Day 246

As I contemplated sitting down to draw, a strange image filled my mind. I saw my hand holding an Ebony pencil forming a circle on a piece of drawing paper. I could even "hear" an amplified version of the sound of pencil scratching across the paper's surface.

When I sat down to draw, I decided to work without much thinking, to allow intuition to take hold. One circle became nearly one hundred, which stopped with a "break" to make some shading with a blending stump. Upon returning to the pencil, another series of lines created a second dominant circle inside the first. Facial features were hinted at, then refined for the actual portrait.

While I say that I worked without thinking, that's a bit of a simplification. When making art, artists have to make constant choices and decisions regarding their work. As I think back to the time of making this drawing, I can pinpoint several conscious decisions I had to make: more lines here, darker lines there, shading here, the face itself there...

#246 June 23, 2011,  Ebony pencil