jennyarntzen.art

  Adele - 2026 02 20 - graphite, pencil crayon, pen and ink, acrylic ink on paper - 8 1/2" x 5 1/2" Adele was standing on her couch looking at me with beady expectancy. I had gone into the kitchen to get a cup of coffee and that was enough to put her on high alert for a stick of celery or a slice of apple. She was ready to leap for the food. Adele is ferocious about food and eating. I wondered how her pose would translate into a drawing. I've been using a mycological approach to building the image in a drawing. Starting with very light, loose graphite in a mechanical pencil. Tracing edges with an imprecise line, hoping to capture an overall sense and feeling without the didactic heavy-handedness of false certainty.  What I am looking at, and what translates into a lively drawing, this is the space where magic happens. I believe in magic. I need magic in my life. I pretty much need it everyday, sensations of wonder, joy, disappointment, frustration: learning. These experie...

  Self portrait in progress - graphite, pencil crayon, acrylic ink wash on paper - 9" x 12" I sort the pencil crayons. Out of their numbered slots in the storage box and into cups from the cupboard - one per colour and then one each for the brown tones and the black, greys, and whites.  I pick up the collection of blues and mix them around in my hand. I look at the colour of the pencil leads and select out three according to tone - a dark blue, mid-blue and light blue. I'm not looking at the temperature of the blues, just the transition in tone from dark to light in three stages. The electric pencil sharpener is jammed. I empty it and clean out the grinding face. It works fine after that and I sharpen each blue pencil to a long, fine point. The fireplace is glowing warm in the cool winter afternoon. The first day of the year. I set up my drawing station beside the fire and set to work adding three layers of blue to yesterday's ink wash over graphite. Last night I fear...

  2025 12 29 - Graphite, acrylic ink wash on paper - 9" x 12" I concentrate on following the contour with my mechanical pencil loosely held in my fingers. I tell myself, "The edge of things, no matter what," over and over, as the line traces my dishevelled, messy, unkempt image. I am still in my pyjamas, wearing a wool shirt for warmth. My spiky grey hair bolts from my head in disarray, recently released from a wool toque.  I hear Eddy, our young, large, rescue dog trying to break through the temporary fencing into the kitchen downstairs. Adele is in her crate beside me, upstairs at my art desk. She is barking to let me know Eddy is up to no good. Interruptions.  I focus again on finding the edges. Is it the edge of a shape or the edge of a shadow? What is contour? What is shading? Is it the edge of a shape or the edge of local colour? What is contour? What is local colour? These unkempt hairs on my head curl gently and persistently in no particular order, no identi...

  Eddy - graphite, pencil crayon, acrylic ink wash on paper - 9" x 12" Finally I have been able to re-activate my drawing practice. We adopted Eddy at the end of June, just in time for my Mom's Celebration of Life on June 30. The combination of these two events distracted me from my own creative pursuits over the summer. Then, in the fall, I had household projects to take care of, causing further delay for getting to my drawings.  Once enough time had gone by, I lost my focus on what I might draw, even if I were to sit down to make a try.  Things have settled down now enough that I can conceive of making a drawing and I have started up a practice of putting something on paper everyday. This means that the day a drawing is started, I put the date on the page. Thereafter, as I add layers of graphite, pencil crayons and acrylic ink washes, the drawing evolves with each additional layer. The start date remains constant. The end date is unknown. A key question was a daily obst...

  Vase of Flowers - 2021 11 04 - graphite, ink, highlighter felt pen on paper - 8" x 10" I made this drawing four years ago. My Mom had moved home with me and my husband after she aged out of the mental health group housing where she had resided for 40 years. She turned 91 her first day home. She was a frail elder with complex needs and we were immediately in an "all hands on deck" situation.  My brother lives across the continent in and around New York City. He was a critical member of our caregiving team and made a point of sending flowers as we navigated one milestone after another.  I have always loved the look of fresh cut flowers in a vase. I have never felt comfortable drawing them. I knew I could never replicate the colours, shapes, and natural beauty of the bouquet. It didn't stop me from trying! This drawing caught my attention when I was recently rummaging through one of my piles of drawings. The date tells me that I made this drawing on Day Four afte...

  Sleeping Rescue - pencil, pen and ink, 8 1/2 x 11 on paper Eddy was asleep on the bed. Gripped by a moment of optimism and energy, I made a combined pencil drawing of blind contour and observed contour lines. My perception of proportion is almost dyslexic, so I need to work back and forth across the subject to pull in and out of the shapes to get something approximate of my observed subject. The pencil drawing sat for a few days while I waited to figure out what to do next. Yesterday I decided to try something with ink. I mixed in equal measure, black and raw umber ink. In five shot glasses I spooned one tablespoon of water for each. The first shot glass received one drop each of black and raw umber. The second shot glass received two drops, the third, three drops, to the fifth shot glass, which received five drops each of black and raw umber ink. To look at the row of shot glasses, I could not see the difference in the intensity of the colour in each glass. They all looked the s...