practice practice practice.

I have had someone ask me to draw Merlin. So I am practicing. And this is how I practice. Grab a magazine cover and the markers. I chose this cover initially, because I loved this man’s intense stare, thinking that to my mind, a Merlin may in fact have a similar countenance.

This is only the cover of the magazine. I work it Creative Arts, a local art studio, and we devour magazines for portrait and gesture studies, so more often than not, the magazines rarely survive intact. After I had finished, several students and I tore the place apart hoping to find the rest of the magazine. We found the contents page, mostly covered with acrylic paint and marker, apparently a well loved palette for the younger students. But at the bottom :

a pilgrim pauses in his meditation at the shrine of an 11th century Sufi saint. ‘photo by Reza’.

And so it goes. This is the beginning of an idea- way out early when it can turn into anything- pure potential. I love this wide-open phase, but I also dearly love the drawing in progress where I have limited the options and am fairly certain that I know more or less, what the outcome will be. I have collapsed the wave, the work is done and all I have to do is color in the lines. for the Merlin, however, the work hasn’t really started yet.

Tags: art practice, art school, merlin, prismacolor markers, Reza, Sufi