ENDLESSLY PART TWO.

Here's a troubling part. The casual observer will probably find the inked images to be quite complete. They're not. A lot of room was left towards the end image that's to be in color. A fully rendered ink image would far more tonal and visually intricate. As I've stated before, I have certain difficulties when working in traditional pen and ink. I tend to always see things in a painterly way, with fine edges and disappearing softness, tonal insights and color coordination's that form harmonies and for lack of a better term something i call, "dis-harmonies. "

In pen and ink I seem to have trouble getting the finish I want without working the piece to death. The "well enough alone syndrome"as it were. So, when I use pen and ink, to form a base upon which color is the final goal, I find myself with two competing interests. That's why, to those who don't know, my "underworking" ink base will seem to be overdone and complete in it's self. Not so.

At this stage I'm usually at wits end trying to not think in color but needing to because it will be just that, in color.

You have no idea how much I admire artists like John Paul Leon, who I think is a first rate artist in pen and ink, or brush as the case maybe....people like J.Muth and the wonderful simplicity and grace of his use of ink......alas I simply don't think like that, in big grand blocks of black and white.

I'm always looking for the grey in between. That's just me. Since it's futile, and probably a crime against art to work in a style not one's own, I must do a thing in the way I see it. For better or worse.

I suppose you know the next blog will be the finished piece......no matter how tired of a subject this is for me, I always endeavor to give it my best.......without you all, I'd never have bought myself the time to do my own "graphic novel"......another phrase that annoys me.

Be here when it goes up, I promise not to many days from now.

M.Z.

ENDLESSLY.

These are beginning portions of a rather large (nearly twenty-five inches square) commission I undertook about a month or so ago. And before you think you would want one also, please note I did this for two reasons. 1. It was ordered by a long time patron of my work as a wedding gift. 2. I threw out a ridiculous sum of money to do it and it was accepted. So, don't even think about it unless you really have a a lot of disposable income. A lot.

What makes this unusual, out side of it's size, is that 1. It's the damn endless again, lol. 2. I almost never pencil in a composition so thoroughly. In this case because I've done so much of this sort of thing, I tend to get a tad blase' about the piece in general, and this time I wanted to make it clear how each related to the whole while giving each of them an individual identity. So I spent a great deal of time working out who was who and what was what. I purposely left the background vague so as to bring each of them close as possible to the forefront. All the better to display their various aspects. In my own way of course, rather than follow the usual.though it's still well within the accepted canon of visual continuity. Tradition!

In a few days at best, I'll show more as it progressed.

'till then,

M.Z.