July 8, 2009
Still working on more patina washes, or, starter pictures, if you will:

I think the biggest thing I've learned on this quest for 10,000 bad drawings, is that to achieve almost any effect, there is an opposite way from the most logical, or obvious one. In this case I wanted an early evening dusky effect on the desert and after I laid in the sky and the pinkish foreground I experimented with my fan brush and brought some of the sky color (which was still wet) down into the mountains. It was too strong, so I took a paper towel and rubbed it out, threw the painting down on the floor, and, while waiting for it to dry, I started another patina painting:

But when I came back to the original twilight piece I noticed that when it dried it gave off a very subtle effect of twilight with the distant mountains blending into the sky as distant mountains tend to do at twilight! This is called a happy accident, and this is an effect I would never have achieved if I hadn't made a mistake. Ha.

Perhaps the best way to document my artistic improvement is to go back to the beginning. Not the beginning of this quest, no, wayyyyyyy back, to, say 1964:

Truly Trudy Bad

Fellow Mucous classmate, Trudy (Peart) Burrus sent me this drawing I allegedly sketched in Mr. Wallace's Civics Class at Mohave County Union High School in 1964. (yes, that's allegedly Trudy at left) If you can't read the writing on the trophy it says: "Brown Nose Champ 1964-65, 1st Place." Mr. Wallace didn't much like me and the feeling was mutual, but he sure liked the cute girls in the first row, which included Trudy and the second place trophy winner, at right, Jan Prefontaine. Not a bad likeness of Mr. Wallace, but the hands and feet are Platypus City! Typical juvenile attempt. As usual, the best thing in the drawing is something totally insignificant: his pocket protector, which is decent.

"In order for the artist to have a world to express he must first be situated in this world, oppressed or oppressing, resigned or rebellious, a man among men."
—Simone de Beauvoir, "The Ethics of Ambiguity"