The Push and Pull of It

Morning espresso in hand, I make the first image of a crow.  The second quickly follows and gives me an idea that I try with the third.  And so it goes until I run out of ideas or the hour ends.   Then, up on the whiteboard they go.  That’s it.

After a couple of days of walking by them, I’m ready to ask, what did I get?  I take pictures and throw the jpegs into a mind map (the app Mindnode) to catch my thoughts about them and ideas for what to try next.

This is the push and pull of media exploration.

This week, it's about frottage — textures made by rubbing.  I work with 18” x 24” Pacon bright white paper and charcoal.

Plenty of textures to gather from my immediate surroundings — the tiles in the bathroom, the carpet, rocks on the fireplace, a crow feather, and a placemat.

For a few pictures, I sketched an image on the paper first and then gathered the textures. For others, I drew right on top of the texture.  The latter led to our surprised man with the gawking crow.

Several stimulated ideas for possible compositions to work on later.

A closer look.

What else can I do with this?  That's a straightforward enough question.

From a few weeks back — Escape from the Laboratory.  The answer was right on my easel, in the afternoon light coming through the window.

The one from this week is percolating on my iPhone home page.