Is this a sketch?

#0755 Is this a sketch?
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Thursdays conversation with Dan. I told him about my experience in Nevada with Shawn & Emily, Shawn looked at my sketches and said: “What is your question?” Dan responded with something I found right and affirming, “You have a question every day, you are questioning all the time.” Yes. So it was hard to answer Shawn. If he had asked “What is your question today?” no problem. Dan & I continued to chat away about decorative and digital, cyberspace, and matters psychological. One question of the day was “what is a sketch?”

Thanks Dan for suggesting this one! It got me started on a roll.

Untitled 1b

#0753 Untitled 1b
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I have just reinstalled Photoshop, it seems I need it to print. Printing is what I have been doing for thre days, or rather not printing, but fiddleing with profiles and software. Troubleshooting. I am so pleased to have reinstalled all my R2400 software, seemed needed after an upgrade of driver did not work. Then found the ICC files for Hahnemuhle paper, needed Photoshop for the use of those. Done, looking good.

In the process, experimenting with Photoshop again and these just poped out. They are very computery, but there is something quite endearing about them too.

Lines

#0750 Lines
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The last abstracts were all with an idea in the back of my mind. Decorative. Taboo. Illustrative, taboo. My current racy enthusiasm for Richard Diebenkorn suffered a moment, a speed bump, when I read the word ‘decorative’ about his art somewhere. His fantastic ocean park works are decorative. If I had the right house they would decorate it well.

So I have been emphasizing the decorative, deliberately confronting my notion, my sense, that being decorative is not on my agenda. I looked at these lines and thought they were quite decorative, but too empty and stark. This led to thinking what if this were a figure? I then returned to some earlier sketches from my life drawing. I made them more decorative? (They are coming up in the next two posts). Id like something with more of this one but with a hint of the nude that is coming up.

Mark Rothko (wikipedia)

“Since my pictures are large, colorful and unframed, and since museum walls are usually immense and formidable, there is the danger that the pictures relate themselves as decorative areas to the walls. This would be a distortion of their meaning, since the pictures are intimate and intense, and are the opposite of what is decorative.”

Meaning

#0747 Meaning
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I am enjoying creating a second image from the first. Not the negative, but one for the exhale.

I tried making meaning in some way of the first image, but saturating it more, letting it be more than it was, but not altered, turned out to be the most fitting.

Later:

I have printed this pair (previous post) on Hahnemuhle Paper in A3 and they look stunning. Image size 212 mm square.

Meaning

#0746 Meaning
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This and the next are in the incantation series:

1. (I am completely) (stopping)
2. (I expect) (nothing)
3. (I am) (doing my work)
4. (I trust) (my resources)
5. (I feel) (supported)
6. (I embrace) (this moment)
7. (I am free) (of the past)
8. (I make) (my meaning)
9. (I am open) (to joy)
10. (I am equal) (to this challenge)
11. (I am) (taking action)
12. (I return) (with strength)

From Eric Maisel’s book Ten Zen Seconds.

I use these! It works for me. Right now # 3 is (I am) (posting in my blog), and I want to get all the completed sketches up, and even more, today’s insights which are buzzing & will go with the next ten or so images!

The next image is part of the duo.