My sketchbook had a few empty pages left, so I filled them with some pastel play. A new book with unbuckled, unsmudged pages is sitting on my kitchen table. Not sure why I wanted the symmetry of finishing a book at the end of the year and starting a new one in the new year – I don’t usually do new beginnings with the calendar year, but it just worked out this time. Wishing all a happy and healthy new year. 
I have two of these yogurt containers full of pencils, pens, charcoal, conte, markers, blending sticks – you name it, I got it. I bought most of them in the quest for a tool that would give me some vaguely imagined yet completely elusive – no surprise there – quality to my drawings. The problem was that I never stayed with any one tool long enough to understand or master it. So my intention for this year is not to buy a single new tool and do more practicing and playing with what I have. Also to double check my spelling – “yogurht” – ugh!
We’ve had a cold snap here this week and I’ve been inside the last couple of days with a cold. I dug through drawings from last winter and found this one. I was in a streetcar that was crawling through traffic when i saw a man who looked like he couldn’t wait for the light to change so he could move away from the young woman behind him.
I noticed them walking ahead of me just as I was at the steps of the office. They were both tall with broad shoulders and a slightly lumbering gait. They seemed perfect together. I wanted to capture them in a less literal way than usual so this was a first stab at that – more colour, less form (still came out more literal than I wanted).
Afterwards, I decided to see what it would look like if I forgot about trying to depict them in anatomical form altogether and just thought about their energy – a surprisingly abstract result – would like to figure out how to work somewhere in between.
The metal rod in his hand didn’t have a ring to it. Some metals have a bright tinkle to them; this sounded like it was made of lead. Still, it was definitely “Jingle Bells” being tapped out in tuneless, flat thuds against the street lamp. I walked past, inhaling his cigar smoke and singing the song in my head.
