3D structure practice

Stuff around the house

Who's There?

A solo I am working on for a new tune my jazz band is playing. Ignore the vid, the point is the music. If it won't play, try this
https://soundcloud.com/dougmortenson/whostheresolo

with and without color

Torres del Paine complete!

It's a really hard question

What is more important
Writing a good poem or getting enough sleep

(This totally counts as today's post, right? Oh come on.)

My creative endeavor this week is corresponding with Dr. Robin DiAngelo to give a workshop in my home on white fragility. I actually have a lot of inspiration and creative energy going on around that, but so far it hasn't generated any postable art, just plans for an event in the spring. Whee!

So anyway, how much of a phone call do I need to make to even qualify as phoning it in. I love y'all for sticking with this, it's been super good for me, and hopefully tomorrow I'll be able to spend some time on a thing to post that's worthy of my exquisite audience. :-*

Tentacle Tea - Rough Sketch

fiddling with some more octopus ideas.  Sketched out a rough first layer:

color added

Same picture with color. 

What I can do in 10 minutes (an incomplete list):

Reserve a seat on a jet

Do a complete ab workout!

sit down and watch a sunset

(given a specific set of 10 minutes, about)

walk to the store

check my email inbox 47 times

find out my credit score

practice counting by primes

spend too much money on Amazon

contemplate my useless white shame

turn on the radio and sing a song

set up a complicated board game

Do 4 simple things that I keep postponing

make an appointment for therapy

Read about books I’m considering owning

age 10 minutes (concurrently!)

masturbate

meditate
make a list

Torres Del Paine — WIP

Stepping away from the security of pen & ink and trying water color on its own.

And one for today

Don't normally do landscapes but I rather like the way this one turned out.

Bean Studies

Proko.com has excellent figure drawing videos. In the premium section, he walks though examples of doing excercises like the "bean," which is a simplified form of gesture drawing. I found with the latest iOS, that I can play the video as an overlay of the Procreate app, off to the corner, pause it at each new pose so I can do my own study of a figure (in orange), then play and watch how Proko does it to see where I could improve. Great resource and fun lunch time activity :)

eep - forgot to post this yesterday!

Gotta love the golden hour and messy hair of childhood

Had some extra time before work so did some drawing. 

I might put some color into it today.

A delicate and satisfying encounter

Egg, cold, smooth, round
palm, warm, hollow

Peaceful headphones dude

This guy looked really peaceful in his commute today.

Help

Word

File

Edit

View

Insert

Format

Font

Tools

Table

Window

Help

Coffee

Teeth

Clothes

Kid

Car

Coffee

Computer

Help

School

Job

Social

Alcohol

Computer

Bed

Help

Relationships

Parenting

Career
Money

Help

Foot

In

Mouth

Help

Bad

Back

Help

Help

Today

This pretty much sums up the mood of my day

computer drawing

A little doodling on the computer to get in some drawing 

how to wake up

I wish I could return
to a time before I knew
in a visceral way
how bad other people have it.

Saw an evening of short works tonight by people of color addressing the institution of race. I am so moved by the stories and heartbreak I heard tonight and yet so very resistant to contemplating real action from myself to rectify the glaring imbalances. I'm watching my values of fairness and shared effort and community come up against my "take care of me and mine and don't worry about the rest" animal urges and I want to hide. Tomorrow I will try to write about that.

Le Commute

Still a work in progress...any title ideas?

I intend to work on this more, but now I need to go to bed, so I'll post what I've got for the day. This is the poem that I excerpted from before. I think when it's done it will be half as long--see, I can do "process" snapshots too, like Adam! ;-)

* * *

We thought we might make it to the top of Echo mountain to watch the sunset.

The sun was cozying down for the night even as we set foot on the Sam Merrill trailhead.

January sunset heat in Alta Dena,

me quickly sweating under my light borrowed jacket.

We talked as we walked. She had nannied for a know-

it-all 9-year-old for whom the response to every statement was “OBviously.”

We laughed about that, about the jadedness of youth,

about needing everyone to know how smart he already was.

The sun going down too fast, careless, sloshed

pink and orange toward us, all over the sky.

I wanted to see it from the top,

wanted to run but

paralyzed

by the paint-dripping clouds

soft and blurry overhead,

sharp in the distance,

smog reddening the distant city’s cheeks

as though it might cry.

It’s okay, I wanted to say,

the stars will clean it up

I wanted to run up the mountain, worried about missing the climax

but I needed to stop and take in the sun from each lookout point on the way

I settled for a brisk walk up, pausing when the beauty made me pause,

knowing that each moment I enjoyed from the mountainside

was costing me a moment bathed in light at the top.

knowing the show that was so overwhelming right here

would be even better from somewhere else.

I mentioned my torment to my friend and she said

“a perfect midlife moment.”

I said

“The symbolism wasn’t lost on me”

and thought to myself,

“OBviously.”

I ran ahead of her, wanting to see the sun’s final descent from the peak.

I saw I wouldn’t make it.

I saw the bottom of the sun squeezing in as it worked its way below the far-off ridge

Quick progression from mango, to lemon, to tic-tac

I turned my head to see if my friend would catch up to me to share

the last moment of light

turned my head back to see that I had missed its demise.

All that stress of positioning, and in my angling to get the moment just right, I missed it.

The symbolism isn’t lost on me.

OBviously.

I was already writing this poem in my head.

Can I tell you? I have been having a problem with Facebook. It has a compelling and stimulating grip on my hand; I scroll for hours when I mean to stay five minutes. I have been noticing my thoughts change, get antsy, hungry for new dopamine spikes.

Standing and simply watching the sunset has become so hard.

I am standing there watching the beauty but also

already imagining how I will describe it

to a friend or a poem

looking for another place to watch it from

Wondering who I should bring to this magical place next time to share this moment

that I’m not even having because I’m so busy telling myself the story

of the time I walked up the mountain with my friend

to try to see the sunset.

I hadn’t brought my journal. My friend said,

“take notes on your phone!”

So I pulled it out

no longer having the experience, but ignoring the experience so that I could document the experience

It occurs to me that writing is a human disease:

the tyranny of stopping to write down the thing

I was full of it, holding it in my arms, nowhere to put it down.

My three-year-old and I had the following conversation the other night while he was on the potty, after I had finished making up a story for him.

He said “Mama, after you tell a story, it just goes Puff out of you, right?”

Flinging his hands away from his mouth to demonstrate

I said “Yeah, it goes Puff! And I let it out into the world.”

He said, “and now the story will cover the WHOLE WORLD!”

Here I was holding this story not able to let it out

exactly like having to pee

like one of those dreams where there is nowhere to pee

So distracted by my unwritten poem

by the words I would use to describe this unspeakable sunset

that I couldn’t relax and smell that smell of sage

that sage smell.

I looked at the moon, coming up on the other side,

and back to the burning fading colors.

I wanted to see both views at once

I spun in circles on the narrow trail,

careful not to get dizzy enough

to misstep off the cliff

I cannot see enough beauty at one look to satisfy me

I cannot see any more than I can

My mind reviewing the words I would use to write all this down

holding on, as if

words were scarce

Full until I have a moment to pee out this poem

My friend pointed at a bright dot in the sky.

“Is that a planet? Or an airplane?”

We looked. It was too bright to be a planet. But it wasn’t moving.

I looked and looked, waiting for it to be clear.

But the top of the mountain still beckoned,

and we reluctantly resumed climbing.

I don’t have to decide that now,

I told myself.

If it’s a planet then it will still be there when I look again.

More color

Drawing Female Faces

Started with this Loish tutorial, with an intent to paint: http://loish.deviantart.com/art/tutorial-drawing-a-female-face-517588691 Got sidetracked drawing faces...

   

Cheeks the Chicken is Confused

Just got home from my first meditation retreat. Came home and just drew what I felt like. Trying not to analyze or think too much about the outcome, just listening to what i wanted to do. 

Starting color

Traveling day

Tired tired yes.
Someday I will write poems.
But now I will sleep.

Octopus Studies

This was yesterday's post. Realized it didn't successfully publish.

Just some rough blobs with tentacle feelers and such. Getting an idea of how these things move so I can do a piece for a friend.

Art Therapy

Sat in with Ilya during art therapy today

Daves Bossa

Some Guitar solo ideas for a new tune my keyboard player is writing. If anybody tries this link, please let me know if it works

If the movie won't play, this link might, but it autoplays the whole song list:
https://soundcloud.com/dougmortenson/davesbossa2

her fairy room

We put the finishing touches on Ilya's room tree today. Here is a little peek.

I miss my little boy so much! Home tomorrow.

Oh, LA freeways.
winter restlessness surges
in car after car.

mom

Daily drawing

Some days, a sheet of stickers is all I've got in me. I'll scratch around a little more before bed.

Winter Sunset

Wheeee!

This is what I write here when I
don't
have
time
this is what I am when I am
in
and
out
Coming in from somewhere, and
I gotta go to somewhere, and
I'm having so much fun that I just
run
a
bout.

This trip has been so, so much about connecting with old friends and finding out that they have grown and found some peace with themselves. Is this the business of our thirties? I'm hearing it over and over from my peers I haven't seen in five years. It's making me happy and inspired. The pace of this LA jaunt is unrelenting but I'm seeing a side of LA that I've never seen and starting to understand why some people love this city. I have a lot to process. I miss my kiddo! But I'm so glad I'm here.

Now, off to see some rock music at the Roxy!
XOXO
A

When did I get so jaded

Another packed LA day and I am stockpiling inspiration. An old friend took me to her favorite LA lookout point and I found myself at the top of Hollywood Hills, a little wary of the drunk kids and the suspicious rich people who live up there and also the coyotes we saw on the way up. Nervous about walking the last bit of one-lane road around a blind curve on the side of a cliff with no sidewalk, but she was so calm about it so I went along. There were a hundred poems to be written today but no time to write them or even finish the one I started yesterday so here's just one thought. I have a creative backlog now, whee!

Another ridiculous vista in LA

Moon dead overhead

City crouching below

300 degrees of space

At the top of Hollywood Hills

Some young dude leading

his girlfriend up the last hill blindfolded

“you better not be

about to throw me off a cliff”

“no honey, I swear I’m not”

That proposal isn’t going to

go over well.

Liberty Bell progress

Lazy Commute Day

Water color colored pencils

Hand and shapes, this morning while I drank tea. Accidentally dunked my paint brush into the tea cup instead of the water cup, so had to make some more tea!

Gap

Work in progress

I had a beautiful walk tonight with Claytie up Echo Mountain in Alta Dena, and I was overwhelmed on that walk with a monster of a poem that is in rough draft form and over three pages long right now. It's not done and I'm going to work on it some more tomorrow, but here is an excerpt to prove I really am working on something for the day.

* * *

The sun going down too fast, careless, sloshed

pink and orange toward us, all over the sky.

I wanted to see it from the top, where I could look the other way and see the simultaneously rising

moon,

wanted to run but paralyzed

by the paint-dripping clouds

soft and blurry overhead,

sharp in the distance,

fog or smog reddening the distant city’s cheeks

so that I thought it looked

like it might cry.

It’s okay, I wanted to say,

it’s only spilled paint

the stars will clean it up

I wanted to run up the mountain, worried about missing the climax

I wanted to stop and take in the sun from each lookout point on the way

I settled for a brisk walk up, pausing when the beauty made me pause,

knowing that each moment I enjoyed from the mountainside

was costing me a moment bathed in light at the top.

knowing the show that was so overwhelming right here

would be even better somewhere else.