Girl on the Floor

Girl on the Floor. Laura is from Budapest, but we met in the Outer Banks of North Carolina (you may recall that I once called the Netherlands my European Outer Banks. But I digress...). It was 2003. But, I didn't tell Laura that I had already drawn in this style way back in 1996. I didn't even realize it myself until I was flipping through some old sketchbooks. If you look closely enough, you can see a painting of Laura lining the wall's of Detroit Transit Railroads rehearsal studio.

Self Portrait, Grid-based

Self Portrait, Grid-based. Infatuated with the grid, with the thought that overt geometrical relationships could so readily expose themselves with direct observation, I sat down at my drawing table and began to look into a mirror. It was 2003, but I can't remember which season. I do remember, however, that I was well-seeped in my 'pixlizarion' phase... and, I also remember the desk upon which I was drawing. Used as a bargaining ship to secure the big room in our newly acquired three-bedroom on the Boulevard, I never really used it for more than storing scattered piles of paper. In fact, I can only remember doing three drawings on the table. Mostly, I just sit on the floor when I paint or draw, which makes things much more intimate...

A Thinking Man

A Thinking Man. A nude male, perhaps my least favorite thing to draw... Tonight however, it's happening again. The London Life Drawing Society is letting a male writer from Maxim magazine pose so that he can write a story. I'm going, just in case they take pictures of the crowd... The price? I'll be forced to draw a naked man. Ugh. "The Thinking Man" came from sneaking into alumni sessions at VCU, sometime back in 2003. I used it as the template for a painting ("Four Men Facing Left"), which is why you can see bits of colored lines scattered somewhat randomly about the drawing...

Ocean Waves I

Ocean Waves I. It was just before the new year, late 2003. I was in Nags Head, North Carolina and had just re-discovered colored pens. This drawing of the ocean waves crashing on the shore pre-dates my other pen and line drawings by a good two-and-a-half years... Something about the Outer Banks of North Carolina makes me relax as soon as I cross the bridge...

Reclining Woman II

Once I had the overall form taken care of (see "Reclining Woman I"), I began to look for relationships that were more implied than overt. Here, the geometry of light was what was speaking to me. In a few years, I would extend this idea in my Particle series. These two drawings were done on the same night, about ten minutes apart...

Reclining Woman I

In the spring of 2003, I had been sneaking into alumni life drawing sessions at Virginia Commonwealth University for a few months. You know, I don't think that it was absolutely necessary to be an alumni from their art school, but then again, I never checked. Anyway, it's more fun to pretend like it was a clandestine operation... In this first drawing, I was trying to get a feel for the more "realistic" form of the model, the one easist to see...