Dear Aunt Doris had foot surgery then demanded I make her a get-well picture (left). After receiving said picture, she apparently de-constructed it with her craft scissors only to reassemble the image how she saw fit (right). Poor, crazy, demented Aunt Doris – She is loosing her mind – but her creativity is unmatched.

Every now and then I pretend I’m an animator – never getting much past 2 frames. I should take a class some day.

Cotton tail rabbits run amok at the apartment complex here in San Diego. They dig. Mostly shallow little holes to lay in and get cool. Then there are all the lizards – they are just the opposite – no digging – they climb up on stuff to get warm. The other day I saw one draped over a dryer vent sticking out of the side of our building.

This morning I drew myself, bed-head and all.

First I drew the one on the left – which I hate to show because it’s such a terrible drawing. I spent around 10 minutes on this one, focusing on each detail of my face – attempting to get proportions right – being real careful. At some point, the halfway decent artist in me realized that this was one of the worst drawings I’ve ever done. It is stiff and generic – proportions were way off – it looks nothing like me – there is no personality or gesture – I had no feeling of satisfaction after drawing it – terrible, just terrible. I was genuinely mad and my motivation to draw was fading. I decided to give it another try (drawing on the right) and this time I scribbled for maybe 2 minutes. I didn’t attempt to draw a literal translation of what I saw in the mirror – I hardly looked in the mirror at all. I just used what I knew of my face from the previous drawing and how I felt at the time. Now I see that the first attempt wasn’t a waste of time. It allowed me to identify what it lacked, what it had too much of and without it I wouldn’t have been able to make the better drawing.