The Bone Yard

When I was a child one of the fist activities my grandparents wanted to show me was hiking. They took me up into the mountains to explore with a cattle bell around my neck to keep track of me and my cousins, whilst scaring away the monstrous creatures lurking in the woods. As I explored I would come upon a pile of bones every few hundred feet. These bones were stripped of flesh and bleached white with tinges of nicotine yellow. This was a stark reminder of the cycle of life. In nature the creature with the toughest claw and sharpest tooth lives another day, but in human society we clamber to defend our right to live like hooting monkeys. We hide behind walls and weaponry and pretend we have the same might as our ancestors. We pretend that if we were left face to face with a lion we would muster the same strength as Samson.

The Drawing

The drawing I’m sharing in this post was the second one I’ve done in my new sketchbook. It’s been a long time since Ive owned a sketchbook. Usually I use copy paper or parchment and keep it in a file folder. This new sketchbook is a Canson mixed media sketchbook 7in x 10in 98lb. I love the texture it is just rough enough that my pens never skip, but its not so rough that it looks grainy like water color paper. This paper is also thick enough that it takes a lot of moisture to warp the page, and ink never seems to bleed through. It does however take a long time for the ink to fully dry. Ive had lines drawn in Noodler’s black eel ink with a broad nib take well over 24 hours to fully dry. You might notice some smearing and darkening in areas where I clearly painted over the lines.

The subject of this drawing is conflicting to me. Try though I might I can’t escape the symbolic gestalt of the past half century. This drawing is explicitly about the decay of organisms. The Nigrado passing from the animal world into the fungal world. It is a shame that these fascinating subjects exist in a cultural culdesac for most people.