Pretty Real Behind the Veil

These aren’t in a particular order, and they are mostly works in process, but it’s a sketchbook.  The first one is mixed media, with acrylic, colored pencil, watercolor, some graphite underneath.  The remaining are all pencil sketches mostly in graphite or tinted graphite.  The rest are somewhat self-portraits, at least in a figurative sense.  In some cases, they have more to do with figurative descriptions of how I might have been perceived by others, recently, or in the past bits of my life, and sometimes how I experienced things.  The elephant girl pic shouldn’t be too much of a stretch to guess at that one.  And that one is an accurate representation of me at a particular age.  I am discovering more and more that I was not only the elephant in the room meaning “let’s not talk about Donna’s issues or objections” but what was happening to me, my needs as a child, as well as my strengths/gifts, were not even noticed.  It seems that my parents never noticed most of the things about me that would have told them that their daughter was different from other children.  They didn’t really see me.  Ah well. 

I draw as a calming, meditative activity.  It gets me out of my head.  When I draw like you see below, it is a mostly not conscious activity.  I don’t plan what I’m going to draw; it’s very automatic.  That is actually why so many of the pics end up being completely entirely in graphite, as I get so caught up in the drawing the the next thing I know, I discover that I didn’t stop to paint or add color!  These drawings in particular have all been meditative in nature.   This is automatic drawing, along the lines of automatic writing.