jennyarntzen.art

  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...