Here Are the Drawings
Pat kindly photographed them for me.
The women's hair is composed of, respectively, leaves and flowers from my imagination, and I drew the picture with Caran D'ache crayons. I bought myself the collection of 84; it's a treasure-chest. Their hair was inspired by my partner Pat; this morning, at the farmer's market in Montclair, she picked up an application to become a Master Gardener. Rutgers University will train her for free if she does 100 hours of service for Essex County, the county where we live, upon completion of the program. She is excited to apply.
The women took me nearly two hours to draw. I sketched a couple on a plain journal page, but then went directly to the good, watercolor paper. Coming up with their hair was especially fun and then I enjoyed inventing the flowers. I did not lose self-consiousness till I was drawing the flower-hair and then I did lose myself a bit in the activity finally.
It's pretty personal, I know, to post a drawing of people, kissing, but it was just exactly what I wanted to draw today, and I let myself. It's not too often that I see images of women, being romantic with each other, and so I felt entitled to create my own imagery. Also, perhaps I was influenced by "Head in the Clouds," a movie Pat and I saw last night, where Charlize Theron and Penelope Cruz played lovers, for a time.
The man featured here is a variation on the same man I've been drawing since childhood, and is done in charcoal. I don't know why I have always loved drawing men, all of whom are always square-jawed and thick-necked; it's like I was walking through the Castro in the '70s (even though I had not been in San Francisco till my adulthood) and was drawing the cartoon version of the guys I could have seen there.
