drawings: May 2008 Archives

At one point I thought I had a notebook illness, but instead I have come to realize that these many  books are my assets--the varieties of shape, size, and function push new problems and suggest new solutions.Yesterday I posted circular plate images drawn from rectangular books. Today's square plate paintings are pulled from my 8-inch square notebooks.

My sketchbooks serve as both a private place to experiment and a portable stage to carry and to show-and-tell what I have been fooling around with. The books hold ideas in more or less chronological order. I do get ahead of myself laying in color, but then I go back and add more layers. The books become a collection spot for bits of sketches, idea scraps, color, a stray word or two, and an occasional quote.

Working on a small mailing I decided to use handmade envelopes. These are made from experimental paintings for plate ideas.  Sometimes they are scrap paper that I insert behind the page I'm working on so that I don't get the whole sketchbook gummed up with sloppy paint. These "outside the margin" pages can get really beautiful when my focus is elsewhere.
When the pages get cut up using a template for the envelope shape,  I pay some attention to placement but as the image is folded and glued into a container it crops and combines the image in unforseen ways. As stamps were adhered, Warren and one of Zoe's friends asked, "Did you photograph these? They are really beautiful." So I did that before mailing these paintings out as messengers sneaking handmade art into daily life.

I got inspired to send a postcard. I needed one with an original drawing, so I ended up with ten drawings, one on each of my "tool" postcards.  Here's a couple, the rest are on the "extended" link.