St. Luke's Attic

When looking through my drawings of the past several years, I see that I’m coming up short somehow. The drawings are pretty good and I like them, but there is something missing. There’s a vitality that just doesn’t seem to be there. The prints I have been working on, I think, are a way to distance myself from this. The way I make linocuts requires that I make a drawing in pencil, redraw it in pen, carve it all out and then print it. The resulting image is something like three degrees removed from the initial act of drawing. I work very hard to keep a liveliness of line in my prints and I hope that I succeed in doing that! But outside of monoprints or experimental inking methods, it’s very difficult to have true spontaneity in printmaking. Maybe by “spontaneity” I mean to say “vitality”. Those are two different things, I know.

I have finished working on my old drawing book. “The Fisherman” and have begun working on the new book. I’m doing new things here and I think things are going in the right direction. Look over the few images that I have posted and let me know what you think. Are things moving in the right direction? Is this new? Or better? Or is it all the same?

Ol’ Scratch. I suppose this is the devil. I hope it’s obvious that his head is caved in because of the massive crushing it has received. I did no linework in this one at all. I drew it in pencil and then limited it to watercolor after that.

A vulture and a bunch of bird skulls. This one was terrific fun; the only reason I stopped was because I ran out of room! All of the skulls are drawn from life, only the vulture wasn’t.

Drawn from life, I went almost immediately to watercolor and then added lines. That’s not my normal process.