More Old School Pen and Ink

I enjoy keeping my pen moving across paper.  This is a drawing of some of the words I heard one night while watching/listening to television with a pen and paper in hand. The size and appearance of the word drawn could indicate volume or emphasised visual attention.   This was done before I got my iPad.  My television stream of consciousness drawings now take place digitally on the iPad.  It is better AND not as good. 

There are times when I really do long for ink on paper even though it is a waste of resources  in the green world. It is something that digital graphics and printers will never satisfy in an artist. It is the primordial thrill you get from taking black ink and staining paper. The pen is a controlled flood of blackness and the artist directs that chaos into imaginative forms. There are times when my iPad drawing app crashes.  I am never sure why. There is no pattern to it that I can find. Unless I have saved the image in the last ten minutes the screen goes black and I lose all current work.  The very drawing you have been working on is gone, the page is black for 10 seconds and then drops you back at the desk top screen.  It is a perfect metaphor, in my opinion;  the digital equivalent of spilling an ink bottle on the canvas. The controlled stain turns into a flood of blackness.  The picture is ruined, and indeed in the digital world it vanishes. It is just as creatively painful, but the clean up is worth it.

Random Words Heard
8x10 Pen and Ink by Jay Johnson