Lineart and Literacy: Art Update: "Deck Party sketches; Painting for the pennies"

Not much to say here for this update except that I am very happy with a lot of the results in my latest sketches. I feel like as time goes on, I am beginning to make pieces that more or less speak for themselves (because not all art speaks for itself unless you can help it) and doesn't really need much context. A lot of the people sketches however were from a party we recently attended. So some people may recognize their faces in this, others may not...

A lot of my work I do explicitly with the purpose to pick out things and faces in my environment which have the most impact on me. I don't think I can literally draw what I feel and think, as that would lose meaning in the translation somehow. I try to let subconscious decide the composition and although that sometimes lead to some very awkward or incomplete results, I trust my mind a lot and I've just let myself paint and work this way long enough to get the results I want. In other words, not only is it very fulfilling, but it takes me other directions otherwise I would've probably missed...

I don't really believe in forcing a method or way of working or choosing one way over another based on what you think the results will be. I think that the hand and mind have so much to decide for themselves and that if you put yourself in too much control you're either going to inevitably be copying something or somebody, or you'll be drawing on energy that may or may not be 'you'. I'm not focused on the drawing 'you' part as much as it's more fulfilling to draw something you genuinely connect or it just leads to something different and creative...rather than trying to make a literal interpretation. So I'm letting it be what it is and I'm satisfied with this... the technical stuff is just as important, but I'm actually trying to use the rules to get the piece I want, instead of letting the rules limit me so I am more comfortable working this way for that reason as well.

Anyway, on to the sketches. I did develop the nude/romantic picture a little more, but it's at such an incomplete stage that the thumbnail I'll leave here is not where the painting currently is at. I'd like to soften it up a bit more, but it may just end up being a painting that I only somewhat finish and don't end up posting here...

Frank on the floor in front of the TV watching Beavis and Butthead. Whether his eyes are closed or not, can't really tell in the picture or when I was drawing him either