[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Here are the steps I use to create an architectural image for a client. They are the same steps for drawing/painting any urban environment.

[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_single_image media=”3183″ media_width_percent=”100″][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_single_image media=”3185″ media_width_percent=”100″][vc_column_text]Reference photo. Second attempt ( first was a bad angle) A challenging subject… what to leave and what to cut?[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_single_image media=”3186″ media_width_percent=”100″][vc_column_text]First Sketches (later colored with prismacolor pencils for painting reference) Note non-straight lines, forced perspective, opening and closing doors, moving cars. Aesthetics trump reality![/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_single_image media=”3187″ media_width_percent=”100″][vc_column_text]Final pencil drawing. Traced with light box onto watercolor paper.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_single_image media=”3188″ media_width_percent=”100″][vc_column_text]Aborted ink drawing. Line of far building’s roof sagged too much. I draw freehand and want “organic” lines- that one was a bit TOO organic[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_single_image media=”3189″ media_width_percent=”100″][vc_column_text]Finished ink drawing with crosshatch shading and photoshop clean-up. Client will use this version in some applications.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_single_image media=”3190″ media_width_percent=”100″][vc_column_text]Aborted ink drawing used as color test.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_single_image media=”3191″ media_width_percent=”100″][vc_column_text]Final watercolor. Note deeper contrasts and slight changes in this drawing.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″][/vc_column][/vc_row]

Just reading Anne Lamott’s “Bird by Bird” and laughing out loud at some of her drolleries. It struck me how marvelous to put something out in the world that can cause physical pleasure twenty years after you laid it down. How some guy you’ll never know in North Carolina is At This Moment appreciating your voice. Then I thought of Shakespeare, who is – as you probably know – long dead. The immense joy his brief years of work have brought, long beyond his knowing or caring. (He, in all probability, cared most about the day’s receipts in the cashbox. But maybe, hopefully, not.)

Of course, this applies to other media. Crying along with Patsy Klein as she admits, “She’s Got You”; shaking your head in amazement at Vermeer’s brushwork in “Girl with the Pearl,” basking in the beauty and originality of Marlon Brando in “Streetcar Named Desire.”  And it is pleasant to think, on some much smaller stage, that my books and drawings might well bring pleasure to some child on another continent (thank you, Amazon), or cause some yet-to-be-born husband to ask his yet-to-be-born wife, “what are you laughing at, honey?”

“Oh, a book by some dead guy,” she’ll say.

And that’s just cool.

Although, I admit, I do spend some time wondering what today’s receipts are like ( and I’d bet Anne Lamott occasionally does, too). But the unparalleled treasure is the one I’ll never see, but one I get only hints and echoes of.

And if you white, middle class dinosaurs

Think the boys in blue in Bagdad drag

Have nothing to do with you,

Just wait

Just wait ‘til you’ve had enough

enough sixteen dollar chicken

enough seven dollar milk

enough five dollar gas

With nary a raise in a decade

With nothing but a big empty smile

From your “elected representative”

And you bow up a little

And say, “Hey, ain’t this my country too?”

Like the people of Ferguson said

Like black people been saying for 150 years

See how the answer comes

Hard as a rubber bullet

Fast as a teargas wind

Direct as the boot on your neck

And the bought cop in “riot gear”

Whose boot it shall be

Says

“Get down on the ground, motherfucker

Bow out flat to the New American Empire

Of which you, too, now

Are a little bit next to nothing”