contactsubscribe

Junk mail

MAY 7, 2011
I was reading about Charles Keene, the great British illustrator who worked from about 1850 to 1890. To keep his drawings loose, he worked on little scraps of paper, with homemade pens and ink. I saw an original of his once - a tiny sepia sketch done on a corner of a torn envelope- and it looked exquisitely spontaneous ( but brutal, probably, for the engraver to reproduce). Of course it's a lot easier to doodle on the back of the mail when you're not worried about doing "final" art. Almost all of it looks like shit and gets tossed and recycled, yet here are a few recent back-of-the-envelope things that - for reasons I am unable to articulate but are likely dubious - have managed to avoid the cut.
Sea burial. A very preliminary sketch. I know a guy who knows a guy, who's got a cousin in the Navy who said it probably went down something like this, but who knows.
I don't recommend this paper for watercolor. I don't recommend these pants either.
© 2024 John S Cuneo