Spiders and Charcoal

These photographs of the drawing I'm working on connect with that earlier post about Time and Light so I'm not going to be even more redundant than I already am. Go back and re-read that post it explains these photographs.

I totally blame my lack of efficiency this past week on a spider. I jumped to conclusions when I thought the tiny spider I killed last Sunday was a brown recluse. I was about to leave the house and get things checked off my to do list but I ended up spending two hours looking up spiders on the internet which freaked me out even more. I wouldn't admit this if I didn't think it seemed so entertaining; I am neurotic enough that I slept with my glasses on and a flashlight and heavy book next to my bed that night. In my defense I was on the hunt for palmetto bugs as well. They like to slip under my back door when it rains. I'm still not use to Florida bugs ick. I put paper towels in front of the bottom of the door. This is a problem though because I'm now afraid to go out on my back porch where my washer and dryer are and I have a pile of laundry that needs to get done. Stupid spider.

On to way more important things. I had some more realizations about my work process. Because I make these charcoal drawings by shading in the value and then smudging parts, it's even harder for me to finish the drawing. I find myself wanting to leave stuff untouched once I shade in values. Every slight change in the drawing is something only I experience and I think that's part of the beauty of the process of these things. It's not the finished product that drives me but the difficulty I have NOT leaving stuff unfinished if that even makes any sense. And all of that becomes part of the overall concepts of these drawings. On a certain level these drawings are simply ABOUT drawing; about the beautiful relationship of charcoal and paper.