Mark Johnson Art Blog Wonder & Whimsy
I read a lot. Always have, hopefully always will. I don’t retain much. But from time to time I think of writing down some particularly articulate capture or thought. I had the happy thought that my Blog is a good place to collate these words that have accumulated over the years on scraps of paper, pages of sketchbooks or key strokes in various word processing programs. Wake up all over again to how many people have thoughts that are worth sharing. And you never know. Someone out there in the wide open spaces of teh World Wide Web just might find these snippets interesting or of value.
Tens of thousands of years from now, humanity will be climbing out of our own Oort Cloud and heading down into the next solar system in the same way humanity journeyed step by step out of Africa, across Asia and Europe, down into Australia and the far reaches of the Americas.
I made 8×10 prints of a few of the Tree Dancer drawings on a light card stock. And then I coloured them in with pencil crayons and touched them up with pencil & fine line pen. Here are some original drawings, and their colourized do-over. I really enjoy doing the colour work, and people tell me they see details that escaped them previously.
I had this strong mental image of the silhouette of a large toad on a toadstool as seen from below. How would that affect the lives, the patterns, the stories of those who lived in it’s shadow? I’ve started the tentative beginnings of a children’s fable, but in the meantime a completely different aspect presented itself to me visually. So I drew it out. Here are different stages of the drawing.
Times I’m waiting, often in a coffee shop or a car, sometimes in a lobby – and I draw what I see through the window.
I have a fair number of Wait Sketches that are the result of parenting and husbanding and doing the car thing. Activities that put me in various places for a while with empty hands and an urge to use my time to some effect.
The universe resides in what is referred to as deep time. Billions of years layer the foundation of our understanding of our world and of ourselves. The depth of our history, all the way from the elements we are made of on up to the faculties we have evolved, combine to understand and interpret that world. This is what fuels the synthesis which is the essential structure of understanding ourselves and the world we live in.
. . . wanted to see doodles with character that you might be able to tell a story about. I thought that was a fun idea, and decided to post some of my doodles here as well. Some may have more character than others. Some are Wait Doodles, which are a bit different than my Wait Sketches. It is all in fun.
So I just had a Tree Dancer accepted in the 59th Colour and Form Society Annual Juried Exhibition. Excellent for me 🙂
I am taking part in the Don Valley Art Club Fall Show, and the Bayview Art Tour 2011 this fall.
