Awkward

When Esteban Vicente chastised my drawing as "too facile," he might have been right but he neglected to mention a very important subtext. My drawing was too facile—to allow my struggle to show, my feelings to show, my process to show.
 
Fifty-five years later, I am more than willing to let all of that show.

The only aspect of process that I allowed to show in those early outline drawings was that I was drawing a continuous sinuous line. Nowadays I prefer to draw with a tool that is much too fat or floppy: an unsharpened woodless pencil, a lumber crayon, a brush. When I want to draw a thinner, more accurate line, I must use a corner of the tip of my utensil, which gives a fine enough line, but with very little accuracy.
 
What's in it for me is that it makes the whole process a lot more challenging, and therefore a lot more fun. What I imagine is the advantage to you, the viewer, is that your neurons mirror the actions of the strokes that are visible in my drawing. It is an empathic reaction that we all have, that lies behind our fascination with sports, dance, live music and other performances. In the case of my drawings, if you are willing to spend the time perusing them, you draw with me!
 
Hopefully, then, you experience with me a bit of my joy. That's very difficult on a computer screen, because you can’t see the surface on which my hand and instrument were acting.
 
Live art is so very important. You may not be thinking about mirror neurons, neither when you are watching athletic performances nor when you are contemplating a painting, but if you spend the time in front of an original piece of art, you are very likely to feel that excitement.

And folks, it is not virtuosity that excites us that way. There are plenty of highly accomplished producers of boredom. 

It's our connection!