I went through a phase of teaching myself how to draw (it was short lived, if you were wondering). I bought Jack Hamm’s Drawing the Head and Figure. I think that if i tried longer than like 2 weeks, I would have really gotten somewhere – the book was good. Here are some snippets:

I also took a fair amount of art classes as an undergraduate. Im sure Ill eventually find more projects, but we can start here. I dont remember the name of this particular process, so Ill just call it printing. (Wet paper + inked glass or layered cardboard + roller machine press = final result). We were to mimic a famous work of art, and although its totally out of my range of normal taste (i adore works from the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood), something about Kandinsky’s Blue Mountain really gets me.

Simply inking the glass wasn’t my thing – ink is not like paint: it is not easy to work with. I wasnt happy with the first result of trying to replicate any kind of image, so I tried something abstract. I wasnt happy with that either so I smeared a bunch of colors on it. None of that made me happy.

But what did make me happy was building the layers of cardboard and then seeing how the press would work. I found the process of constructing it really meditative. And then inking it was not so fun, but pressing it again and again and seeing how it changed was neat.