Week 3: Sketchbook
Most my artwork of the last 10 years falls into this genre so it was no problem coming up with an idea for a class sample drawing. I was looking forward to doing this assignment, completely prepared. At the very last minute, I mean the nanosecond before putting pastel to paper, I changed my mind, inspired by the paper size. I love drawing on Sennelier pastel card but the largest available size is 19 x 26″. I felt restricted by the small paper. It reminded me of the laptop I inherited which is a standard sized laptop but feels like being in a doll house compared to my big screen, wireless mansion of a desktop. Furthermore the laptop was already loaded with MS Vista: windows popping open, scroll bars, some sort of MS designers gone mad translucency thing that has to be seen to be believed, I mean, totally anathema to anyone who knows how to micromanage their computer experience. Ubuntu, BSD, Perl anyone?
Since 2001 I have grown ficus retusa bonsai over circuit boards, real plants grown over real pieces of circuit board, and made the ceramic containers for them. Right before I started the drawing, I attempted to email an image of my bonsai using the laptop. Who knows what happened. The image broke into multiple windows on the laptop screen, probably nervous pastel coated fingers on that itty bitty fingerpad and the whole mess looked like….well, a potential drawing. With the thought that it would be easier to create a program for sending images than using someone else’s idea of an image sending program, I added a bit of my own Perl code, a program that admittedly I never got to work correctly, digitally speaking, but has its uses as a decorative element. The best laid plans and all that.