Persistence

I used four pages of paper in my current Moleskine sketchbook yesterday, and was dissatisfied with everything I did. I drew a pipe set on the arm of the Adirondack chair on the patio, then the mill on Trout Run Road, then a dark pipe cluster scrawl in the late afternoon gloom in my studio, and finally one more pipe sketch out on the patio before the early dusk. It just got worse and worse. I didn't care that the results weren't so bad. I cared that the experience each time delivered me to a deeper sense of futility. I didn't think I'd care to even try again today. But that's self absorption for you, I guess.

Today is different. I packed up a Thanksgiving leftover feast for my ex-wife and her husband to enjoy with our children this evening and sent it in a big cooler with Tina when she went off to church. Left some compliments for people who had posted photographs, pipes, and comments on Facebook and Google+. Pulled myself out of my putrid funk, threw the sketchbook into my black leather shoulder bag to go off into the countryside, then decided to wait for awhile out on the patio in the late November sunlight to see if an unreliable friend from Virginia would show up for a visit with his family on their way home.

The bag, just plopped down on the picnic table in the low angle light, and my now habitual urge to draw coaxed me into giving it another shot. And for whatever reason, it went pretty well. My stomach almost unknotted. I was able to enjoy what I was doing and seeing. I felt almost happy. Yesterday, Noble was discouraged with the results of her efforts on Trout Run Road, and I told her that she just had to work and work and work until things improved. I told her that some days it just stinks and you want to quit, but you never get good at drawing or anything else without going through the tunnel, and sometimes you simply have to forget about whether or not you can see a light at its end. Art is hard like anything worth doing. Persistence and faith when we have no hope can show us the way.

My old bag and a Talbert billiard on the patio, 11 9/16 x 8 1/4, Intense colored pencils