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Sometimes my drawings are just weird.
Here is my process of creating the napkins. Each morning I start with
a quote. I think about the day before or that morning and see if there
is a particular idea that comes to mind. Then I go looking for some
good quotes about that idea, either in the many quote books I have
or online. Sometimes I make the quote up, but not too often.
After I write the quote on the napkin, then I think about what the drawing
might be. I don’t take a long time with that decision, since I originally was
drawing these while I was making lunches for my daughters and had to work
fast.
I usually trust that I will come up with something interesting and just go for it.
But trusting your mind, your eye, your choices, also means you are sort of
walking a high wire. You have committed to do this thing and even if half way
across a big wind blows, you still need to finish. Sometimes my ‘big wind’ is a
odd color choice, or a pretty bizarre creature or person I have drawn into the napkin.
I like the challenge of figuring out how to make something work within the
limits of that odd thing I have in the drawing already. In this case the idea
of having a mind stretched was obviously the starting point. But I didn’t
want a bald person so I chose to have the hair stretched out to signify the
mind being stretched. B the funny hand/bird lips/sucking stretching things
on either side were a bit of a mess. Then I added the volcanoes, which I
always like as signifyers of something momentous and powerful. But the lava
turned out to be sort of confusing and dark, obscuring the volcanoes a bit
more than I wanted it to. I just kept going until I felt it looked interesting
and stimulating to the eye.
Sometimes this process can lead to beautiful images, and sometimes to
very strange images and sometimes to failed but interesting images. I am
not sure if this one is in the 2nd or 3rd category, but it doesn’t seem to
belong in the 1st, as best I can tell.
What do you think?
“A man’s mind, stretched by a new idea, never goes back to its original dimensions.” – Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. – USA, Supreme Court Justice, 1841-1935