finding the lines

is finding footing for where the ink goes.  that's the essential zen of it:  making the marks on paper is to provide a flightpath, a landing strip, the suggested foreknowledge of where surety lay.  never definite.  simply the surest places to put lines, in the wild mind of the penciler who wishes they were instead inking.  if followed they may not all be Great Lines but they will be True Lines.  not all True lines are Great.  Not all Great lines are True.  this is my general policy.  it leads me, by instinct, by the nose, as i build things.  i'm working on the Kammerer portrait now, and the ticonderoga is the perfect tool for making predictive pencil marks with an eye toward brush.  it's got a wide tip--  a quarter inch, across the head if it's perfectly flat (which mine never is, worn to an ovoid nub)  --and because of the broad body of the pencil it can be held in ways that mimic the deftness of stroking an inked brush across paper.  it's a good pencil.  perhaps my favourite, next to the mechanical drafting pencil i habitually use.  although of late it's been whatever pencil's handiest.  i don't truly have an axe.  i've drawn with chopsticks

satisfaction (and where to find it)

first & foremost, satisfaction is to be found puttering in the studio, idly fixing things:

taking the splitting wine crate-cum-cd shelf off the wall to reinforce the joins and level it.  it takes minutes.  it's been staring at me for months, an ugly separation of staple & wood, a widening crevice along a seam, positioned right next to the light switch for the hall closet.  today's the day the crack is sealed and the irregularity ends.  it takes minutes to resolve months of entropy.  why not sooner?  why is now the Right & Proper time for such a simple thing?  and why is it satisfying?

it's an endless source of satisfaction, knowing that everything in the studio is something i have competence in repairing.  if a wire needs replacing, or a switch requires installation, or if carpentry needs doing; knowing i have all the necessary tools & supplies for executing swift & clean repairs

this comes from a childhood spent in relatives' workshops & garages, obsessed with pegboard & circuitry, eyeball deep in a world of belts and capacitors and spindles and vacuum tubes and screws and fuses--  everything must be arrayed in order or nothing can be accomplished... a place for everything & everything geddeouddaheahkidyabotherme.  every barn i ever spent time in had a workshop, a makeshift garage, a surfeit of spare parts.  it is not nostalgia that satisfies me: it is knowing that it was all Purposeful

i may not always get to a fix-it first thing but if it idles long enough it will take priority some fateful day in the studio wherein i am dithering-- not because i do not want to work, but because there is work to do that is not Art, and it is through the perfection of those specific labours that my mind is cleared of everything but Craft; and it is in that state, finally, that i am best prepared to wield my brush & inspired to Do, and Make, all thinking & saying spent.  there is only the Moment of implement applied to paper, and that is not simply enough:  it is simply everything