So, yesterday, because I hadn't made any new sketchbooks in time I grabbed what paper I could find in my garage; it had to be good paper so luckily I found some random Arches (I think the highest quality drawing paper) I had cut up for another purpose. No time to sew them together! At first I was sort of glad, larger pieces, no need to ponder what happened if I had something I liked on both sides of a page, no folds, but then...I will finish this thought at the end. I had just gotten an e-mail from my brother, noting the advantages of sketching someone while napping, and the health benefits of napping in general! So, when I got to the park, and found myself looking for someone who was napping, I was so excited to sit near this woman and see that she was really settled in, she really didn't seem interested in moving at all. This was one of those moments when the person seemed all of a piece and I was really into it. But, then, of course, she did move. I liked the drawing anyway, maybe even better because of it's possibility.
So, she sat up. Here she is with her cell phone.
I wanted to publish this today, but need to finish it tomorrow morning... So, now it is tomorrow. This is another person napping, and do you see the pigeon in the background? I found this paper in the folder I keep some cut up paper in, I use the outside of the folder to put my paper on as I am drawing. I like the history of this folder: my husband, a mathematician, got it at a math meeting he went to in Barcelona, Spain, in 1996. He gave a series of lectures and wrote a song called "That's What an Algebraist Should Know" set to the tune of "The Birth of the Blues" which he performed at the end of the last lecture.
I had stained this particular piece of paper during the winter with my favorite blue ink from the set of Windsor-Newton inks I bought in 1978 in Weaverville, CA (Trinity County), and they are bright as ever.
Just as I was walking back to my car I saw this lady's crossed legs and she was another example of someone who appeared to me as a complete shape. I guess I should explain that. What I mean is, all the shapes that I see within her general being seem distinct yet fit together, and the shapes themselves seem very harmonious to me. They all work together, they sort of move together. So I sat down again to sketch her.
To finish about sketchbooks vs separate pieces of paper: when I drew on these individual pieces of paper, it gave me freedom from the attachment (literally) to other drawings, the drawings stood on their own and didn't need to have any relationship to one another. On the other hand my sketchbooks give me a structure and a form to work within, (sometimes a kind of narration, sometimes not) and without it I felt a bit unmoored. Like, are these separate drawings okay on their own? But then, I ask questions about the sketches in the book, do I leave them in there, or get them out, in the same form or in some other form?
