New and exciting things....what are they, again? Dancing and Drawing.

Dancers at Cowboys.

   I'm interested in the things I can't seem to learn.  I plot ways around them...or at least salute and squeeze by.  Frustration usually means I've have found an edge beyond which I don't normally go.

  A lot of the human brain is set up, apparently, with music in mind.  There is lots of proof of this.  I learned my ABCs singing them.  Anyone can identify thousands of songs within a bar or two, some within a note or two.

  But.  I can't sing or play an instrument.

  Turns out I love to dance and have for a long time.  Since ballroom dancing in 5th grade or so.  Most of my girlfriends have been honky-tonk bar dancing partners.  We weren't drinkers or there for much of anything but dancing.  Dancing is my avenue into musicing-up my brain.

  But I'm a slow learner, on new dance moves.  It's an edge for me.  Therefore, into dance lessons I go.  I hate the process, but, like anything: keep grinding and you get it.

  in the last century I was on a ruin with a group and one of the older folks, an anthropologist, pulled out a sketch book and started drawing a petroglyph.  I offered to take a photo of it and send it to him, which he accepted, but he made the offhand comment that he DREW these things so he would be sure he had actually LOOKED at it and SEEN it.  Impressive.

  This Spring, after decades of thumbnails and cartoon-illustrated post-cards, I've decided to take a drawing class.  Get some expertise or at least instruction.

  It's working.  I got my ID renewed and a parking sticker.  I'm a college student again.  It's fun.  Since I'm at a junior college I'm in with a group of young people showing every sign of the stresses of modern life.  They are on screens.  Plugged in.  Doing something else besides task at hand.  Several of the kids have yet to speak to the instructor or each other.  K-12  beat them into silence. 

  That's my strategy for staying fresh-brained.  Dancing and drawing.  They combined when the Blue Gypsy and I were at Cowboys on Thursday night and the DJ announced that it was College Night. 

 I'm a college student.

  Where's my free T-Shirt?  Where's my free shots at 11:00?  Let's break off the hottest new dance moves!

Normal cartoon approach.  Postcard.

Cartoon approach.  Walking skeleton stuffed with books.

Artist wandering desert with ravens.

Sunflower chair.

Confronting internal contradictions...in the desert.  Cartoon postcard.

Classwork.  Draw a sphere, a cylinder, a cone and a square.

Poetry flowing through Rita.  Postcard just for her.

Anything worth doing is worth doing badly.  At first.  ACs house with shadow in 2-point perspective.  I actually learned that.

Second try.  This is more what I am after.  Drawing something while looking at it.

Today was Still Life Day.  I like still life....First of two shots at drawing a skull...while looking at it.  Wednesday I'm going to do a stack of three.  Yes, this is a terrible drawing.  Second was better.  The third will be mixed.  But I'm learning.