2 ✏️ Drawing Dogs
Current status: James Tate low battery mode
First things first, special thanks for the sweet replies to the first newsletter! I especially enjoyed this “I promise not to read any future newsletters!” :) That’s about how I approach most newsletters. If hearing updates from old friends is the main outcome of whatever this is then that’s coal enough to keep the train chugging along.
I set the stupid arbitrary goal to write on Tuesdays and it’s Tuesday. Like any true project kick-off, the inspired decision is paired with immediate doubt.
Today started out as a long day because last night we stayed up late watching Bringing Out the Dead (1999) by Marty Scorscese with Nicolas Cage, Patricia Arquette, John Goodman, Ving Rhames, Michael K. Williams, etcetera. It’s hard to sleep after a roller coaster like that. You won’t find a more accurate Youtube title than Ving Rhames is amazing. We should all be so confident to use “You don’t know nothing about [insert whatever here]” on a regular basis.
Tuesdays are generally marathon days for me and Lotje. Mornings are for putting out fires (fixing bike tires, house leaks, mother-in-law lost her keys again). Before lunch is for getting as much work done as possible until our 7 year old or 5 year old twin nephews arrive after lunch ready to knutsel their asses off.
Knutsel is Dutch for crafty. Shoutout to the Knutsel Koninginnen (Queens) Lotje van Lieshout and Lieselot Moed. Fröbelen is a less flattering word for knutsel that I learned last week while researching sandboxes. It’s named after Frederich Froebel, founder of the Kindergarten movement and first guy to commercialize kids playing in sand. Now you know.
The twins wanted to draw Transformers on transparency sheets. They’re the boss. I like watching them draw, make lines, spread their focus randomly over an image. They’re at the age where they don’t think about it too much and still enjoy ding donging around. I guess that’s the sweet spot that Picasso talked about when he talked about painting like a child. The creative adult is the child who survived (Ursula LeGuin) kind of thing. Watching them makes me think of how Jacques Tati talks about learning from dogs. Dogs bounce around and have fun with it.
My granddad and quote factory Kelly Gutshall, who I’ll probably mention often here, said that when he was a kid he would say, “I’m like a bird” if asked how he was. He didn’t know exactly what it meant but it gave a certain free feeling.
Today I’m getting in touch with one of the old dogs from the archive of a 1980’s dog studio photographer that I bought recently.
Old dog ran out of steam, I fell asleep before pressing send.
And sometimes Tuesdays would come as Wednesdays. I hope it’s not too boring. Thanks for sticking around as I figure out. I’ll try to stick to the one shot way of writing and sending on Tuesdays to keep it from getting too endless. Some Tuesdays might just be a doodle. I’m looking for big and small ways to share the fun of my studio and that makes me happy as this guy…
See you next Tuesday,
Jason