In the Dark

I drew this quickly.
I needed to get outside after a day of being in a car all day and eating rich food (or so it seemed) so as soon as we got home I laced up my boots and grabbed my sketchbook and a black crayon and walked to the river. It was sunset and the light was changing every few seconds. There was also a breeze so the reflections on the water were constantly moving and shifting.

As it got darker and the drawing progressed, I kept shading the whole drawing with the broad side of the crayon. The details started to clog and a graininess emerged that suggested the very particles of air and matter that intercept the sun's photons. Matter becomes  film; these mute microscopic processors hold and then scatter their small allotment of visible solar energy. Their vibrations are the matrix that enfolds the more solid furniture of this real place.

If you like this sort of thing, I suggest you look at the drawings of the famous French pointillist painter George Seurat.

A Walk Around the Lake at Sunset

I took at walk around a lake before dusk the other evening. Before setting out, I frittered away my time (at the computer no doubt) so that when I left the house, even though it was very light outside, I knew that I'd be returning in the dark --probably. I'm an optimist and it gets me into trouble. Of course, there was no trouble; there was just a lack of light and a nagging feeling that someone would worry a little about me.

I bumped into an old acquaintance along the way and we chatted halfway around the lake and through the college campus. By the time I got back to the shoreline it was apparent that I'd be walking back in the dark. My feet on the path would be my eyes. The sky was clear and I could see Venus glittering to the west in a sky in deepening shades of a Maxfield Parrish blue.

Then I saw where all the ducks and geese were hanging out. It was nearly 9:00 p.m. The sun was down and the stars were starting to twinkle. There was still a lot of light in the sky but any shadows were just a suggestion rather than cast by any distinct light source. Everything was reflected or hinted at.

But the birds were busy as ever: scouting this way and that, tipping up and dabbling at something below or bossing each other around. As I write this, two days later, it's 06h45 and I know they are all up and at it: feeding, squawking and reacting to the life of a duck or a goose in the waning days of summer 2010. It's seamless really, a bird's life. Sleep but an interlude between the waking, wandering and wondering until the big bell clangs and it's time to go.

I felt my way home and avoided looking into the sky or even over to the lake because my light-deprived eyes were so attuned to to varying degrees of gray and black. A looming dark shape could be a mass of bushes in the distance or a tree trunk about the collide with my forehead. My depth perception was not dependable so I used the sounds of my footsteps to tell me whether I was on the trail. The lights were on at the college and they reflected off the lake's surface. A pair of black silhouetted mallards whooshed overhead to join their friends in the cove.

I made it home fine. The lights were on. I had to squint in order to see.

colored pencil, ink