Category: illo

So I’m studying the Blues. Strictly armchair. I’d often read that the Blues were important to modern music, but I couldn’t _hear_ how they were important. So I started listening to old Blues, to try to suss out the bits that had filtered down. I couldn’t find them. See, I was looking for tiny details, focusing on small parts of the sound– focusing so close on the bark of a tree that the forest was completely lost to me. It wasn’t until I started trying to play them that I began to see.

There would be no country music without the Blues. There would be no rock. No jazz. Even the various electronic genres owe a debt to the Blues. All good modern music (‘good’ in my opinion, of course) to come from America flows directly from the Blues. Because the Blues were where African aesthetics of rhythm were joined with European aesthetics of harmony. This is a big deal to me.

here are some quick sketches of a couple of my favorites thus far:

Robert Johnson

‘Mississipi’ Joe Callicott

John Lee Hooker

somewhere around here I’ve got drawings of R.L. Burnside and T-Model Ford as well. Posts ’em when I finds ’em.

I consider this to be another in my Kali series– but my more recent Kalis seem to have less traditional imagery, and more of my own. Does this mean they shouldn’t be called Kalis anymore? Maybe. But I’ll keep calling them that anyway. This one I have mixed feelings about. I’m embarrassed I didn’t ‘play up’ the wonky drawing, instead I tried to hide what was wrong. Since my own approach seems very much to involve mistakes and flaws as central elements, it’s a bit antithetical (did I use that word right?) to try to cover up my problems. But I just loooove the color. Oh yeah baby.

So I skipped a week or two. Get over it. I was going to skip this one as well, til a friend’s sketches for the theme pointed out to me that I was in a rut, and the whole point of doing IF was to try new things. :) How soon we forget.

The theme this time is summer. Didn’t feel like illustrating it, so I worked on a drawing of a summer memory– when I was in HS I worked as a swim instructor & coach during the summers. Every afternoon at 3:30 the pool was empty til 4 when the team I coached would arrive for practice. Empty, that is, except for me. I’d just float around the diving end of the tank, halfway between the surface and the bottom, watching my shadow on the below.

Probably the most peaceful times in my life. I still miss that.

This one might need some explaining. Computers do just fine with digital thinking. A bit is either 1 or 0, on or off, black or white. What’s great for computers isn’t so great for us humans. Humans that think digitally are dangerous beings– those who are confident that they are good and right do the most unspeakable things. It’s that kind of digital that I chose to illustrate.

IF’s theme this week is Envy. This is a much better theme than last week– too good, in fact. I’ve had the opposite problem from last week, when I had trouble coming up with something worth drawing. Now there’s too many ideas. This is a theme I’ve dealt with before in previous paintings, so I tried to avoid using elements from earlier solutions.

I had trouble coming up with a simple illustration of “Aquatic” that wasn’t just a “dictionary figure”– that is, an aquatic noun.

Ever hear of it? It’s here. Their welcome describes it better than I want to. It’s something I’ve been doing to keep ahold of my illustration skills– not my “make pretty pictures” skills, but rather the “make pretty pictures that illuminate a topic” ones. I haven’t posted my solutions there for a few reasons. I haven’t wanted to attract attention to my derelict of a website, for one. There’s a very wide range of technical skill displayed at IF, but a narrower range of solutions…

I prefer illustrations that bring something new to the table– that are not simply pictures of a noun, like a diagram in a dictionary. A good illustration should help the viewer see a side of the topic that was previously hidden to them– it should illuminate. You’ll find fewer of these at IF, probably because a good number of the participants are amateurs– just drawing for fun. I’m not knocking them and their pictures; more power to them, in fact. They’re just working at a different part of the curve.

There are some excellent participants as well– but only a handful of them. Denis Goulet, par example, has an excellent sense of humor.

The great thing about IF is that you get a hundred or more people presenting their solution– and my goal is to be different from all of them. From this POV it’s an excellent exercise.

Here’s links to my previous IF solutions:
Alone
Reinvent
Daring
Mischief
Nourishment