacher a few weeks back. He was a snappy dresser so I started to draw him. However, I didn’t really like his message, it was too preachy, formulaic and simplistic for my taste.
Mindscapes
This woman was in front of me at church. Once I finished drawing her profile I lost interest in drawing the rest of the church scene so I started making up a story about her using images instead of words. What she thought, what she said, what she actually was living and how different they were.
