radiant fracture

I mentioned liking #drawthisinyourstyle challenges on Instagram -- this happens when someone posts an original illustration with an open invitation to reinterpret the image in your own, you know, idiom.

This dialogue of images really pleases me, and it seems to my eye to bring out strengths in the responding artist that aren't always otherwise visible.

sovay asked to see some of my versions & I thought: to the brave, that sounds like a post, so. Lucky you.

Posting pictures instead of a written update seems, honestly, more fitting. Drawing has consumed by far the largest percentage of my time this season -- I draw almost every day, sometimes three or four hours a day, or more.

It's been hard to write for the last few months. Words haven't come very easily to me. I can write -- I can set to work -- but there's a feeling almost like a physical weakness when I sit down to it. I would think it were a physical weakness, except it only seems to apply to picking up a pen. The paintbrush is weightless.

These images probably work better paired with the (generally much more skillfully rendered) originals, but for that you need to go to Instagram. They are all watercolour pencil except the last, which is gouache. They are all between four and five inches square in the originals, which is about all the space I can command before I start to panic.

(After a drawing by @bambiwatsonart)

(After a drawing by @jb0xtchi)

(After a drawing by @isunija, though hers was much more straightforwardly a Beauty and the Beast image, with a furry beast rather than a giant heron)

(After a drawing by @clemence_gouy -- I liked the nonbinary possibilities of the image a lot)


Thank you for your indulgence.

{rf}