And sometimes I stay up past midnight to finish a blue hawk. The Talking Heads fill my headphones and smiles ensue.
Penciled out on a 1’x2′ piece of 1/8″ plywood.
Rendered in pen in just under three hours.
Mixing fluid acrylic blue with a matte medium and a slo-dri fluid retarder. Applied to the wood with scraps of an old t-shirt.
“She has the smoke in her eyes…”
Laying out the shapes on the plywood.
Having fun with the large piece of scrap plywood I picked up from the hardware store down the street. It was thin enough to cut with a few passes with a box cutter. I cut it into three pieces. the first piece can be found under my previously shared abstract face drawing. This one is the second. I am considering options for the third.
The teeth reminded me of drawing the feathers on my hawks.
I did the pencil for the dinosaur last night before I went to bed. Tonight I got home from work, cooked a hamburger and sat down with the headphones on. I listened to some live concerts by Umphrey’s McGee. A really great band out of Chicago.
These Micron pens are about toasted now. It’s the third large drawing on plywood I’ve done with them. The coarseness of the wood isn’t very kind to the tip of the pen. A bike ride to the art store in the morning before a trip into the hills on the mountain bike is in order.
Raptor or Tyrannosaur I’m not certain but it was fun to assemble piece by piece.
The first study, to figure if I could even spell the word Grateful with pen drawn feathers.
Reminding me to go searching for the sound. To chase after the ever elusive muse.
The pen study.
The pencil hawk laid out with the letters and all.
To find the beauty in tragedy, and the strength to continue through.
The bird as it flies from out of the gates of my imagination.
To laugh my past away, and to make it one more day.
Robert Hunter’s lyrics for the Grateful Dead are a deep well of inspiration for so many.
Myself thoroughly included.
“I’ve been gambling here abouts
for ten good solid years
If I told you all that went down
it would burn off both your ears…” -Robert Hunter
I laid out another life size hawk in pencil on plywood. Then I saw this tree in my head and heard The Grateful Dead coming through the branches. I tell you if I had a dime for every time that happened I’d own the bank.
I wish I could take you to where I was standing. The dirt under my shoes where I stood. Head tilted back. staring up at an open sky watching a single hawk fly.
Imaginations turned it into more, as imaginations will do.
Feathers are brushstrokes on the sky and I always forget to look at it.
What was the color?
I liken it to my consistent failure at remembering names of people I’ve just met.
“Althea? My name is Ben, It’s very nice to meet you…”
We create and destroy. I walked to the bookstore at dusk. Everybody I passed had their eyes on a screen. Disconnected. It brought me back to an afternoon.
She was putting her coat on in the hallway, annoyed by something but no intent to share with me what was the root. It was February and snowing. I didn’t speak a word and she walked out every door. All I could do was turn the blinds.
Tonight walking home from the bookstore, my eyes trapped by the pages of the book I had found. A series of photographs of Barn Owls, I walked right into a telephone pole. Hard enough to drop the book and laugh out loud. I hope somebody saw that and got a laugh too. We owe the earth that much maybe. To drop your book to the ground and laugh.
I’ve been laying out more drawings on 1/8″ craft plywood. A Red-shouldered Hawk and a Zone-tailed Hawk.
Not new subject species here but a real fine thing to put to page so why on earth or sky not?
farnco illustrations 