This is the space for our members to discuss and share their creative projects, ranging from written works to drawings, photography, and even craft projects such as knitting and woodworking. Self promotion is welcome (websites where we can view and/or purchase your work). Please do continue to preface if content is NSFW and be sure to properly spoiler/link such content. Those of you who’d like to post future Creative Endeavors Threads post your request in the comments below.
I turn fifty-one today, but my birthday this year pales in personal comparison to the fact that this week (possibly this past weekend) makes it officially ten years since I started drawing again (which would lead into painting etc etc). It’s wild to think that it was so long ago; still feels like only yesterday. I’ve gone through various (maybe too well-documented, lol) phases of commitment and emphasis since then and right now it feels like I’m at another mild impasse; there’s so much more I want to learn and do but I feel and know that I ought to focus on one or two at a time (I wound up skipping a gel print class at the library last weekend partly for that reason). I’d planned to do a thorough evaluation of my painting progress to determine whether or not I’d continue with that, but then I decided that could wait until the end of the decade at least (or maybe Thanksgiving 2027, as that’ll be its decade mark).
In the meantime, here’s another block print–“Herald of Carabas,” inspired by both Perrault’s “Puss ‘n’ Boots” fairy tale and our house cat (who will likely inspire a lot more specific artwork in future).
The impasse isn’t just personal; as mentioned in comments last week, the arts organization putting on the sketch sessions in the town next door that have long been my personal favorite (out of the varying local and regional options) was ordered to shut down by said town due to an (apparently long-standing?) existential ordinance violation (that wasn’t made clear until over a year into multiple weekly classes for both visual and literary arts). Challenges at the city council meeting last Tuesday—to my happy surprise—thankfully punted the issue for an ordinance review and organizational compliance, so the sessions are safe for now. Whatever the cause, it’s another reminder of how fragile any kind of bottom-up arts infrastructure is in this area, not just locally but in Detroit as well; I’m still waiting to see if I renew my membership in the Scarab Club for next year given some of the changes, however well-intentioned (not to mention the depressing social atmosphere at their figure sketch sessions).
The header this week would have been the oldest sketch photo I still have, dated 24 November 2015 and drawn at my dad’s house in Baton Rouge; I know there was at least one older drawing I would have done on the plane trip back to the Old Country (based on Wagner’s Rhinemaidens from the Ring Cycle) that’s now lost but which I really ought to try and recreate. That said, the former kept getting cut off by the photo editor in gruesome ways and so I’m substituting this comic panel from January 2017; I was not the man pictured at the bar but occasionally might as well have been (it was certainly an accurate portrayal of my mood at the time, and sometimes now).
How’s your work going?