Adele - 2026 02 20 - Jenny Arntzen

 

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 experiences give my days meaning and purpose as I strive to make sense of humanity on earth, my humanity, my own life in drawings, in life lines on a piece of paper.

Adele is looking up at me. Her forefeet are planted firmly on the soft couch cushions, causing the muscles in her shoulders to bulge. Her hind quarters appear above her head because of my angle of observation. She is lifting her head as high as it will go, to get the best view of the kitchen and my next move toward the fridge. 

I have traced and scribbled with the mechanical pencil. Now I select three pencil crayons from my collection of hundreds. My method for selecting colours is simplified to save on taxing decision-making. I knew I wanted blue, violet and yellow, so I picked the pencil crayons that had been least used, or yet to be used, in those colour ranges. I used the same feel with each colour layer, lightly tracing, scribbling, and now, with the long tip of the sharpened pencil crayon, I could add shading. 

With each layer, the image on the paper appears to take on a life of its own. I continued to strive for a likeness, that gives me structure. The likeness in the drawing seems to have a mind of its own. The gaze in the eyes, the expression on the face, the position of the ears, the feeling of tension, these all emerge as the layers of marks build up. 

I put the drawing in progress up on display to live with it and find out what else it is asking for. There is something missing, I don't know exactly what. There is an absence in the drawing, it is not complete. But I'm also not clear on what it needs. That takes time, glancing at it as I pass it on my way to other tasks. Eventually, I decide I have nothing to lose. The drawing is not precious, it is drawing me into its existence, it is telling me it is not done.

Last night I happened to have a blue and a violet ink roller pen on hand. I was sitting listening to music being played by members of the Portland Folk Song Society on their regular Saturday night Zoom Song Circle. I was on the list to play, but I would have an hour of listening before it was my turn. To pass the time, I put the unfinished drawing of Adele on my music stand and went back to tracing and scribbling, first with the blue pen, and then the violet.

One of my structural rules for drawing is to leave the lightest areas, the highlights, untouched. There is no white added to lighten areas that have gone too dark. The lightest areas have not been touched, they are the local colour of the white drawing paper. Thus, any tonal intensity, from the lightest shade to the darkest concentration, these are indication of layers - a single layer, multiple layers, many re-tracings. 

For me, life in a drawing is conveyed by the dynamic life of each line in the drawing. It is the movement of lines, individually, and in relation to each other, that gives a sense of movement, of a living thing, even as they are rendered in permanent marks on a sheet of paper. This is life, this is living. It is moving, dynamic, shifting from one layer to the next.

After adding the ink lines, I mixed up acrylic ink washes to flood the zone and add contrast. The contrast is in both the use of brush and ink in relation to mechanical pencil, pencil crayon and ink pen, but also in terms of washes of area that have been coloured, in relation to the areas still left untouched, or minimally touched.

The ink from the pens is not waterproof, so there is some uncontrolled washing out of the pen and ink lines,  into more coloured areas. It is like painting with the ink pen, even though the amount of washing out is both predictable and unpredictable.

I chose the ink colours for the washes based on least used bottles of ink and colours I was already work with - Purple Lake, Prussian Blue, Cerulean Blue, and Yellow Ochre. I used a few drops of Carbon Black to darken and deepen the mix. 

Once the ink washes were done, there was nothing more to do. The drawing was complete. It was not asking for anything more. I couldn't tell if I had ruined it, by adding too much. But I can't spend much time in that self-doubt and there is nothing to be done about it, anyway. I can't remove what I have done. "What is done, is done."

I hung the little drawing of Adele up to dry and walked away from it. 

Later, coming back with fresh eyes, I marvel at the interplay of the layers, the emergence of her form and her character, her funny, crooked whiskers juxtaposed with the intensity of her gaze.

It is a drawing that has come to life, to my life, and I am grateful for it's presence on the wall.