It's been said that the Artist is always drawing herself no matter what the subject matter of the painting is. That's true. The Artist's Personality comes through in everything she does.

Here are two line drawings that I scribbled out quickly - no predraw, no agony. I'm glad I'm the person that I am. I like these much better than the 3rd drawing - where I tried to redraw the girl in a way that I've seen students trying to control a picture to be perfect. (I've even seen some people take out rulers!) Do you see that the pictures show as much about Me as about the person I was drawing?

This is a truth that comes through in everything that we do - not just our Artwork. It's not what happens out there that determines what we're going to do. It's our own Essence that determines what we see, what we choose, and how we act.

Doodling - drawing freely, mindlessly. Sometimes I discover really neat things when I do that. This time, I was surprised by the first picture I'm posting here. It was a mess of stuff that I was drawing with a humongous marker while waiting waiting waiting my turn at the store. What to draw? I drew the mess of stuff that they had next to the cash-register. No predraw. No style choice. Just pen moving. No idea for an illustration. Just doodling.

Doesn't this look like a bold, useable illustration?

I was just daydreaming over my recent pictures - that's what I do. Decided to focus on line-quality. Redrew one of the pictures that I just posted on February 16th. Not that there was anything wrong with the original. Just - what if - Just trying something Different:

That was interesting. So I decided to try it again. But this time I got side-tracked. Ended up redoing one of those February 16th Caricatures - which distracted me from studying Line Quality:

Makes me wonder - Do we ever really change?

The Answer is Yes! But it's not an overnight thing - not usually something like - "Now I'm going to draw like This." No. It's a gradual thing. As we try new things, as we think new ideas, as we practice. We don't see immediate Change any more than we can see a baby grow from one day to the next. But one day, we recognize that that baby is a lady. And one day we recognize that our Artwork is Really Good!

Maybe I don't have enough deadlines or something. But I just spent my time dreaming about a word that I wrote on one of the Caricatures that I posted yesterday.

First, I was thinking that it would have been better if I predrew the letters bfore inking. It's always a toss of the coin during party-work - to predraw or not to predraw. So here I tried it again:

Eh. A hodgepodge. Would it be better if I decided ahead of time whether twould be AnglesAnglesAngles or gloppy curves?

That took too much thinking to be done in a Party situation. Oh well, Party Art is immediate. Fast and in the moment. The Artist has to let people really see her - unedited and raw.

But there are other options. Curly writing, of course, but that isn't usually wanted on Boy's Pictures. Calligraphy. I think that one of the first considerations should be Spacing. The Graffiti stuff I just posted above is tight. Perhaps I could use expanded simple letters sometimes:

Or not playing with Spacing at all. Not squashed together, and not expanded out. How about Speed and Bravado:

It's all good. Then I got to designing something that Looks like the meaning of the word? With Line-Quality:

That doesn't look like the meaning of the word. But I feel finished - Don't feel like working on it any more. Just now.