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July 27, 2008

#2 exchange sketchbook: mitchel hunt

by sven at 10:10 pm

thousand-legged spider

The sketchbook exchange continues. Whereas the last sketchbook will ultimately return to me, this one is for Mitchel Hunt in Ontario, California.

blue eye

It's going to be a little unnerving to let go of all these pictures. Some of them I like quite a lot. Oh well: training in the ephemeral nature of life.

(And I've got some mega-high-res scans. Heh.)

close my eyes, look in the mirror

For "close my eyes..." I photocopied my face, then re-photocopied that image onto acetate. I distressed the toner using a wire brush. Then I used acrylic gel medium to glue the acetate onto a text-based under-painting.

The surface of this page is as glossy as if I'd poured clear resin over the whole thing. Very apt for something that references a mirror.

crab mab

This one was originally titled "crab man" -- but I liked the typo better.

Wash of blue acrylic. Outline the mab in black acrylic. Fill in the negative space with white (a trick I picked up from Egon Schiele). Scribble shading with a pen.

village

And a straight painting of a tiny village underneath mile-tall blue fronds.

* * * * *

The first three sketches were loosely inspired by a poem I wrote this morning... So here it is:

the soul

close my eyes
and look in the mirror

the soul dissolves flesh
i am flower bulb
branching tendrils

ageless sexless
profoundly sensual

don’t mistake me for
inner sight and silent tongue

i am the whipping red threads
the bubbling swamp
lit by a watcher’s small candle

to be buried here
when the light goes out
when fragile roots dry brown

suspended in darkness
invisible intangible
open my eyes to a bright world

the other thousand-legged spiders here
clothe themselves in faces and skin
they become what they wear

and i feel so apart from my species
on the outside of a humanity
that lives with eyes wide open
that never seems to blink


July 27, 2008

posted by sven | July 27, 2008 10:10 PM | categories: sketchbook, writing