self portrait #2 - photoshopped

I don't normally do much manipulating of my images in Photoshop - just some basic cropping and colour adjustment. But one day I took this drawing (first seen in yesterday's post) and had some fun playing around with Photoshop filters. The end result reminded me of a Kirlian photograph.

self portrait #2

This drawing was done during the period of the green and purple men's faces. I look kind of like a hobbit, but I love the sense of joy and playfulness in my face.

Again, this drawing was made with Crayola washable marker, then sprayed with water to make the ink run.

woman's face #1 (brown)

This drawing was created a couple of years after the previous two, but is in the same style, with the same technique. I used a Crayola washable marker and sprayed the drawing with water to make the ink run. I love the dreamy expression it gives the woman's face.

man's face #2 (green)

Here's another drawing from yesterday's series. I love the laughter in this face. It was drawn with a Crayola washable marker and then sprayed with water to make the ink run.

man's face #1 (purple)

Here's the original drawing from which my last post was created. It was made with Crayola washable markers, and then sprayed with water to make the ink bleed.

man's face #1 (black and white)

This is actually a black and white inkjet printout (on watercolour paper) of a drawing I originally made with Crayola washable markers. The marker ink will run if you wet it, so I made a series of drawings which I sprayed with water to make them look more like watercolour paintings.

This image was a controversial one in my family. My father really disliked it (and others of the same series) because he found the faces macabre for some reason. I was really saddened at the time, because I thought they were some of my most beautiful, sensitive and haunting work.

jupiter #2

The Grandparent replied, "That is the largest planet, named after the kind of the Roman gods, Jupiter. Jupiter is so big, it is more than twice the size of all the other planets put together. It is the fifth planet in our solar system."

Jupiter's face is an inkjet print of an earlier pen and ink drawing of mine. There are scraps of an old poster (the green background) and some gold mylar (Jupiter's crown). The image is coloured with Crayola crayons and black china marker.

glenn gould

I was a huge fan of Glenn Gould in my late twenties. I had just started to learn the piano, and went looking for recordings of Bach keyboard music because I enjoyed the "List A" pieces in my conservatory piano books.

I found something called the Goldberg Variations, and played it on the stereo one night when I was alone in a huge, empty house. Part-way through the recording I was frightened by the sounds of a male voice mumbling nearby. I got up and looked out the windows, peering into the blackness unable to see anything, my heart beating rapidly.

Then I realized that the "mumbling" was coming from the stereo speakers. I later read that Gould always sang as he played, and his singing is audible in all his studio recordings.

The Goldberg Variations (especially Gould's 1981 version) became one of my favorite works, and when my sister got married I suggested she use the quodlibet (variation 30) as her wedding march. (Listen to it here - scroll down to track 31)

I did a series of sketches of Gould performing at the piano, using videotapes of his recording sessions and TV shows. Gould was an eccentric musician, constantly swaying, rocking, and conducting himself with closed eyes as he played. There was something restless and driven about him, and I like this particular drawing because it seems to catch him in a freeze-frame.

self portrait

I remember a drawing instructor once asked my class, "Why are there so many self-portraits in art history?" We tried to think up intellectual reasons - something along the lines of "the self-reflexivity of the artistic process since the renaissance," and were brought up short when the teacher pointed out that the artist is often the cheapest and most convenient model for him- or herself.

I went through a phase where I drew my face, hands or feet incessantly, and after a time I could even recreate my face from memory, without consulting the mirror.

This drawing is created with black markers in varying thicknesses, as well as soft (dark) pencil.