Scraps & Jam

What is art? I've decided it's mostly escapism... at least for me. It's either escaping TO someplace or escaping FROM someplace.

It's creating pictures and stories to escape from the world I'm in... or it's drawing or painting a picture of a place I'd want to escape to.
Imagination is the band-aid of comfort in a painful world of reality.

I suppose the proof that this is so is to just see how much more work I seem to get done the miserabler things are in my 'real' life. Just a little imagination can smooth a bit of jam on the hard burnt toast that day to day reality hands out.

Obviously it's easy to draw the conclusion from all this introspection that the artist must be spoiled, precious, overly sensitive... a whiner, a hopeless dreamer and afraid of the real world. To all of which charges I plead guilty.

But enough philosophy!



Here's some of the new books I'm working on. Looks just like a pile of scraps doesn't it? That's because it IS just a pile of scraps. This is how I luv to work... just drawing bits and pieces... at a tiny size or any size I like. I just draw what I feel compelled to draw... whatever feels fun and right to draw. Later on I'll patch it all together effortlessly and effectively in Photoshop and InDesign.

And the best part of working like this is I can ride my bike up to a cafe and hang out and draw away for hours and hours. Escaping the penitentiary of the old studio every now and then feels like a working vacation... believe me I already spend enough time in that room. Happiness is an empty cafeteria table by the window... with a pile of blank tissue paper to draw on, a 2B pencil, eraser and a good book. Oh... and a cup of tea. The hours are filled with the joy of creativity.

Turns out I get to go the ALA midwinter meeting here in Seattle next week! That ought to be a nice day out from the padded cell. I've never been to one of these book events, as they are rarely ever held in Seattle. What fun!