Mug Shot

In honor of this being Self-Portrait Tuesday, I thought I would stop you all in your tracks with this drawing. Yup, that's me. I drew this several years ago and I am not trying to look like serial killer. That is my regular face. I was born with a droopy mouth. It runs in our family. We also suffer from the Taylor chin, or lack thereof. It is a constant battle to hide these afflictions from the world.

I try to make everyone focus on my eyes and then one day I noticed there was this brown smudge in the one on the right. Eeeuuoow. What is that icky thing? It is still there and I have no idea when it first appeared.

I try to always keep a smile on those lips and stick my chin out so no one will mistake it for my neck. The line of demarcation is vague, very vague.

About drawing: I taught myself to draw. This is not a boast. I also taught myself to tie my shoes, to find my way home from school and to fuse. The thing about drawing is that you aim for a likeness, I guess, at least that's what I did. For this drawing I sat in front of the mirror in my studio and used a soft pencil and a drawing pad. Drawing from life is way different than drawing from a photo. Life is three-D and a photo is two-D. Half the work is done for you already when you draw from a photo. But then the photo tells the whole story anyway so why draw? Because somewhere in all this drawing stuff, the artist's hand is supposed to appear. I mean the way the artist draws should have more to it than the photo. Like personality or something. So in the end, if the personality doesn't show, because it is too perfect, then it is boring and could be interchangeable with a photo. So my advice to novice drawers, don't get too perfect. Enjoy the irregularities of your drawing. That makes them much more interesting than photo realistic ones. Rilly.

I started out at three or four drawing dinosaurs on the bedroom wall. It was newly painted and just crying out for a mural. I don't remember the consequences, but whatever they were, it didn't stop me. In fact the attention I got from adults was my fuel and I kept drawing and painting until I graduated with an art degree.

Hey people, I didn't mean it. It was only for the attention!

For me, drawing is like a way of getting these ideas in my head out on paper and that's it. Like writing only with pictures. Writing I like better, because you don't have to frame them, or mat them or store them. This drawing was in a box that was under piles of paintings and paper and tablets and broken frames and glass that has no frame etc. Just a big pile of junk. UGH.

But I got it out for you. Because some of you are drawing on Friday and some of you are doing portraits on Tuesday and because I wanna play nice.

I finished Big Red yesterday just before I finished my sewing machine. I am taking it in today.
I have never killed a machine before. And I rilly hope this one is fixable. All the quilting I have to do and now I have no machine. I am miserable.

Can't see the quilting? Yeah, I know, so I took details.






If you must see each stitch, just click on the picture.

You will discover that I cannot remain consistent to save my life. I get bored (as mentioned many times before) doing the same design. It doesn't matter. In the big picture you can't make out the stitching anyway, and that is how most people see a quilt, from a distance.

I am half done with Big Green and am dying to finish it because the next ones in the series are begging to be made. If only I could send these out to a quilter who would finished for me...the way I would quilt them.