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The orchid in my office at church was in this lovely state this morning, with about 20 buds and two flowers already opened. I drew it for a long as I could before I had to begin working, with two results : this sketch and the knowledge that I have to paint this flower. The morning light was so lovely that I’m going to take a photo tomorrow at the same time so I can paint from it at home without having to schlep this sweetie back and forth.
Botanical shapes call to me all the time. I don’t know why, and don’t really want to dissect it, but they do. This orchid that has been on our kitchen table for weeks, for example. Another orchid, in my office, has over a dozen buds, and I’m hoping I’ll have time to draw it later this week, before they all open.
Here are the last few days’ stages of the same drawing.
I don’t quite want to call it done yet, even though I’m playing with other things as well.
Drawing only 10 minutes or so means slow progress, but I’m enjoying myself, and the geometries that keep appearing in this structure the more time I spend with it.
I started drawing this with pens the other day, since I had gray and black gel pens and thought, hey, basically two colors here, I could draw it in just those two. But the lack of erasability made me anxious; I wanted a pencil. So here’s tonight’s start.
I just loved this structure (probably part of a substation, Joy says), and had to take a couple of pictures so I could draw it.
I had a rather thrilling experience as I was flipping through my phone’s photos to find the reference photo for this drawing. I saw a photo I had taken of the half-finished drawing and thought for a few moments that it was the original. Hyperrealism is seldom, if ever, my goal, but to have successfully conveyed something so elusive is deeply satisfying. I have learned a lot about water through this process.
This was what I worked on on Wednesday and Thursday, and it is now finished.
One more day’s drawing and it will be done, I think. From a photograph of the ocean section of Biosphere 2, outside Tucson, AZ.
I started this several years ago and put it away, not to rediscover it until Saturday, when my daughter planned an alebrije-painting session for the family as a Christmas present. I did the patterns on the tongue, top fangs, and right cheek then. I want to complete it and hang it on the wall, instead of consigning it to a drawer of half-painted and unpainted critters, so this evening I started painting the sides of the face. Even using acrylic markers, I can’t get the precision and intricate detail of Oaxacan artists, but they are my beacon.
To paint alebrijes is to be back in Oaxaca: sitting around tables with a dozen other norteamericanos in the upper terrace of the Oaxaca Lending Library. Painting my very first one (a sea turtle) in the town square of San Martín Tilcajete during a festival dedicated to this, the town’s signature art form. Sitting at home (home for our six-month sabbatical), at the table we had bought in the huge market, Abastos, strewn with the evidence of our various projects, such as the long huizache pod I had picked up from under a tree in the neighborhood, captivated by the geometry patterning its surface also.
Sermons in Stones 
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