Further Explorations

I recently went to the local art store for a particular kind of paper which it turned out they did not have, but I wound up purchasing a small squarish sketchbook from Bee Paper Company which has led me into a series of investigations. I did one series of small circular black and white abstract drawings, another series of square abstracts using colored pencil. (Most of those are posted on my flickr site). The last few days I've been working on this series of black-and-white abstracts. Each is 5 1/4 inches square.

There's something satisfying to me about working in small scale like this. Perhaps its primary virtue is necessity: all of our stuff, including most of my art supplies, not to mention our furniture, has already been shipped in preparation for our move to the mainland in January. So this is work I can do in a small space with limited materials. But I also like that I can begin work on one of these pieces and complete it within an hour or two. And because I make it a point of practice not to have much of a plan as I begin drawing, each one is a kind of experiment that plays out in the making, and the results are always something of a surprise.