Self-portrait contour sketches

Blind contour quick self-portraits looking only in the mirror (not at the paper). From an old sketchbook.

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Mojito and Fennec. For a size comparison, Moji is a 74-pound dog. 

Three little pigs? Three bears? Three muffins, all in a row.

More art on my website: jalapfaff.com

More contour sketches, and Rumi update

These are some more contour sketches from an old sketchbook. I remember doing these at an airport. The last two are guys that were dozing uncomfortably in their chairs, waiting for a flight.

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Gadjo, oozing as he naps. Gravity was winning, but he slept right through it.

Doggie boredom--waiting to go to the lake.

Rumi update: I took him to an internal med specialist today. She thinks it's very likely one of two possibilities: either IBD (not IBS), or FIP.  Pick an acronym. Actually, pick the first acronym, because we do not want FIP.

IBD is possible but not likely, because statistically, his age is too young for IBD. Nevertheless, we'll treat (change in steroid dosage, anti-inflammatory med, and diet switch to single protein) for IBD because it's easy and won't hurt to do so. If he responds well to this, it means he does actually have IBD and we might see a little weight gain beginning in a month or two.

FIP we sure as hell don't want, but it's more probable. Why don't we want it? Because it is incurable and fatal. There is no test for it per se, it's sort of like you rule out everything else, like IBD for example. If he has FIP, he will continue to decline (i.e., lose weight) either slowly or rapidly--very unpredictable--and may or may not have any other symptoms. But if he does have FIP, it will kill him, sooner or later. :((((

I'm trying not to think too much about it right now, or about how awful it would be to lose my hilarious, sweet, crazy Rumi, and for Gadjo to lose him. And keeping my fingers crossed that he has IBD instead. And I'll just give him lots of love as usual, and be glad that his quality of life is (still) great and he's happy. It's all just a big question mark right now. 

Everyone, give your animolecules a special hug today in Rumi's honor--Rumi, regardless of which disease he has, is here to remind us that we never know how much time we will have with our furry loves.

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Dramatic Colorado July skies.

More art on my website: jalapfaff.com

Scribble drawings

...Or at least that's what people who see them call them. I don't really call them anything except maybe "super-fast sketches" or "blind sketches" or "semi-blind sketches" (or "super-fast semi-blind sketches"). They are each about 6" x 6" and the way I do these is literally as fast as humanly possible, as fast as the pen can move. I only allow myself to look at my paper a couple of times, so there are plenty of failures, but the ones that turn out have some ineffable, transcendent quality that I love. Each one probably takes about a minute or two. (I also do some that I do totally "blind," i.e., I don't look at the paper at all, only the subject: contour drawing.) I'll try to find some of those too. These are all of The Husband.

These are pretty old but I need something to show you all...I have so many large abstract oils in progress, but none getting done. I worked for two hours last night and started two more...but haven't finished a single one yet. Eventually, I'll have quite a few to show. In the meantime, I'll keep digging up stuff I haven't posted before.

Meanwhile, at the Pfaff-Rajan Museum of Contemporary Art, in the Rothko Forgers Wing...

(Looking at paintings on the opposite wall while the bloody annoying tourist cuts off his line of vision.)

Museum fatigue.

More art on my website: jalapfaff.com

Cat contours

These are contour drawings, where you look at the subject but not at your paper. It feels like you're drawing blind in a way, even though you're staring at your subject. If you've never tried it, I highly recommend it (Nicolaides has a very good description of how to do it; I think it's one of his first lessons, maybe even the very first one; sorry, I don't own the book), if for nothing else than for the amazing revelation that lines drawn this way are somehow more alive. These four I've posted here were from a set of perhaps twenty that I did within half an hour or so. It was great, because the cats on my bed shifted slightly every five minutes or so. To me, there's something of the Chinese elegance of line that often happens with contour drawing, and especially with cats!

The Husband and I also got into the habit of doing quick contour drawings while waiting at restaurants, etc., for the sheer entertainment value of it (when a drawing comes out looking really funny, which is very often!). It takes a lot of willpower not to look until you decide you're done (which can be in 15 seconds or an hour or whatever), but when you see the fascinating results, you realize it's worth it. (In Nicolaides' method, you are allowed to look back at the paper when you're done drawing a given curve, etc., only in order to put the pencil back onto the page in a different spot, then it's back to looking only at the subject. It's also fun to do it without ever looking back at the paper until you're totally done; this leads to extremely weird but cool drawings. Read up on it in Nicolaides' book or another book or online for a better description.)

These are actually just very light, thin pencil sketches in a sketchbook done late one evening. For them to show up at all on the computer after I scanned them, I had to do a pretty extreme contrast adjustment. They're now nicely visible on the monitor, but you can see right through the page to sketches on the other side. It also makes it look like they were done in ink, which upon seeing them, I wish I had.  Oh well.

The photo is Cleo (all black) and Miss Lemon. They are two girls (ages 1 and 3) who are often caught in compromising positions around the house.

More art on my website: jalapfaff.com