seeing what isn't there

Two down, one to go! Woo hoo! Yup, that means I finished the drawing tonight. :-) I totally love it. Look for it after Christmas....

This drawing was an example of what I refer to as "seeing what isn't there." Thankfully I was given a LOT of reference photos to work from, which was a saving grace because the pic that had the best pose was very very small, partially obscured by something else, and in shadow. It's a strange process, a strange feeling, something I can't really explain, but even though at first sometimes I look at these things and think "I can't possibly work with that" after a little while it's like I'm drawing what I can't actually see but know should be there. It's like this whole other level of perception. And that probably makes me sound like a weirdo so I'll just quit while I'm ahead since you can't see what I'm talking about anyway. ;-)

It rained a bunch. It's cold. It's muddy.

I'd started working on the scrim image. I thought I'd done the image transfer properly but part of it didn't come out, and by the time I realized that I'd already removed the paper printout from the surface. Bleh! So I'm sanding and polishing it down and will redo the transfer. Live and learn. I think this is a hard piece of ivory. That's okay. This is a VERY complex piece with a lot of lines (which will all be done with dots, whee).

That's all I got. I think I'll go to bed. Before midnight, what a concept!