copper plates not yet made. drawings still in progress. envelopes not fully addressed. but my hand muscles hurt from working on them every possible minute yesterday. and on saturday i drew the envelope lining and had it printed on nice paper and cut into the shape of an envelope to be slid in and pasted along the rooftop of the envelope as soon as i've addressed them all. tonight i'll keep addressing. there is the real fear, too, that my drawings will not be able to be made into copper plates--the lines too thin, my photoshop files not black-and-white enough, etc. bridge bridge bridge bridge.

i have to go back to why these drawings i've been drawing chose me in order to know how to tackle the (i think) final two drawings of the semester. i want to make two big drawings and i want them to be as meticulous and messy and strange and eloquent as possible. i want them to be in conversation with one another to relive the feeling of indecision that a drawing singly doesn't offer as well. similar or the same group of objects. a dress, a paper one, hard to tell what it is, but a dress to me. i want to not be able to identify almost any object i draw in these drawings. i want them to have lived enough that they are their own things, their own holy shapes loved enough to move past just being a nameable object. i want the line and color to speak of the essence of the objects.

i have to confront the fact that i'm collecting, but i'm not organizing. shuffle shuffle. the combinations, one next to another and then another next to another, they have their inherent meanings that i don't attempt to create or muffle. the drawings side-by-side will help show that no two objects are meant to be next to one another.

but gerhardt asked: if i were to string these in a necklace, which would come first, which drawing would come second? what is their hierarchy. men and their need for hierarchies? i don't want to organize them. they're each most important depending on the day or moment. they are their own blog. but in compositions, often the painter directs the eye. i don't really. color can do that. i can direct the idea to the most seemingly insignificant objects, then. i push against hierachy, it seems.

i will have white space, but clusters of groups of objects. i won't set many of them up as still lifes, i don't think, i will just draw them as they occur to me. really i want to make a whole drawing of mostly paper cap gun casings pinned to the wall.

i draw things into paper in order to collect them into my world. i pin them to see them, a messy order, and they're too fragile, i think, to be on the floor. i then draw the collection because i love the way it looks. they have become disassociated from their environment, extracted and put into my own abstract one. by how i draw, i will show my love for these paper objects. the paper itself becomes a material on which i draw, and the drawing on paper shows my attempts to draw it--the spills, coffee marks, that separate it from a wholly trompe l'oeuil affect, which is just a trick and so not for me. the pins keep it in the 3d/2d conversation and ground the paper drawings, give a sense of scale. just a few. just dress pins, not so many big black clips.

this time i will have more color and more variation of gradations in color. more blacks. i want it to feel as rich as a sally mann painting, but not black like drama. i think the shadows will be more expressive this time, though, richer.

right now i've slid the paper in between a board and a table to help it to straighten so that i can put it on my desk and begin drawing. i'm itching to draw all the cap guns and their shadows. to get into that meditative space again, to relax while not breathing as i draw tight little carpel tunnel drawings, to fall in love with line and color and this american life.