This past month, I took an experimental drawing class at Kala with Theadora Varnay Jones. Her teaching included drawing on transparent substrates like Yupo, Duralar, Vellum, and Plexiglass, using dry pigments, graphite powder, and rubbings. The transparent papers were a little intimidating for me and I would need to plan better before using next time, but the drawing with dry pigments and rubbings felt like something I could do. The above was initially done with rubbings from Kala's windows and a ladder. I then went in with these lovely dry pigments to add color and definition. This piece doesn't have a name and I welcome suggestions.
This piece was also done in Theadora's class. It was my first exploration with dry pigment. She had us mask areas with Avery labels and tape and then apply the pigment. Most of Theadora's colors were warms. When I got this home, I used jacquard dye powder for the blue field you see on the left.
THE BIG STUPID: Some of you know this is my busiest time of year. It's been a little busier than normal and I had to deal with some really stupid things. I've decided to appreciate the small stupid and work on the big stupid. My personal big stupids I'll save for another blog post, but here's some larger big stupids that you might like to read.
1. An indigenous grandfather and his 12 year old granddaughter were handcuffed and questioned by police in Vancouver. They're crime - simply opening a bank account while indigenous. Read story here. It's one of those stories where you hope the bank employee receives some serious counseling on race.
2. The Pentagon made $35 trillion in accounting adjustments last year alone -- a total that’s larger than the entire U.S. economy and underscores the Defense Department’s continuing difficulty in balancing its books. Read story here. That $35 trillion could pay for some super nice things like healthcare for every US resident, tertiary education, childcare, etc. Instead our tax dollars are some write-off for the largest funded government agency. Weirdly enough, one of my bookkeeping dream jobs is an audit of the pentagon.
3. Re-posting this from Alisa Golden. Other than this website, I don't use social media. (Ok, there's LinkedIn, but that's for bookkeeping.) There's lots of reasons - mainly the time suck spent in front of another screen. But, then there's this pervasive neediness that social media unrealistically tries to fill. It's just not interesting to me. As a 9 year old once said, "Why would you use Facebook when you can hang out with real people?" Yeah, I'd rather do that and get feed back from real people. You may argue that his falls into the small stupid category, but I'm calling it big because it seems to be everywhere and all at once.
& I have been researching, drawing initial sketches and working on my graphic novel. It's in progress. Here's something fun to make you laugh and wonder...
