Wow!

Have you seen my sister's blog? I've always known she was intelligent and thoughtful but this is amazing. She's the only other person in our family who reads, I think. And she can remember the quotes, apparently. So she's one up on me. I read and comprehend but remembering and communicating the info to someone else is an entirely different matter....

I spent most of the day drawing. I think I'll scan what I have tomorrow and scan more as I go along so you can see the progress. I always surprise myself. I get so insanely impatient that I actually think about giving up--but not in the way most people would give up, by walking away from it or throwing it in the trash. No. I think about drizzling my salsa over the whole thing, or ripping it up in tiny little bits and then going up to the roof to toss it to the wind--something ritualistic. As I sit, hunched for hours (ok maybe an hour), working really hard on it, struggling with a detail that I just can't get right, a thought rises gradually in the back of my head like a river flood, until it bursts forth, drenching all of my hopes of producing something good to look at: "You suck! Why do you keep on with this impossible notion that you can draw anything?" Then out comes the salsa. But I don't pour because then I'd just have to start over.

Then, after a few hours of working on it, spread over weeks, of course, I look at it and see something I could not possibly have created. It has a pleasant-to-look at style to it. A local artist once commented that my pencil drawings look like oil paintings. Sometimes I think he's right. They have a soft, impressionistic quality to them. But I'll never be an "artist." More like a breathing photocopier. I can't create. I'll never be a Cassatt or Degas (two of my favorites) who, while painting models and still lifes were still able to make it something more than life, something original. But maybe I'll be a Warhol, if I ever learn how to silk screen. At any rate, the salsa will always be there. Heck...if I'm imitating Warhol I can "paint" the salsa.

P.S.
I'll get some more pics for you, Busy Mom. I don't have a camera. I have to use the video camera from work and then still some shots from the tape. So it'll be a day or so.

P.P.S. Please go to the review site and comment on Laser Jock's review. He just posted it a couple of days ago and he keeps bugging me: "Has anyone commented on my review yet? Have I had any hits yet?" Humor me, please?