Female Figure, Part 2

This is the second of a series from one pose (same pose as previous blog entry)- a pose that at the time seemed like it would make a pretty natural painting, there was sort of a dignity to it, and a twist. Here thigh seems enormous in this picture, I can't account for it.

I am home tonight from Tuesday drawing, with a blister on my middle right finger from rubbing charcoal into drawings, and 3 drawings of a male figure from Lowell that seem promising. I am using this yellow tagboard, which has this peculiar way it stains after you rub and erase it too much, and tonight i also used a better paper that i bought at ben franklin, of all places, two for one, in a stack next to these furry worms that you can make go through a tube or climb up your arm, and it seems great, just subtly better than cheap tagboard. it still stains, but it seems to make a stronger line or something- there's more tooth I guess.

Mike Ball and I went drawing and ate peanut butter sandwiches and listened to Carl Sandburg, reading The People Yes and tried to listen to a minute of John Ashbury but i had to shake the ipod to shuffle it as i had no idea what he was talking about. But Carl, he's great, and he's always been my favorite and i love how he reads in his lilt and sing-song way. I recall discovering him on tape at the Evergreen State College Library and he's really the first poet i ever really was blown away by, really moved by, as his poems have a strangeness and a melancholy to them that seems deep.

I don't think id really go drawing unless someone went with me. I go each week with sort of the same fellows that ive been going with for 10 years, never anyone new really, we just hang in there. Its such a dying art, or it feels that way, it may be past its novelty stage. i cant really say what it is that people find so fascinating in it, especially if you're just starting out, or doing it to relax. I don't find it relaxing, i want to make something really great someday, so i get frantic about it, and bummed when something i think is pretty good looks pretty bad the next day. Or the next year.