I made this blushing art piece after a year spent squeezing out small-scale sketches in stolen moments. During my first job out of college, a 9-to-5 corporate desk job, I made hundreds of like drawings on sticky notes, notebook pages, PDF editors... no surface susceptible to mark-making was spared. I felt out of place much of the time, but this drawing habit became my companion.

"Would you be my evening companion?" is a question we might ask of others, of an activity, a practice, a substance, or perhaps of ourselves. The day is often spent in service to the world outside of our personal desires in work, volunteerism, or managing the practical problems that seem to accumulate without end. I ask, and am asked, to conspire in the evening time, when personal fulfillment seems nearer within reach.

This is the first sketch I made in the style. I stumbled into this technique one weekend morning, and it pleased me greatly. I found it gratifying and beautiful. I kept drawing, and drawing, and drawing...

... and whenever I was able:

A bit about the technique:

It's not complex, but there is intention behind it. The process begins with creating a roughly bilaterally symmetrical or textual composition with some kind of broad-tipped marker. I don't concieve of the shapes as inert forms, instead as a sort of form that holds a posture. I play with these postures and intentionally amplify their felt properties.

Next, I trade my broad-tipped marker for something precise that I would typically choose to write with, like a pen or pencil. I totally change my mindset with this new phase: instead of playing loosely with form and symmetry, I narrow my focus and make fine marks--sometimes taking care to follow the existing contours, sometimes inventing new limits--to define the edges of the shapes. I circumscribe the diffuse marks and add definition to what was previously amorphous and undetermined, completing the drawing process. With this technique, I get to be both a scribbler and a scribe.