Sunday, June 24, 2012

Life Drawings 1989!

Finally getting around to cataloging/publishing 3 surviving pieces of Life Drawing and as far as I know, the oldest surviving pieces of Life Drawing I have. If you have noticed I've been cataloging a ton of old stuff over the past week, and I hope that won't stop for a bit. I have a lot of that to get through, and I have been putting it off way too long.
The figure at top was the first model I ever remember drawing. A tough foreshortening that I did pretty good with.
Yes, the guy in the middle had two belly buttons. I don't know why. The two holes, they looked as identical as they do in the picture. I see this character (and his two belly buttons) as an interesting metaphor and gatekeeper for what art making has been in my life. He embodies the seen of sustained embryonic sustenance and also the exo-nurturance of the myth-man; the wounded warrior (a piercing? the lancing  St. Templar of the George dragon stabbing?) and the shit-maker (possibly a colostomy hole?) & the emperor-bum. I think I did him justice. I worked at a brewery racking kegs for a while in my early 20's and I remember thinking about this guy, and still being proud of this drawing, as I hammered bungs into the kegs bungholes. But mostly it seems a symbol, the one (regular) belly button, the obvious, physical nutrient-line and the other non-nutrient bearing astral/spiritual/incorporeal snake hole purveyor of inspiration, maybe a third eye entry at the 3rd chakra. The man has 9 holes entering his body. The woman has 10. It *might* make no sense unless your the artist who made it, and have lived with it as a cryptic signal for 20+ years. I get it anyway.
These were all done during a short stint at Lane Community College in Eugene Oregon when I was 19(or)20. The bottom one I used as inking practice quite a few years later.