A New Batch of Small Drawings

sd 25, egg tempera on paper hand-toned with pigment and size, ca. 7 x 7 in.

I enjoy doing these small drawings because with them I can let out my inner painterly painter; because my painterly side is so hidden, I have tremendous uncertainty about them. I feel most secure working in a deliberate and fairly precise way, with images that have a grounding in geometry. But at this point in my life, I enjoy the challenge and the play. Years ago I did a series of small painterly oils on panel; they were a mashup of deKooning and Mitchell and Hodgkin. I gave up on them after a while. Now that I'm a senior citizen I allow myself to wander about in my art making; as long as I'm engaged with the work, I keep going.

I work on the toning of these small drawings at the same time as I'm toning paper for my larger drawings. When I began doing them, the backgrounds were fairly simple, then I began to loosen up. Now I layer color, and move the brushes around freely. I am mainly using 2 inch flat brushes with pigmented size; the size is a solution of food grade gelatin. In sd 25 almost all the paint is size, or perhaps I would call it distemper paint, but distemper has some added chalk. So...I paint all the backgrounds during my "toning" day. Then, I spend some time looking at what I've got, and with a brush hovering above the drawing, I add something to it. It was only two light green curved lines above....

sd 26, egg tempera on paper hand-toned with pigment and size, ca. 7 x 7 in.

....and here it was a line of gold paint across the opening. I feel that what I'm doing is pinning down the drawing, making a deliberate mark on the more fluid background, saying here I am, here it is, a decision. These additions feel necessary to me.

sd 27, egg tempera on paper hand-toned with pigment and size, ca. 7 x 7 in.

Two thick yellowish rectangular lines pick up the ocher above.

sd 28, egg tempera on paper hand-toned with pigment and size, ca. 7 x 7 in.

I never know if I've done the right thing, or should have done more; I'm floating in a sea of doubt.

sd 29, egg tempera on paper hand-toned with pigment and size, ca. 7 x 7 in.

This drawing was difficult to photograph because the three egg tempera squares are very shiny (I glazed them with extra egg medium) so look different in different light. They are a dark red.

sd 30, egg tempera on paper hand-toned with pigment and size, ca. 7 x 7 in.

For this drawing I added three yellow arcs, one on the red and two below. I meant to echo the sweep of red. The other thing the additions bring is a different sense of space: they tend to float above the glue size paint below.

sd 31, egg tempera on paper hand-toned with pigment and size, ca. 7 x 7 in.

For sd 31 I added a green rectangle, using several layers so its opaque quality would assert itself on top of the translucent blue and green.

sd 32, egg tempera on paper hand-toned with pigment and size, ca. 7 x 7 in.

The underpainting for this drawing was just the yellow; it looked almost like a floating landscape to me. I began adding a couple of curved lines, but didn't like them at all. Then I painted the horizontal transparent brown washes, and maybe I saved it, but maybe not. I sincerely don't know. What I do know is that I am giving myself permission to try all sorts of things, and giving myself permission to fail.