gray smudges on knuckles

The country drive last Sunday began "the stir........"  
Monday after running errands, I stopped by Lincoln Lakes "to stand ...... and be. listen. feel the sharp air on my face. silent, hoping for a response."
I began a checklist. Dug out my padded overalls. Would my body still fit in them?? Pulled the heavy backpack with paints and supplies out of storage.
Tuesday I checked off the overalls. It was a squeeze with my tummy, but I fit. Went out with the hand saw and for my new past time, hand sawing tree trunks that lie out in the yard. Each in various stages of being cut. It is more of an exercise for me to do, rather than a task to accomplish. An exertion to keep my mind sharp.
Wednesday the paint kit was moved into the cab. The easel in the back. For a time to come.
Friday the sun remained out long enough for me to "go look. pull out the backpack, set up the easel, hunt and locate the bungee cords. telescope the legs out. stand and observe. locate the graphite.. and sketch."

Orange road cones are stationed around me as I draw from the creek bridge on South Ely Street. Sunshine. Nip in the air. Clear sky. November. And the promise of an overcast afternoon. ... An hour passes. I regard the creek on the west side of the bridge. Another day for that, another time.

Today it goes well. How will my body respond tomorrow? ...to this stretching and lifting, bending and moving, climbing up and down out of the cab. Another check off the list, taking down the easel, carrying supplies back into the cab, lifting, placing. Gathering the cones. Off down the street.

  
Ely street meets West Lincoln Street and I stop by a green field with trees aflutter and a house nestled beneath its boughs. At last I find a fallen branch and mark the place I want to come back to. No sketch. Jotted thoughts on a paper squatch in my pocket to remember by.

On the shore the easel and drawing pad secured with bungee cord around back. All set.
A sullen monument of bleached tree ascends to my right. A far tree bank across the lake. Two houses peeking out from behind way up there. The breeze cold, the sunshine bright, the sky still clear blue. Bright yellow green algae. This place I hope to return to and paint.
Less than an hour I am satisfied.

Piling all into the cab. Easel hoisted. Graphite retired. The smudges removed with a clean moist baby wipe towel. I return home. My eyes roam through the passing tree trunks to backyards and houses tucked away in the wood. The spark bursts. Houses tucked away in the wood. A concept to come back to.

Here, I have finished posting the photos and typing the text, and the weather report proves to be true. The clouds have rolled in and the sunshine has left.

Thanks for reading it. It's time for lunch.

North central Missouri, central United States, North America, planet earth.


 

fresh powder

     It's cold outside. Fresh white powder is everywhere. Dressed in my gray parka over Orscheln coveralls, I stand on the hillside of the city of Carrollton, the south end that slopes down down to the flat bottoms, and further out across fields to a distant unseen Missouri River. The stillness of January and winter. Sketchpad gripped close, this pencil describes the plume of smoke from the chimney in the lower yard just ahead.

      I slip into my car to bring back circulation and warmth to these hands and cold feet in boots. The engine purrs. Fifteen minutes pass. That's enough. Gloves on, I'm outside puffing steam. The drawing resumes.

     The year is 2013. Clay Street offers rooftops and pristine yards under snow.

      This city has variety, neighborhoods clustered, with woods winding through the city limits and ponds and hills. Farmland on the edge of town, appears in town for a city block, if your are on the east side of this village, our hamlet. Our population is just under four thousand residents (not including chickens or dogs).

      Houses peek out behind barren branches, just off South Ely Street before it meets West Lincoln Street.

       In that same locale, I can look up and see the sun trying to burn through the winter haze. A silvery disk, the light traces of graphite on white paper.

       Hints of dried brush, lilting smoke, tracks in the snow, and sled trails. The blue sky is described as darkness with this 6B lead pencil.

      What I observe with clear sight, what might have been a point-and-click photograph, is now living-reminders-of-what-I-am-about. Not a photograph-maker like my father. For me, image-making BEGINS when I interpret and exclude and include and make marks on white paper, and decide which elements I want to keep. A store of locations, pinpointed on my map, my sketchpad. The haze in the air, which I cannot draw like a photograph, becomes vague, wispy, incomplete, yet sufficient. Yes. This is what makes a drawing a "drawing." An organized jumble of abstract lines and scuffs. A full record that I can always go back to and savor with my eyes.

      I WORK HARD on this limb and trunk. A balance of description and silhouette. Some of it graphic and bold. Some of it a shell and empty. Poetic. And this time it worked!! I pulled it off. (Even a whole year later, when it was carved onto a rubber linoleum block with razor blades and sharp gouges, inked black with a brayer, squeezed tight onto flat paper-- that limb still held the poetry-- exactly what I wanted to remember of this day, Friday afternoon January third.)

      It was a year from now that the drawing was turned into rigid black and white. Let me tell you what I learned from that. Carved lines cannot be light grey and wispy like a drawing unless the ink applied is faint light grey. I knew that going in. This is why I am so pleased with the composition of the "limb over houses in the snow" that I drew today. I made this composition with my own hand. It is mine.

      My fingers are freezing. The downtown shops poise on a mountain over there. Stiff grass sticks out of the snow by my boots. Traces of snow activity leftover from Christmas meander across the vacant lot below my gaze. There are sledding trails, snowmobile ruts, footprints, and the lonely houses huddled along West Lincoln Street, down towards the Lincoln Lake. The winding tree rows, the crisp Midwest chill. "Gee, it's cold out here!!"
     Back in my idling car there is an apple, the raisins and the carrots I've packed to munch on. Yesterday I was out drawing. Tomorrow I will be doing the same. But for now, while I munch and swallow, I am thinking where to drive to next. Out by the Oakhill cemetary, just a few block from here? Or up on the east side, where I can look over rooftops, an old barn, a ridge of trees to the house rows on Third Street that disappear up by the Adams Elementary School and skyline of church steeples?

scenery of carrollton, missouri

Ahh.....summer break. Looking to establish my routine as fast as I can. Woodcuts, yes. Drawing, yes. Painting, we'll see. And continued exercise, whether pedalling my bike on blacktop Hwy B or walking laps side to side at the Senior Center or bouncing on my family trampoline, yes, yes, and yes.

So, here is a recent one minute pan of nature just outside of my town, west of Carrollton.

 

Leafy trees, creek bed, sunlit clouds, grave rural road.

It's time to get those pencil studies rolling.

field near Missouri river, graphite on 12 x 9 drawing paper

tree and village hills, graphite on 12 x 9 drawing paper

 

umber over birch panel

It was March snow in mid-Missouri.

Thirteen inches out our back door, as shown by the ruler above. Inside the living room it was warm. Work was progressing.

 

 

 Grain of 12 by 12 inch birch wood panel (above)

 

Thin umber wash over birch panel makes cuts easier to see.
Graphite marks made on block. Converting wash splotches in three color study into pencil. Six minutes.

 

 Drawing on block. Two minutes.


Elegant curls.

Cuts begin using Speedball linocut tool. Four minutes.


Convert this to pencil marks, please.


Draw the map. Two minutes.

Living room work bench.

his answer

Shouts of joy resound in my tent. He did it.

The Lord has done mighty acts. He answered me.

Thus, pens song writer and poet David, son of Jesse.

The day the dragon wind howled in my ears,

surrounded by juicy mulberries,

just west of the Floyd Levee, off blacktop B,

this is the information I came home with.

 My dream was to capture

the branches going up up up above my head,

 yeah, imagine this, on a horizontal canvas.
Double click on image to enlarge.
(15"h x 24"w on stretched canvas)

The dream took shape

when I rendered an abstract on square paper.

(18 x 18 inches)

It was during the workouts

 in the water and

 the sauna heat,

the waiting, the pausing,

the resting of the mind,

that He brought it to me.

The square graphite came next.

(12 x 12 inches)

There are too many

changes that He granted,

praise to His name, His majestic name.

So grateful this image came to be.

The desire of my heart,

placed within by His intention

bestowed by His affection.

Harder still would be 

the converting

of graphite swiggles

 into solid black shapes.

Inked linoleum block
 (twelve inches square)
Double click on images to see enlarged.

Trial proof

Woodcuts and paintings
Now on display
lower level of Burkholder Project
Lincoln, Nebraska
August 3-28