Hands & Pants collab : Many ideas, one outcome

My friend John Casey has been doing a specific collaboration with artists from all over for years that he calls "Hands & Pants" because that's what you get when you participate: a hand and a pair of pants. The rest is up to you. I had the opportunity to do this last April when I received a 8.5" x 11" pen and ink drawing of a hand and pants. With the composition and size, I was sketching, sketching SO many ideas. I went to the several boxes filled with collage pieces and thought, "Oh this would be fun" since I hadn't done a collage piece in a while. Well, the piece I chose, the flower headdress, extended far beyond the paper's edge. After hemming and hawing for a while, dabbling with a few other ideas, I made the (in the back of my mind, a possibly regrettable) decision to cut the being out and adhere it to a watercolor piece that I had been working on around the same time. I think it turned out nicely.

Thank you to John for the experience. The next Hands & Pants show will be in the Fall 2019 at Faultline Studios.

Spirit Flowers

These are small - 5.5"x 5.5" - pen, watercolor, and colored pencil spirit flowers. I do these sort of mindlessly, working out different color pallets/combinations, designs, and just general warming up. I did these at work where I don't have a compass so I used a paperclip and a pushpin.

Nailed

Another heart. I think about this piece now, months' after its completion, and I see the representation of a "total feeling," a complex physical, psychological, and emotional reaction. This was especially agonizing but even from the sketch it felt good to do. In a lot of ways, art works are some sort of picture diary. I'm letting you read pages  fom mine.
In life, we take the hammering because it is unavoidable, and after a certain amount of time one tends to acquire an extensive collection of nails.

Sometimes I feel more of the nails than others. Being sensitive will do that. Also, I find with huge failures, all of those plans, those beautiful dreams, the peaks and valleys, so much energy and work, all became nails driving into one spot, knocking the wind right out of me. And the big ones take longer to hammer in so it's a protracted and shocking process.

Now that I'm an adult, a good portion of the time I'm doing the nailing. Whether it's about perception, expectations, rules (including moral and ethical code), or personal character traits, I'm making most of the decisions. You hold the hammer, life just provides the nails.

Or maybe it's  just me? Wouldn't be the first time that's happened.

Nailed: DeScaibled: 2016

Mixed media gouache, ink, and colored pencil on prepped chip board.