The Elegantly Dressed Beautiful Woman | Ink on Paper | 2004-2018
‘The elegantly dressed beautiful woman with the cat as her carry-on wearing black and an orange scarf and visiting her parents in San Diego who can’t have pets and thinks her nose is bigger than I drew it but was flattered and thinks I am lucky.’
I created the line drawing portion of this drawing in December of 2004 while at the airport waiting to go to San Diego. The woman and I kept in touch and I sent her a photo of the drawing. 14 years later I decided to finish it with color.
I have been going through old sketchbooks recently and one in particular has stood out for having some amazing drawings. Not because of technical skill but because of the bizarre content. I have always drawn some pretty odd scenes but this one sketchbook seems to be filled with them. I am not sure why. The only thing I can think of is the size of the book. It’s bigger (7″x10″) than the average sketchbook I carry around with me. I think perhaps that allows me more space to create a scene and when I create a scene out of my imagination I tend to get pretty out there.
I saw a new person in the orchestra this week. I liked the wave of her hair and the shape of her face. I couldn’t see her once we sat down so that was all I had in my head as I started the drawing. From there she gradually turned into a bust of a Goddess or Queen or whatever you think she might be.
I drew this a number of weeks ago when I was playing around with profiles and symmetry/assymetry. I enjoyed making everything about them color opposites while their sentiments were exactly the same.
This style harkens back to when I first started coloring my napkin drawings, way back in 2008 and 2009 when I would just follow the lines I had drawn with colors.
I draw the majority of my images from my imagination. But many of the drawings may start with something or someone I see as an inspiration point. It might be a long straight nose, or the uniformity of choir robes, that I remember and start with. But after that initial inspiration I am not trying to recreate the look of a person or place. I am then much more interested in the marks on the piece of paper and what they represent. This usually doesn’t happen with designed intent beforehand.
Where the Light Was On
For example, I didn’t start out wanting to show a woman looking off to a high rise in the distance. I started out wanting to echo the long vertical line of her nose with another long vertical line in the distance. It was after I made that second line in the distance that I started wondering what that could be. Then I started designing the scene with intent. Her look was so intensely focused off to my right that I didn’t think the high rise by itself would be a sufficient reason for her to be looking in that direction. A light on would make the difference and create the loop between the woman and the building. That in turn makes one wonder, what is happening in that building?
She Had A Little Work Done
I often start a drawing of a person with their nose. But I tend to do long noses or really big curved noses. I do this because I like making a big first mark on the page. But I got tired of doing that and was thinking about what sort of nose I could draw that I don’t often. So in the middle of the page I put the smallest nose I could. The moment I did that I thought about someone getting a nose job to reduce the size of it. The phrase ‘she had a ‘little’ work done’ came to mind. I built around that idea with other elements that were outsized instead of small, to allow for a big contrast. In the end though the drawing really wasn’t about the nose and the ‘little work’ it had done, it was about the eyes and lips and the BIG work that was done. As a matter of fact to me it looks like the only part of her that wasn’t worked on is her nose since the line is simple and uncolored. Sometimes what you think you are going to drawing isn’t what you end up really drawing.
Asparagus
I have a real penchant for art movements of Surrealism and and Dada from the early to mid twentieth century. I don’t know why but I like things that make me go ‘huh?’ and art from both those movements make me do that. In this drawing it really isn’t the image that does that, but the words. There’s no reason for them to be connected and that is the whole point. Thoughts and life don’t always make sense, but that doesn’t mean they don’t occur.
The Woman Who Drank Too Much Coffee
I showed this drawing to a friend in another country via live streaming video and she didn’t understand what all the marks were about. I explained it by telling her the title, then she understood completely!
The Choir Sings About Tools
The whole idea behind a choir (or any group in a uniform) is to present the group as being more important than the individual. It’s a powerful way to put something out into the world that wouldn’t be possible as individuals. But yet, without the individuals the group could never exist. Yes, each person here is drawn as an individual in the facial features and hair, but when it came to coloring them I decided it would be more interesting to show what was coming out of their mouths as being what made them individual, instead of their skin color.
Why the tools? Well, I couldn’t really think of a great quote or song lyric at the time and I thought icons of tools would be an interesting challenge to draw.
I Feel So City
The idea for this drawing was observing a woman reading at a coffee shop. I was barely able to get the lines of her face and body in before she left. What I was left with was someone who, without the book in the picture, looked rather depressed. I colored her in bright colors to compensate for that depressed look but still saw it. I then drew the background to match her look, not her color. Adding the word play came to mind at that point.
Yesterday I was leading our running group in warm ups. I mentioned we were going to run a certain stretch of the route at the end and that I wanted them to do a certain thing during that. One of my coaches spoke up and said, “We aren’t doing that stretch of road on the route.” I looked at her map and sure enough, not only were we not doing that part, the part close to it that we were doing was at the beginning of the run, not the end. I had read the map backwards out of habit, thinking we would run clock-wise around the neighborhood as usual instead of counter-clockwise as the map showed. So, that was figured out.
Force of Habit
We finish the warm up and off I go with my lead group. What do I do? I go the wrong way. Even though I read the map, heard the coach say we were supposed to go in a certain direction, it had all flew right out of my mind like so many balloons drifting off into the atmosphere. I just defaulted to what I was used to and went in the clock-wise direction. It was not until I was about a mile into the run that I realized it.
Poof
Of course, it really wasn’t a big deal. We were going to get to the water stop and back to the store perfectly fine. We even passed the groups that had gone the right way as we hit the water stop. But it shows how easy it is for thoughts and ideas to just disappear out of you one’s head and into the ether.
And that is why I try to make a habit of writing things down as often as I can!
In the New Testament of the Christian scriptures there is an Apostle named Thomas. He is known as ‘Doubting Thomas’ because of the story of his not believing the other Apostles when they say that Jesus has come back to life after having been crucified, declared dead and put in a tomb. His response to their amazing story is to say, “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.” At that point they drop the subject and go about their business.
An entire week passes before they are all together in the same room, including Thomas. Jesus appears again and tells Thomas to come look at his hands and put his hand in his side. Thomas does so and declares to Jesus, “My Lord and my God.” Jesus uses the event as a teaching moment for them all by saying, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”
This story has been used for centuries as a way to tell disciples belief should come before evidence. It is a singularly important passage for those extolling faith in the church. There are other moments in Jesus’ story that put forth the message of faith, but none do it with the graphic nature of this story. So, faith is what it’s all about, right? Not necessarily.
Blind Faith vs Absolute Evidence
If absolute and blind faith was of utmost importance then why would Jesus take the time and energy to appear to Thomas? Why wouldn’t he just say, ‘too bad for you, you didn’t believe so out you go!’? He didn’t because he understood that while some might have blind faith not all will. He didn’t come, teach and be an example for just the heaven-minded types. He came for the down-to-earth, grounded-in-reality types too. He understood that some need absolute proof, some need none, and some (probably most) are in between. His response did include that those who didn’t need proof are ‘blessed’, it’s true. But he did not condemn or judge Thomas for not being in that crowd. He came back specifically to give him the proof he desired.
And the church, as a supposed extension of Jesus, should do the same. If someone doesn’t need proof, doesn’t care about evidence, fine. But for those who do want those things in order to believe they should be given every opportunity, with grace and understanding, to pursue them.
Thomas’ History
You can read more about what Thomas did after this story took place here. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Saint-Thomas . However, it should be noted that ironically the evidence is scarce about whether any of these events actually took place.
She went around and around about wearing circles. She didn’t want to be too matchy matchy. Then again she did because her mom liked her more when she was. But she liked her mom less when her mom liked her more which was very confusing to her and made her head hurt.
She went back and forth about wearing the jacket. She liked the color and the buttons were all nice circles and she liked nice circles. Then again she worried about there being too many circles because her boyfriend didn’t like a lot of circles. She didn’t like when he didn’t like what she liked and that made her head hurt.
She went in and out of her closet deciding on whether to wear pants or a skirt. She liked wearing pants but her Grandmother thought it was unseemly. She always wanted to please her Grandmother because her Grandmother gave her money when she pleased her and didn’t give her money when she didn’t. She didn’t like doing what pleased her Grandmother just for money but she needed the money very badly and that made her head hurt.
She went up and down emotionally about what blouse to wear. She had a blue one that was pretty and she had a green one that was strong and she had a red one that was sexy. She liked looking sexy but didn’t like people thinking she was trying to look sexy. She didn’t like looking strong because then people thought she was trying to look strong. She liked looking pretty but didn’t like people thinking she was trying to look pretty. Thinking about what other people thought about her made her head hurt.
She decided on wearing the jacket but couldn’t decide on any of the other items so she just sat there in her jacket thinking around and around and back and forth and in and out and up and down about everything, especially the circles. She eventually got up and took a pill for her hurting head.
