This is just strange

Was basically drawing this guy from "Princess Mononoke," but without the facial wart, and what better to put in front of him than a pussycat? Sorry, that's what it's like when one's mind wanders.

I'm enjoying working the monochrome wash, however. You have so many levels of light to play with!

I guess the drawings would look a little more sane if I copied photographs, but I hate that, because it usually looks dead to me. Prefer inventing out of my head, from a suggestion of something I see. That's when the drawing's not being done from life. But there's the risk of this oddness, plus lousy proportions, and the like.

I've thought of making a blog where I put all of my totally failed drawings. I think a lot of artists have these, but they destroy them, or at least don't put them out in public. I don't think I'm the only artist who screws up proportions, or misdraws a hand. I think, though, I'd be alone, or at least a very rare person who showed them to people. (not that I really think I'm going to go ahead with it. But anyone is welcome to start. I've got a title for the blog: "Guh!")

Actually, one of the most inspiring things for my own art was looking in a published version of a Picasso sketchbook, and seeing a drawing with a messed-up hand. So, even the deities perhaps went through trial and error.

This to me is an essential part of the learning process. I use mistakes and failed drawings as things to learn from, and always have to go through a certain amount of these before I get my touch back, for instance, with watercolour after a period away from a brush.

Sometimes, of course, there are those happy accidents, but it's hard to rely on them. Then, on the other hand, there's planning, and preparatory drawings, and all the tricks illustrators use to get the image down in reasonable time. A lot of people in illustrative art copy a master. That's okay. I'm just moving along a different path, a harder way to do it, with a lot more blind alleys. Don't think this is a better idea, it's just where I've ended up.