As drawing has become more important in my life it seems only natural to ask myself why? So I did so: "Why," I said to myself, "has drawing become so important in your life?"
"I'm glad you asked me that," I responded. "I think there are a couple of threads in my life that have come together over the past decade."
"That's very interesting," I said to myself. "Would you like to tell me about them?"
"Well, if you have the time," I responded.
"What is time to us?" I joked, "There's only the two of us here!"
"Then go on," I said.
And I did.
First is the doodling. I have done it all my life. Early, it was pencil lines on menus, church programs, things like that. Later in school, doodles often took over the margins of my notebooks. But it wasn't about not paying attention. It was rather that somehow the act of doodling allowed me to actually concentrate - focusing on the doodles seemed to make it easier to make order out of the lectures.
"I still have dozens of the notebooks. Would you like to see them?" I asked.
"Let's save that for another time," I responded. "You mentioned another thread?"
"Ah, yes. I spent more than forty years teaching university courses, all of which had something to do with the media and its impact on society."
"Interesting."
"Initially, yes, certainly," I allowed. "But when you spend 40 years concentrating on the terrible things the media show us. The deceitful, violent, uncaring ways human beings treat each other - with only an occasional human 'human interest' piece thrown in, it can kind of bum you out."
"I see," I said. "So what did you do?"
"I began to treat my doodling more seriously."
"Go on."
"I retreated - in my drawings - into a world that avoided the mayhem on the screens. A world I created on paper - often 24 x 20 inches. It is probably about the illusion of control. Something we have forfeited for the convenience of an interconnected digital world. Going "off the grid" - if it is even possible - would demand a set of survival skills and level of personal fitness incredibly rare, if not unique in the softer inhabitants of the First World hi-tech world I inhabit. So I make up a nicer world on paper. One I can control."
"Would you show me those drawings?"
"There are quite a few of them." I hesitated.
"Oh, go on. As you said, 'It's just the two of us."
So i did.
I guess if I had to create some sort of logical presentation I would skip a chronoligical scheme and go for categories: Like, faces, places, flowers, bottles, and "other things." That would cover most of it.
So lets start with Faces:
I call this guy Gandalf - drawn and painted in Photoshop
Angry Dude - Marker on paper
Masque - Marker on Paper
Apple of My Eye - Drawn and painted in Photoshop
Elf Self - Drawn and painted in Photoshop
Four Faces - Marker on paper
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