Katherine Anne Porter

(1890-1980)  I was introduced to KAP's writing by one of my English professors, Martin Bidney, and she's since become one of my favorite writers.  I just finished making my way through a large chunk of her collected writings in the Library of America edition (which, by the way, is a beautiful non-profit publisher devoted to preserving the nation's cultural literary heritage: www.loa.org).  Anyway, afterward, I started reading a completely different piece of genre fiction, and the contrast almost ruined the latter experience for me a bit, seeing the stark difference between brilliant writing and that which is meant mostly for fun.  Also made me realize how difficult it is to pinpoint exactly what makes good writing good; I just know it when I see it, but I have trouble articulating why.  Anyway, this pencil drawing on red paper (don't ask why) is dedicated to the paperback copy of her collected short stories that I lost on a beach trip many years ago. Here's hoping someone picked it up and read it.

cold dog nose

This was likely inspired by some Zen paintings I had just looked at, but this with a pen rather than brush.

Sylvia Plath

1932-1963.  Ink.  I recently read The Bell Jar, and found it really well-written, but it was a bit of a haunting experience to read about someone's thoughts and attempts at suicide when that person would actually go on to do so.  Of course, the book is not all about that, and I felt real compassion and an affinity with her. Doing this ink sketch felt intimate in a way, almost like a direct communication between us.

green sea turtle

Here's a pen sketch I did of one of the turtles you could see each evening resting on the beach behind the Waikoloa Marriott.  Really beautiful animals, both when swimming and at rest.

coffee cherries

Saw these at the Mountain Thunder Kona coffee plantation--beautiful place that smelled soo good, and had a great tour.  You can actually eat these, which house the coffee beans themselves.  This is in colored pencils.

ren

It's been a while since I practiced any Chinese calligraphy, and I've gotten rusty.  Despite its simplicity, this character was one of the few I was happy with.  It's the character/radical for person, or man.

too young for the beats, too old for the hippies

I recently got around to reading Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.  (I'd been meaning to read it ever since I read The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, oh, about eight years ago.  My reading list gets really long, so it can take a while to get to things...)  Incidentally, I watched the Jack Nicholson movie shortly after finishing the novel, and though the movie is good, it really is just a shadow of the book.

Waikoloa

So we say that habits are hard to break, but I suppose we really mean bad habits, because it seems like good habits can easily be broken and once they are it's actually hard to start them again.  Granted the holidays can be a great distraction from the daily routine, but nonetheless I feel a bit guilty about not posting or doing much art in the last oh, month or so.  Well, here's to 2011.  This was a brief sketch done near Waikoloa Beach on the Big Island of Hawai'i, watercolored later.