Just Playing Around

There is something undeniably attractive about drawing on photos from flyers, magazines, etc. Partly it is appealing because you can doodle from an existing image: in this case a face in a flyer. One thing led to another, a little black marker, a little highlighter and it looks odd and mysterious. Then I put it on top of a photo of fall leaves. So there you are, art that might not "mean anything", but insists on being anyway. Sometimes images suggest a meaning later on. Meanwhile, take advantage of any opportunity to draw purely for the entertainment value of it. I often forget how much fun it is to try a new idea.
When we were kids, we used to draw a weird mark or squiggle on paper and challenge each other to make a drawing out of it. This was a fragment of a photocopy of someone: (the top of his head appears in the lower left.) I drew it as a hill, added a tree, and a horizon line. Then I began erasing the halftone and enhanced it a bit with black pencil to make a moody sort of sky. Photographing it with this bamboo placemat as a mat makes it look more important than it really is. That's a good thing to remember: almost any artwork you are struggling with takes on stature if it is matted. Imagine it matted, and see if you can live with it.