Inktober 2018 Day 31, "Slice"

Day 31 of Inktober, prompt word "Slice." I previously wrote about Inktober here. This is an edited version, but I'm posting these daily on my Instagram, @St.Rhinoceros:

Day 31 of Inktober 2018, prompt word "Slice." Ink and watercolor on paper. by Ciana Pullen / St. Rhinocéros. [Image description: a profile of a head sits centered on a floral background. The profile, drawn in black and white, has a 3-D edge as if it is a slice of head viewed from a slight angle instead of a simple silhouette. The inside area where the brain would be is filled with a black and white image of eleven crows flying out of a bare winter treetop. The background is several richly colored realistic flowers on a black background: two red-orange ruffled tulips with leaves, a light purple-blue peony, two pale shell-pink peonies, two magenta ranunculus, and two reddish purple poppies with stems.]

Inktober 2018, Day 30 "Jolt"

Day 30 of Inktober, prompt word "Jolt." I previously wrote about Inktober here. This is an edited version, but I'm posting these daily on my Instagram, @St.Rhinoceros:

Day 30 of Inktober 2018, prompt word "Jolt." Dip pen and ink. by Ciana Pullen / St. Rhinocéros. [Image description: black and white line drawing on a white background of a woman reaching underwater toward the viewer. Only her hand and face are visible below the surface of the water, and the finger tips reach out toward the viewer, as if to rescue them from drowning, with dramatic perspective. The woman's face is intent and her eyes look toward the viewer. Her hair floats straight up. Lots of little bubbles create underwater texture.]

Inktober 2018, Day 29 "Double"

Day 29 of Inktober, prompt word "Double." I previously wrote about Inktober here. This is an edited version, but I'm posting these daily on my Instagram, @St.Rhinoceros:

Day 29 of Inktober 2018, prompt word "Double." This is a self-portrait as the Black Lodge version of myself, like Twin Peaks' Agent Dale Cooper's evil twin. If you haven't seen the new season of Twin Peaks, drop everything and go watch it! Of course I was afraid the new season after a hiatus since the early 90s would fail to recapture the initial magic, and to the extent that the earlier series create an appealing, goofy Americana feeling, it does fail a bit. But the spiritual, emotional, surreal and horror aspects really shined in this season. There is some goofiness and humor with the FBI agents and their world, though. Without spoiling anything (because it has nothing to do with the plot because it's David Lynch and some memorable scenes and characters simply have nothing to do with anything), there's an exquisite scene of a call girl simply exiting a room with tremendous style. Kyle MacLachlan acts his little butt off in the new series, and this drawing is a riff on a memorable scene of his. [Image description: black and white ink drawing of a haggard woman driving a car. Only hear head, shoulders and hand on the steering wheel are shown. She wears a black jacket on a black background and black steering wheel, with dark ragged cross hatching on the face and hand. The hair is backlit and outlined in white. The woman stares straight ahead at the viewer, looking intense, evil and expressionless, with a closed mouth and penetrating eyes.]

Inktober 2018, Day 28 "Gift"

Day 28 of Inktober, prompt word "Gift." I previously wrote about Inktober here. This is an edited version, but I'm posting these daily on my Instagram, @St.Rhinoceros:

Day 28 of Inktober 2018, prompt word "Gift." Dip pen and ink. by Ciana Pullen / St. Rhinocéros. I was feeling pretty despondent about "what is the point of art" when I made this; it's a bit sarcastic. When you think about it, there really ISN'T any point to art, and throwing your hat in the ring along with the greats really IS crazy. We all just do it anyway, that's how it works. [Image description: black and white line drawing of a mountain of motifs from famous paintings, including Artemisia Ghentileschi's Judith Slaying Holofernes, Matisse's Blue Seated Woman, Vermeer's Maid Pouring Milk, Manet's Bar Maid, Monet's Bridge, Velasquez's Infanta, Goya's Saturn Devouring His Son, Sargent's Madame X, Sophie Calle's self portrait covering one eye, Tamara de Lempicka's self portrait while driving, Degas's Woman Using Binoculars, Cassatt's Woman in Loge Using Binoculars, Cezanne's Still Life With Fruit (with a tiny figure skiing over the edge of the white tablecloth like the famous dream sequence from Hitchcock's Spellbound designed by Dali), Matisse's leafy cutouts, da Vinci's sketch of a helicopter-like device, Man Ray's iron with spikes, Toulouse-Lautrec's dancing woman, Lee Bontecou's welded hole sculpture, Odilon Redon's Cyclops, van Gogh's Starry Night, Degas' ballerina fixing her shoe, and Yayoi Kusama's polka dots, and Duchamp's Urinal. A small cartoon woman stands atop the pile of famous motifs holding a paintbrush and palette in one hand and holding up a finger to speak with the other. She's squatting under some sort of ceiling or roof because there's not much more room for anything else on the page. A word bubble comes from her mouth reading, "Ehh, I think I can do better."]

Inktober 2018, Day 27 "Thunder"

Day 27 of Inktober, prompt word "Thunder." I previously wrote about Inktober here. This is an edited version, but I'm posting these daily on my Instagram, @St.Rhinoceros:

Day 27 of Inktober 2018, prompt word "Thunder." Dip pen and ink. by Ciana Pullen / St. Rhinocéros. [Image description: realistic black and white drawing of a thunderstorm. A small landscape takes up the bottom eighth of the image; towering storm clouds take up the rest of the space. A tiny single-wide trailer home on blocks sits on a wooded hill overlooking a valley and hills. Far away at the horizon a tornado has formed. In the middle ground a huge cloud is raining into the valley, creating a sweeping diagonal swath of lines and light from the bottom left up to the top right of the image. Several puffy black horizontal clouds are silhouetted against the rain. Behind the raining cloud, and to the right and behind the hill and trailer home are towering puffy cumulus clouds. Lightning jumps between two clouds. Shadows form on the ground from the clouds and the composition is overall dappled black with finely lined shades of grey. The storm appears to be moving toward the tiny trailer home.]

Inktober 2018 Day 26 "Stretch"

Day 26 of Inktober, prompt word "Stretch." I previously wrote about Inktober here. This is an edited version, but I'm posting these daily on my Instagram, @St.Rhinoceros:

Day 26 of Intkober 2018, prompt word "Stretch." Dip pen and ink. by Ciana Pullen / St. Rhinocéros. [Image description: black and white drawing of an interior looking through two doorways into a third room with a window. A man sits in a chair in front of the bright window turning halfway to look behind him. Behind the door frame in the second room, just out of his view, is a woman standing with one leg bent as if hesitating to take a step, with her head tilted as if about to peer around the corner or contemplating what is around the corner, and her hand is over her heart. She stands mostly in shadow. The drawing is shaded mostly with horizontal pen strokes. The space around the doorway closest to the viewer is black, with reflected light from the window on the floor creating sort of a bright visual runway for the eye of the viewer to travel toward the man and window. Style is realistic.]

Inktober 2018, Day 25 "Prickly"

Day 25 of Inktober, prompt word "Prickly." I previously wrote about Inktober here. This is an edited version, but I'm posting these daily on my Instagram, @St.Rhinoceros:

Day 25 of Inktober 2018, prompt word "Prickly." This is a representation of that prickly sort of headache you get when you're sleep deprived, which I certainly was when I made this. Dip pen and brush, ink. By Ciana Pullen / St. Rhinocéros. [Image description: black and white psychedelic-looking drawing of the torso of a skeleton with crystals growing off the neck. A large brain floats in the space above it with cords leading out to two eyeballs. One looks to the left off the page. The other looks at the viewer and has a droopy baggy lid drawn over it. The background is full of messy white line drawings of faces and eyes on a black background. A stripey line divides the background between skeleton and brain, and above the line the background is short lines forming an undulating pattern. The skeleton bones have dots on them, and the eyeball that looks off page is repeated several times in a line filled with different patterns. Every inch of the page is covered in pattern.]

Inktober 2018, Day 24 "Chop"

Day 24 of Inktober, prompt word "Chop." I previously wrote about Inktober here. This is an edited version, but I'm posting these daily on my Instagram, @St.Rhinoceros:

Day 24 of Inktober 2018, prompt word "Chop." Dip pen and ink. by Ciana Pullen / St. Rhinocéros. [Image description: black and white drawing of the head and shoulders of a woman. She holds a knife with a sphere impaled on the end of it, which she examines with a disinterestedly skeptical expression. The sphere contains an image of a bird flying over treetops, as in a crystal ball or a parallel reality contained within the sphere. The sphere is the light source; the background is black and the figure is shaded in high contrast. Somewhat realistic style.]

Inktober 2018, Day 23 "Muddy"

Day 23 of Inktober, prompt word "Muddy." I previously wrote about Inktober here. This is an edited version, but I'm posting these daily on my Instagram, @St.Rhinoceros:

Day 23 of Inktober 2018, prompt word "Muddy." Dip pen and brush, ink. By Ciana Pullen / St. Rhinocéros. [Image description: black and white drawing the head and shoulders of a woman who is spinning around from upper left to bottom right of the image to face something the lower right of the viewer. She has wet stringy hair that is smacking her in the face and blobs of mud flying off of her face and torso. There's a big splash of mud through the negative space in the background in the upper section of the image. Most of the drawing is done with messy dark ink washes. The face is done with crosshatching pen marks. The face looks intense and angry.]

Inktober 2018, Day 22 "Expensive"

Day 22 of Inktober, prompt word "Expensive." I previously wrote about Inktober here. This is an edited version, but I'm posting these daily on my Instagram, @St.Rhinoceros.

I simply wanted to write some beautiful script with the dip pen, and that turned out to be more difficult than I thought. I ended up with two attempts I was willing to post, and none I loved. I would like that time machine, though.

Day 22 of Inktober 2018, prompt word "Expensive." by Ciana Pullen / St. Rhinocéros. [Image description: black and white ink drawing of a handwritten letter sitting on top of an envelope. The letter is formally written and is addressed to St. Rhinocéros's past self, then describes some financial difficulties and requests some actions for the Past Self to take to avoid said difficulties, ending with encouragement to be more "difficult" with regards to arguing financial decisions and to view the ensuing confidence as an investment in itself. The letter is signed Future Rhinocéros. A small chic package decorated with lavender sprigs and twine sits in the top right with a gift tag that reads, "F.R. -- Message received! Enclosed please find a time machine. -Past R."]

Attempt #2 at the same idea for "Expensive." By Ciana Pullen / St. Rhinocéros. The text is identical. [Image description: Same letter and response as above, but the text is simply written on the page like a letter, there's no pretense of making it look like a drawing of a letter sitting on a surface. The response is written in a small diagonal framed rectangle at the bottom right of the page. The focus is on the handwriting, which is old-fashioned cursive script, not too fancy.]

Tutorial: How To Paint A Cat

Thank you @Hosico Cat for this amazing tutorial.

[Video description: relaxing vibraphone music plays while the camera shows a close-up of a paintbrush painting a cat's head on a plain white background, which in fact is obviously just an illusion created by a very calm real cat wearing a piece of paper with a hole cut out like an Elizabethan collar and someone stroking the cat's face with a dry paintbrush. The cat glances around and enjoys the paintbrush massage.]

Inktober 2018 Day 21, "Drain"

Day 21 of Inktober, prompt word "Drain." I previously wrote about Inktober here. This is an edited version, but I'm posting these daily on my Instagram, @St.Rhinoceros:

Day 21 of Inktober 2018, prompt word "Drain." I shamelessly stole the pinecone head idea from a phenomenal 1920s Dada / surrealist artist named Claude Cahun; she once wore a costume pinecone or fungus on her head and took some photos. I intended to come up with a more meaningful object with which to replace the head, but after serious effort I was unable to improve on the pinecone. [Image description: black and white ink drawing showing a woman with a big pinecone for a head who has just dropped to her knees and is reaching blindly for her human face/head, which has somehow come off and is melting and dripping through an invisible grid that forms the plane of the ground. The figure is top left, the face is bottom right, and she reaches toward the viewer. She wears shorts, sneakers and a loose cropped T-shirt. Her face is conventionally pretty and calmly smiling but one eye has dripped through the grate. A swath of abstract black brushstrokes behind and to the right of the figure highlight that area of the illustration. The style is graphic-realistic, not cartoony.]

Inktober 2018 Day 20 "Breakable"

Day 20 of Inktober, prompt word "Breakable." I previously wrote about Inktober here. This is an edited version, but I'm posting these daily on my Instagram, @St.Rhinoceros:

Day 20 of Inktober 2018, prompt word "Breakable." Dip pen and ink. By Ciana Pullen / St. Rhinocéros. [Image description: black and white ink drawing of a woman walking on a beach. A more detailed rectangular section in the upper center of the page shows a woman in a sweatshirt and jeans walking near the waves viewed from far away. A piece of driftwood and seaweed sits half buried in the sand. Beyond the frame of that rectangular section is a series of five overlapping contour line drawings of a nude woman walking, looking up and looking down and ahead, walking forward and, with perspective, moving diagonally from upper left to lower right toward the viewer. The larger version of the driftwood also makes an overlapping appearance beyond the rectangular section. The horizon line and edge of the waves extends also beyond the section forming a triangular shape because of perspective. The overall style is realistic, not cartoony.]

Inktober 2018, Day 1 "Poisonous"

I mentioned that I wasn't able to scan the first Inktober image because it was too large. So I photographed it and I'm finally posting it now.

Day 1 of Inktober, prompt word "Poisonous." I previously wrote about Inktober here. This is an edited version, but I'm posting these daily on my Instagram, @St.Rhinoceros:

Day 1 of Inktober 2018, prompt word "Poisonous." Dip pen and ink. by Ciana Pullen / St. Rhinocéros. [Image description: a black and white ink drawing with ink washes. A black rectangle covers most of the page, set to the bottom left of center. Inside that frame is an ambulance with open doors, viewed from the back looking straight in, slightly from below. A stretcher sits halfway out of the ambulance. A man floats or flies out of the ambulance slightly above the viewer and his head extends out of the black frame at the top left. He has two heads; one looks back at the ambulance, troubled, and the other looks straight ahead, determined. He holds a backpack. The interior of the ambulance is very brightly lit, and one door opens beyond the black frame. The dual light sources make the face very high contrast.]

Inktober 2018, Day 19 "Scorched"

Day 19 of Inktober, prompt word "Scorched." I previously wrote about Inktober here. This is an edited version, but I'm posting these daily on my Instagram, @St.Rhinoceros:

Day 19 of Inktober 2018, prompt word "Scorched." I drew this to look like a solarized photograph (I drew from a normal cell phone photo which is grainy enough to leave something to the imagination). To make a solarized print in a photo lab, you expose the film onto paper, then put the paper in developer. Just as the image starts to develop you take it out and scorch the photosensitive silver salts with bright light for a few seconds, then continue developing the print as usual. You end up with a psychadelic quicksilver negative effect. Dip pen and ink. by Ciana Pullen / St. Rhinocéros. [Image description: black and white shaded portrait of a man leaning and looking intently out of frame. Where the darkest areas of his face would be, they are instead flipped and a bit marbleized.]

Inktober 2018, Day 18 "Bottle"

Instead of a finished piece for Day 18 I made a video. "Einwegsflaschen" in German means disposable bottles that cannot be recycled. Literally, "one way bottles." The drawing is of Bernini's famous "The Ecstasy of Saint Theresa," and the story is a Buddhist parable but I can't remember the source.

Day 18 of Inktober, prompt word "Bottle." I previously wrote about Inktober here. This is an edited version, but I'm posting these daily on my Instagram, @St.Rhinoceros:

[Video description: Title reads, "Einwegsflaschen (Disposable Bottles)." A bottle is picked up off a piece of paper and then, in fast-forward speed, a close up of a pen nib draws a loose sketch of Bernini's famous sculpture, "The Ecstasy of Saint Theresa," which is a sculpture of an angle holding a cloaked woman as she reclines and holding an arrow that is poised to pierce her heart. Her face looks orgasmic and/or overwhelmed. The pen writes the words, "The Ecstasy of Saint Theresa," then draws an arrow into her heart. Then a dropper drops water onto the image, causing the ink to run. A hand then smears it all over and the result is a drawing with a messy ink wash over it. The pen begins writing over the image, and superimposed script reads "Once upon a time there was a rain drop who was afraid to fall because when he hit he would be obliterated. But he discovered that when he fell into the ocean it did not swallow him up. Instead he opened up and swallowed the ocean." Then a little bottle shape is torn out of the page and the paper is held up to the light that shines through the bottle-shaped hole.]

Inktober2018 Day 17 "Swollen"

Day 17 of Inktober, prompt word "Swollen." I previously wrote about Inktober here. This is an edited version, but I'm posting these daily on my Instagram, @St.Rhinoceros:

Day 17 of Inktober 2018, prompt word "Swollen." Dip pen and ink. By Ciana Pullen / St. Rhinocéros. There is ALWAYS this guy on public transport (and on a few memorable occasions, this woman). Still, overall Berlin has public transit has felt safer than Washington, DC., and Charleston, SC., public transit. Beer is allowed and commonplace in public, so there's more of a gradation between "normal" people, those traversing a particularly belligerent stage of puberty, sports fans, and That Guy. In Berlin the fights and shadiness almost never involve others so long as you stare at the wall pretending HARD that nothing is happening (and of course everybody does that). Whereas in the US the first thing the trouble-maker does usually is try to involve everyone around them. Though we did have a few knife-ings throughout Germany and a group of dudes kicked some lady down the stairs here in Berlin; but let's be real, that wouldn't have even made the local news in the US it's so common.  [Image description: black and white realistic drawing of a long seat on a subway car viewed face-on. On the right sits a big slovenly man with a beer leaning against his duffle bag taking up a lot of space on the bench seat, looking out of frame to the right and shouting with his mouth wide open at nothing in particular. On the left is a smaller woman cramped into the corner as far as possible away from him, looking away and to the lower left through a glass partition. Her ankles are crossed and her purse is bundled onto her lap; her hands are clutched. Windows, hanging loopy straps that you're meant to grab onto when the train is moving, and several bars are also visible. The scene is lit harshly with overhead lights and the drawing is high contrast; the linework is scratchy, giving it an overall gritty, slightly cartoony feeling.]

Inktober 2018 Day 16 "Angular"

Day 16 of Inktober, prompt word "Angular." I previously wrote about Inktober here. This is an edited version, but I'm posting these daily on my Instagram, @St.Rhinoceros:

Day 16 of Inktober 2018, prompt word "Angular." Drawn in the mirror. Dip pen and ink. By Ciana Pullen / St. Rhinocéros. [Image description: black and white sketch of the head and shoulders of a woman (me). Her head is turned to the left in profile and the viewer's eye level is collarbone height, so the neck is central to the image. A big neck muscle is central to the piece, drawn as a big black vertical line traversing most of the piece. The linework is very sketchy and bold. Angular measurement lines break the piece up into planes. The planes of the face and neck are also geometrically simplified, and the directional shading lines also are planar and angular. Round facial features, head hair, nape of neck hair and shirt collar intersect the straight angular lines of the skeleton and neck. Not a cartoony style; realistic but sketchy.]

Inktober 2018 Day 15 "Weak"

Day 15 of Inktober, prompt word "Weak." I previously wrote about Inktober here. This is an edited version, but I'm posting these daily on my Instagram, @St.Rhinoceros:

Day 15 of Inktober 2018, prompt word "Weak." Drawn in the mirror (except the goat head and bottomless abyss, obviously, those I image-searched online). Dip pen and ink. By Ciana Pullen / St. Rhinocéros. This is meant to capture that feeling in the throat and chest when you feel like you want to cry, but you either don't have the energy or privacy to do so. [Image description: black and white finely shaded drawing of a woman's head and chest. There is a goat head awkwardly squeezed under her chin emerging from her neck, stacked like a totem pole. There is a black hole or nebula filling the space of her upper torso. The top of her head extends off the top left of the page and she looks down at the viewer with a slack face. There is blank white background space in the upper right and mostly blackish space around the nebula filling the silhouette of her chest and shoulders.]

Inktober 2018 Day 14 "Clock"

Day 14 of Inktober, prompt word "Clock." I previously wrote about Inktober here. This is an edited version, but I'm posting these daily on my Instagram, @St.Rhinoceros:

Day 14 of Inktober 2018, prompt word "Clock." Text reads, "Heliotropism-- Sunflowers turn toward the sun as it moves across the sky." by CIana Pullen / St. Rhinocéros. Dip pen and ink. [Image description: In the upper left corner are two standing bare legs visible from the back, from the calves down. Radiating from the feet are several overlapping shadows which extend across the upper page, diagonally down to the lower right, and straight down, all ending out of frame and differently proportioned like shadows on a sun dial. In the bottom third are three sunflowers, one on a stalk with leaves facing away from the viewer, the middle sunflower without a stalk facing skyward and tipped toward the viewer, and the third facing the viewer almost full-on. The placement implies it's the same flower on a stalk changing position throughout the day. Superimposed over the stalk and leaves is a white rectangle outlined in black containing handwritten cursive script that reads, "Heliotropism-- Sunflowers turn toward the sun as it moves across the sky."]

Inktober 2018 Day 13 "Guarded"

Day 13 of Inktober, prompt word "Guarded." I previously wrote about Inktober here. This is an edited version, but I'm posting these daily on my Instagram, @St.Rhinoceros:

Day 13 of Inktober 2018, prompt word "Guarded," showing a minotaur in a labyrinth. By Ciana Pullen. [Image description: black and white ink drawing with light sepia brown washes in a realistic comic style. A bored naked woman with hairy legs and giant horns sits in a massive armchair reading a magazine and drinking tea. The chair has a shaggy fur hide draped over the seat, bull's hooves for legs, and the front of each arm is studded with a massive taxidermied animal paws (lion? demon?) clutching a human skull. The minotaur has her legs crossed and the magazine which she is thumbing through is balanced on her knee, her legs are crossed and she's absent-mindedly dangling a human skull from her toe by the eye socket like people do with sandals. Her other hand is lazily holding a big tea cup sitting on the arm of the chair. The scene is dramatically uplit from an unseen light source in the bottom right hand corner and a sliver of backlighting. In the upper left background a few corners of the maze are visible and a faraway second minotaur figure is walking, not toward the first minotaur.]

Inktober 2018 Day 12 "Whale"

Day 12 of Inktober, prompt word "Whale." I previously wrote about Inktober here. This is an edited version, but I'm posting these daily on my Instagram, @St.Rhinoceros:

Day 12 of Inktober 2018, prompt word "whale," after a painting by Mary Cassatt. This was my second attempt, at first I sketched out an interior scene of my own invention but it didn't have the right mood and looked too... invented. When I realized I wanted it to have the feel of Mary Cassat's painting, I decided to simply copy the painting and add my whale under the watery floor. I always thought the big blue sofas looked like they were floating in an ocean in the original. [Image description: black and white ink wash painting of a living room with several overstuffed skirted sofas and chairs in it at odd angles. In the chair closest to the viewer sits a little girl, bored and slumped back with her feet dangling. Instead of a floor, there is the surface of water with little ripples. The black shadow of a whale swims through the living room toward the viewer and underneath the chair the child sits on.]

Inktober 2018 Day 11 "Cruel"

Day 11 of Inktober, prompt word "Cruel." I previously wrote about Inktober here. This is an edited version, but I'm posting these daily on my Instagram, @St.Rhinoceros:

Day 11 of Inktober 2018, prompt word "Cruel." By Ciana Pullen / St. Rhinocéros. Dip pen and ink. [Image description: a black and white line drawing on a white background. On the left is a large figure that appears as if it's assembled out of several pieces collaged together. It's head is a giant screaming infant head, it has one naked beefy arm and muscular pectoral clenched in a fist, its body and other arm is in a black cartoonish business suit, and one of its feet is a white foot in a sandal that looks like a Roman sculpture. To its right on the bottom of the page is a black square with a small upside-down figure drawn inside with its extremities extending outside of the black frame. It has a baby's body and an elephant's head that is turned to look toward the screaming baby figure. Standing en pointe on top of the black square is another figure with a large baby's head (or doll's head) in profile looking calmly at the larger screaming figure, with 5 ballerina legs attached directly to the head. Each leg wears pointe shoes and is lifted in ballet attitude except one which extends down and balances on the black square. Four diagonal lines stretch across the top of the piece over the screaming baby's face and converge in the eye of the ballet feet figure, like rays of light refracting from a prism or lines radiating out from a central point. The overall look of the pieces is clean and graphic.]

Inktober Day 10 "Flowing"

Day 10 of Inktober, prompt word "Flowing." I previously wrote about Inktober here. This is an edited version, but I'm posting these daily on my Instagram, @St.Rhinoceros:

Day 10 of Inktober 2018, prompt word "Flowing." by Ciana Pullen / St. Rhinocéros. Dip pen and ink. [Image description: a black and white line drawing of a bathtub in the middle of some ocean waves, with a person in the bathtub looking out. The waves are medium-large, made up of flowing black lines that are loosely drawn. The bathtub is full of soap foam, with a dollop of foam on the bather's head. Only her head and shoulders are visible as she clutches the bathtub. Her facial expression is dismayed and confused. The bathtub and bather are also somewhat loosely and simply drawn. Above the flat waterline at the horizon near the upper edge of the image are little puffy clouds and a flock of birds.]

Inktober 2018 Day 9 "Precious"

Day 9 of Inktober, prompt word "Precious." I previously wrote about Inktober here. This is an edited version, but I'm posting these daily on my Instagram, @St.Rhinoceros:

Day 9 of Inktober 2018, prompt word "Precious." by Ciana Pullen / St. Rhinocéros. I drew this out in black ink over a light yellow-orange mottled watercolor wash, then digitally reversed the colors so it was bright lines over a dark mottled blue/purple background. Then I made the bright lines a bit more yellowish than white to make it look less like an architectural blueprint. The eyes in circles I left un-reversed, but changed the colors slightly to blend with the rest of the image. [Image description: a mystical tarot card-like design drawn in pale yellow over a blueish black background. The linework is spare with little shading. In the center frame a large pomegranate sits on a dock that stretches symmetrically away from the viewer into a body of water. A section of the pomegranate is peeled with the flesh and seeds exposed. Directly above the end of the dock are two cupped hands with three circles lined up vertically superimposed above the hands. In each circle is an eye; the up looks up and to the left, the middle looks down and to the right, the bottom is closed. To the right of the hands superimposed above the waterline and sky is a glowing set of abstract symbols including wings, a moon and some dangling mobile-like circles and lines. Glow lines radiate out from the symbol a short distance. On the left of the hands a towering wave rises out of the water and curls up over the hands. The stylized wave design is reminiscent of the famous Japanese woodcut print by Hiroshige. In the outer rectangular frame are, the wave extends beyond the inner frame. A string of stars and stardust on the bottom left and upper right outer frame areas bookend the middle framed area.]

Inktober 2018 Day 8 "Star"

Day 8 of Inktober, prompt word "Star." I previously wrote about Inktober here. This is an edited version, but I'm posting these daily on my Instagram, @St.Rhinoceros:

Day 8 of Inktober 2018, prompt word "Star." by Ciana Pullen / St. Rhinocéros. Dip pen and ink. I'm pretty happy with this, but if I had this to do over again (and who knows, maybe I will), I'd make it at least twice as large so that I could get a finer gradation of black and white. I wanted the figures to pop less, to blend into the night sky a little more with the direction and texture of markmaking setting them apart rather than a distinct white outline. I'd also make the faces a little less cartoony. I wanted to capture that wild-eyed look that prey gets in the last seconds before its capture, but instead I got more of a "ruh-roh!" expression. This might be one to try again if I'm ever in a particularly obsessive mood for hours on end. [Image description: Black and white drawing of stars in the night sky. Stars are small white twinkly shapes, while the black space in between is a flowing texture of black lines very close to each other. In the center part of the black space between the stars, a lion is closing in on an antelope. The antelope is running toward the viewer with the lion right behind it, looking back at the lion in horror. Both animals are made of the same linework texture as the rest of the black space. But the eyes, teeth and claws are white.]

Inktober 2018 Day 7 "Exhausted"

Day 7 of Inktober, prompt word "Exhuasted." I previously wrote about Inktober here. This is an edited version, but I'm posting these daily on my Instagram, @St.Rhinoceros:

Day 7 of Inktober 2018, prompt word "Exhausted." I was happy with the previous two drawings, but I felt my actual drawing was too uptight. So for this one I drew laundry because it doesn't need to be exact or precise like a human figure, and tried to just have fun with markmaking. I'm especially happy with the socks on the top and the hem of the jeans on the bottom. By Ciana Pullen / St. Rhinocéros. Dip pen and ink. [Image description: black and white line drawing of a teetering pile of folded laundry. Some of it is loose contour drawing, some is a variety of markmaking and patterns.]

Inktober 2018 Day 6, "Drooling"

Day 6 of Inktober, prompt word "Drooling." I previously wrote about Inktober here. This is an edited version, but I'm posting these daily on my Instagram, @St.Rhinoceros:

Day 6 of Inktober 2018, prompt word "Drooling." Dip pen and ink. [Image description: black and white realistic line drawing of a woman in a striped shirt dragging a much larger version of herself. The small woman is straining. The large woman is limp and drooling profusely; her slack face is visible in the foreground.]

Inktober Day 5 "Chicken"

Day 5 of Inktober, prompt word "Chicken." I previously wrote about Inktober here. This is an edited version, but I'm posting these daily on my Instagram, @St.Rhinoceros:

Day 5 of Inktober 2018, prompt word "Chicken," by Ciana Pullen / St. Rhinocéros. Ink with dip pen. [Image description: black and white realistic style drawing with shading and crosshatching. The top half is a man's face, turned 3/4 toward shadow and looking back over his shoulder in horror with bulging eyes. The bottom, where a mustache would be, is instead 8 or so human legs attached under his nose, running to the right and away from the viewer, kicking up a cloud of dust.]

Inktober Day 4 "Spell"

Day 4 of Inktober, prompt word "Spell." I previously wrote about Inktober here. This is an edited version, but I'm posting these daily on my Instagram, @St.Rhinoceros:

Day 4 of Inktober 2018, prompt word "Spell," by Ciana Pullen / St. Rhinocéros. Dip pen and ink wash. I'm happy with the image, it's basically what I envisioned; but I realized at this point in the challenge that drawing in this style is the biggest time investment with the least amount of visual payoff for me. I always think cartooning will make me draw looser, but in fact it's the opposite. My style is loosest, simplest and most honest when I'm aiming at realism. Good to know, and just one reason I'm glad I participated in Inktober this year. [Image description: a cartoonish black and white drawing with ink wash in the style of The New Yorker cartoons (that was an accident). It's a view straight down the hallway of a bland modern hospital, from slightly above eye level. A bored nurse in scrubs walks along the ground pushing a cart. Meanwhile patients float near the ceiling. In the close foreground only a man's belly, feet, and one hand holding a cup of tea are visible. In the middle-ground a woman in a wheelchair floats with the top of her head pointed toward the viewer. Just behind her a man floats with his back to the viewer looking at the ground, like a pathetic version of a famous heavenly figure in the Sistine Chapel. They float just under fluorescent lights and are in shadow; they also cast shadows on the shiny floor that stretch toward the viewer. Extra shadows hint that there are more floating patients behind the wheelchair lady, out of view.]

Inktober, day 3 "Roasted"

Day 3 of the Inktober challenge which I previously wrote about here. The prompt word is, "roasted."

Day 3 of Inktober 2018, prompt word "Roasted." Sadly my scanner struggles to reproduce the color of the highlighters I used; the original is black & white ink with neon orange (pink and yellow) highlighter ink. [Image description: realistic-cartoonish drawing with ink wash of a man and woman walking down a street. The man has his head down, the woman looks at him worried, they're holding hands. They walk in front of a wrought iron fence and residence with a window. It's black and white with a grid-like appearance because of the architecture. Superimposed and offset at a -30 degree angle is an orange line drawing of a nuclear bomb exploding and the man covering his face. The drawing extends beyond the borders of the black & white image.]

Inktober, day 2 "Tranquil"

I'm participating in an online drawing challenge called Inktober, where you challenge yourself to complete one drawing per day in ink throughout October and post it online. There is an official list of creative prompt words which people can choose to use, and I am, because it's fun to see what everyone else did for that prompt. Participation is completely casual and chaotic, so judging from Instagram I think around 4,000 people are doing it. The point is simply to improve your skills and motivation while finding community in an otherwise lonely discipline.

I've been posting low-quality phone camera pictures on my Instagram account @St.Rhinoceros but I finally scanned some drawings in and edited them. I'm starting with Day 2 here because I stupidly drew Day 1 so large that it won't fit on my scanner which means I have to photograph it with perfect ambient light that won't leave a gradient (and it ALWAYS leaves a gradient). I'm not in the mood to do that right now. So here is Day 2, prompt word "tranquil":

Sketch for Day 2 of Inktober 2018, prompt word "tranquil." This is my husband and I relaxing in the Schlosspark in Berlin, a huge garden behind a restored Baroque palace called Schloss Charlottenburg. The garden adjacent to the palace is strictly formal in the Baroque style, while the rest is a wooded area around a winding river in the Victorian style of Frederick Law Olmstead with the occasional Italianate formal area around a sculpture. A resident flock of sheep move from field to field and keep the lawn areas under control without mowing them. It's in the middle of the city but so quiet. [Image description: a black and white pen sketch of a landscape with a large tree on the left with sunlight filtering through its leaves, a ribbon of river in the middle with a reflection of the trees and shrubbery, and a riverbank on the right with trees and a sculpture that are illuminated by rays of sunlight flowing diagonally from left to right. A row of formal evergreens cuts the composition horizontally at the waterline in the bottom third. Under the tree on the left in the mid-foreground a couple of people lie on the ground on a blanket sleeping or looking up at the sky. The style is somewhat academic but looser.]

Dancer Bastien Hippocrate

I saw this dancer in a music video and thought he was very interesting:

[video: moody music plays as a man, who first appears to be drunk, is actually dancing in a dark allyway. The scene is lit by car headlights, as if the camera is in a car that is backing slowly away while the dancer follows.]

[video: a male dancer (Bastien Hippocrate) and female dancer (Claire Dessimoz) are connected by five-foot tethers, placed to look accidental, on various parts of their torsos and limbs. As they dance they manipulate the other person's position and catapult each other around. The style is writhing and messy. The first part is just the sound of the dancers shuffling and huffing, then abstract guitar music starts, which sounds loose, moody and agitated.]

Avant garde clothing by Iris van Herpen

[video: a profile of fashion/costume designer Iris van Herpen, showing clothes that are extremely impractical, ethereal and surprising. Lots of laser cut shapes and high-tech materials manipulated so they look organic or alien.]

Playing Clair de Lune for a blind 80-year-old elephant

video description: A piano sits in a forest clearing. A man leads an elephant to it, pats its trunk, and plays Clair de Lune by Debussy. The elephant waggles its ears and listens patiently.

There's a little-known elephant sanctuary near Nashville where I used to live (little known because they don't allow visitors; it's purely for the elephants). I wonder if they ever do this.

Mummified Crocodile Conservation

I hope you enjoy this video about the British Museum conserving a mummified ancient Egyptian crocodile with 30 baby crocodiles on its back. They're preparing it to be exhibited for the first time in 70 years. First they send it through a CT scanner to see what is inside and how it is mummified, but to do that they must inspect it for fragile areas and pack it up to be moved. Next they remove dust with inventive tools and reinforce certain areas with adhesive.

Too Many Statues? A Response to Martin Kettle.

As you may know, a few days ago a bronze statue of English suffragist Millicent Fawcett was unveiled in London's Parliament Square. It is the much-celebrated first female statue in this public square of national importance which already features statues of notable historic kings and political figures such as Winston Churchill. And today in The Guardian, Martin Kettle penned an article calling for fewer statues, not more.

Of course he has no objections to commemorating Fawcett, Kettle explains, and proclaims his goodwill toward Tuesday's celebrants. But the thankless job of raining on their parade falls upon his shoulders. To add to the statues in London, he fears, is to fuel an arms race of power and influence that statues represent. What's to stop Trump or Tony Blair from commemorating themselves in statue form to express their power, just as commemorative Reagan fever swept the US a few decades ago as an expression of conservative power? After all, he points out, one need only look at the statues already in Parliament Square to see how conservative they skew-- hardly representative of the legacies of liberalism and labour movements (or the existence of Scotland). To only the most power-hungry of the victors go the spoils. Modern Britain is a pluralistic society, writes Kettle, yet its statues do not-- and indeed cannot-- reflect that. No new statues in Parliament Square, proposes Kettle. What we need is fewer statues-- to remove a few of the real stinkers.

 When I read a news article I always keep in mind that authors rarely get to write their own headlines and bylines, and are under immense pressure to remain topical and grab attention. So I'm willing to look past the article's function as a knee-jerk "Nuh-uhh!" to a feminist achievement, in order to consider the real meat of the article. Look past it, but not ignore it. After all, how fishy is it that the midst of a celebration for a feminist statue just happens to be the moment when Kettle feels enough is enough with the statues-- or at least the point where The Guardian feels the public will be receptive toward that view? Only a few years ago a Gandhi statue was unveiled in Parliament Square, and before that Nelson Mandela. If Kettle is right about London being in the grips of a statue-fever, more are surely to come. Perhaps Kettle could have saved his article for one of them and avoided participating in the spurious phenomenon of declaring that things have Gone Too Far the second women approach equal representation in film, academics and the corporate world. Unless the next few sculptures to go up are also popular and well-deserved, in which case Kettle's entire point would be more challenging to make.

However Kettle makes an excellent point about statues as the inevitable expression of power-hungriness and dominance rather than popular merit or moral courage. Even with all the care modern generations give to commemorating only the worthy in statues, will our values hold up through future generations? Or will they seem as backward and oppressive as centuries past appear to us? At the same time, when one considers 2018 as merely part of an endless ancient cycle of struggle and renewal, why would Kettle imagine the struggle to express dominance would stop with us? Why would our generation stop striving to leave our enduring mark on the world?

While "dominance and power" might conjure images of a feudal warlord, it's surprisingly also an excellent framing of what Millicent Fawcett helped achieve. Suffrage is about power: the power to participate in one's own government and society, to lead, to resist, to excel. It's no mere feel-good "empowerment," as the word is so often overused today, but the very tangible power to move through society as an equal citizen. And while feminists abhor accusations of seeking dominance over men, the fact is that a belief in equality and civil rights must be socially dominant in order for any citizen not to be oppressed. How can a woman access crucial services if the majority of those services subscribe to male supremancy? Fair interactions with police, judges, medical workers, educators and the rest of society would be impossible, and so would be equality.

The presence of a bronze statue of Millicent Fawcett in Parliamentary Square is likely more about cementing and defending that dominance for all to see, than about Fawcett herself. To those who support male supremacy, the Fawcett statue is precisely the Trump statue scenario that Kettle fears. Likewise those more radically progressive citizens for whom Fawcett's activism was hopelessly milquetoast are taunted by the more moderate dominance represented by the statue. Under-served pluralism, indeed.

Yet despite nods to "plurality" and "both sides," no British person of any political faction has gone unaffected by what Fawcett helped to achieve. If anything, marking the magnitude of women's suffrage with her sculpture a over century later is too little, too late. Is it really fair to say we need a new approach to public art because statues like hers "emphasize our differences"? Isn't that just a way of erasing history to avoid controversy? Do women really need to be "brought together" with those who deny their equal humanity?

But when Kettle sets up a false division between banal statues and public sculpture with more artistic merit, I beg to differ. Sure, statues often fall victim to the bland yet offensive bad taste of art-by-committee, simply because so much money and municipal posturing are involved. But so does much of high-profile public art. Are we really going to weigh the social value of Trafalgar Square's giant bronze thumbs-up against the hard-boiled civic blandness of the Fawcett statue? To what end? When I think of a great statue I think of a sculpture that is also a great work of art. The Einstein memorial in Washington, DC., comes to mind: an expressively lumpy hulk luxuriating in his quiet, intimate hideaway, as inviting and accessible as he is lost in thought. Or the lesser known elegant bronze punks of Berlin, forever occupying the steps of a local government building in their aesthetically marvelous simplicity, relatable yet eternal. Or Rodin's lyrical memorial to the Burghers of Calais. Unlike art-by-committee, great statues like these don't give the public what it wants so much as give the public what it didn't yet know it wanted. They teach and connect because they're visually expressive as sculptures. What we need are more of these. Not less.

With his call for public art instead of statues, I think Kettle is also too quick to dismiss the cultural value people continue to place on statues. Most folks don't have the money or clout to influence what gets cast in bronze for the town square. But if the popularity of Madame Toussad's is any indication, statues still matter to people. Hardly any vacation or weekend downtown is complete without a selfie with the local statue, especially if it's physically accessible. Popular bronzes of Marilyn Monroe and Jimmy Hendrix demonstrate that people still want to see their generation's heroes celebrated as statues. Sales are strong for pricey handcrafted figurines of fictional characters. Since Planet of the Apes, films have relied on the pure shock value of the beloved Statue of Liberty getting damaged. The playful Italian film Garibaldi's Lovers shows life with public statues in a warmer light.

But what I'm especially surprised Kettle neglected to mention, given its topical relevance, is the current movement to remove offensive statues in the US. Protesters recently toppled a statue commemorating Confederate soldiers in front of the Durham County Courthouse which had originally been erected in the 1920s heyday of the KKK. Police had greased it up with cooking oil to prevent protesters from climbing on it, but following the Charlottesville neo-Nazi rally and murder, the statue met its end, appropriately enough, when protesters managed to fasten it in a noose. Meanwhile in New York City a statue of Dr. J Marion Sims, the "Father of Gynecology," is no more. Enough New Yorkers found it untenable to glorify a man who experimented on and tortured enslaved women in the name of medicine, that they successfully petitioned for its removal. Many traditionally celebrated figures who contributed to Native American genocide or who were among the most egregious proponents of slavery are also up for removal. There's a tradition of toppling statues-- Hussein in Iraq and Stalin in the former Soviet Bloc come to mind-- and the US is having its moment.

While on the surface a tendency to topple bronzes may support Kettle's call for fewer statues, in fact I think it shows just how deeply connected people remain to these sculptures and the symbolic power they represent. I don't see this moment as the moment when we all calm down and, for the first time ever, stop struggling for visibility in the town square, stop caring so much about statues, stop striving to adjust the public displays of power to something that more accurately reflects our lives and times.

The "arms race" that I see happening is really a different sort, a race between nonspecific public art and specific statues. That is, between sculptures commemorating enormous groups or ideas versus individual heroes. The lure and moving power of less specific, more abstract sculptures is undeniable. Take for example Käthe Kollwitz's powerful Mother and Son (Pietá) in a Berlin memorial to all victims of war and tyranny. Or Yinko Shonibare's new abstract "Wind Sculpture" in New York exploring migration, the African diaspora, and the American mixing of cultures. I'm glad to share a world with these sculptures. But the case for celebrating individual heroes is becoming ever more difficult-- and not for lack of unsung inspiring people. The idea of the Hero is increasingly removed from reality, placed into superhero movies, sci fi, fantasy, or even the distant past. Today's "badass" female character exists in mythical realms, has supernatural powers, does violent things that would be illegal and impossible in our real world. Never does her world threaten to intersect with reality. In our increasingly bureaucratic, anonymous world the idea of a real-world hero-- indeed, that individual people just like us can make a difference-- threatens to disappear.

A miscellaneous handful of Kettle's points still stick in my craw. If the 1970s unveiling of a statue of Winston Churchill in Parliamentary Square was "inevitable," why is it still so surprising (through no fault of Kettle's) to commemorate those who won liberty for literally half of all citizens? Why does Kettle approve of the US policy of waiting over 50 years after a president's term to commemorate him in statue, yet considers the Fawcett statue an imprudent (though honorable) move over a century after she made her mark? And finally: what, exactly, is so horrible about having an abundance of statues?

An advice letter from Holly's boyfriend in Breakfast at Tiffany's

 Dear Prudence [I imagine him writing],

I've been dating a woman for a few months now. We prefer not to use labels. When it's great, it's great. Shoplifting together, shared interests (we're both poor and good looking) and lots of sexual tension. We're both sex workers so I don't need to hide that aspect of myself from her. But I'm beginning to have some little niggling doubts. 

For example, she wakes up in late afternoon and spends her days chain smoking in a sawn off bathtub. Sometimes she wears bedsheets in public and most of the time she doesn't even wear pants. And occasionally she breaks into my apartment through the window and watches me sleep. Should I be worried? I find myself embarrassed night after night when she wakes up the whole apartment building because she can't be bothered to keep up with a key. Am I crazy or is that kind of an a**hole move? And then there's the monologue-ing. She is... an interrupter, for sure. I feel very unheard. Her scattered conversations are nearly impossible to follow. I feel bad because she must have some undiagnosed attention disorder which she's obviously trying to self-medicate with alcohol, but it's the 1960s and we don't know about attention disorders yet. That could explain why she doesn't properly feed and care for the cat she keeps. She jokes that she doesn't feel responsible for it, but surely she would never actually harm or abandon it? She also has a side gig helping the mafia organize crimes, though she reassures me that that's nothing to worry about. 

But my question is mainly about the other men in her life. I found out she walked out on her husband and stepchildren, but that's understandable because she was like fourteen. And this one's a doozie: whenever the sexual tension mounts she tells me I remind her of... her little brother?! She even calls me by his name. And one more thing-- I just found out she's engaged to a Brazilian millionaire, but it's just for the money. It seems a little unfair, since I broke it off with my sugar-mamma to be with her. I simply assumed, without asking, that she wanted to take things to that level. Why doesn't she wordlessly understand that she belongs to me and we're dating now?

Do you think we can make this work? I sure hope so because she's gorgeous, super quirky, and she's a regular Mozart on the ukulele.

-Nervous in New York

 

Characters Paul Varjack and Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany's.

Royal Ballet Rehearsal

I've become completely addicted to this series of filmed rehearsals of the Royal Ballet on YouTube. I could have sworn I previously posted a clip of the final caterpillar scene from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, also from the Royal Ballet, but I can't find it so I'll post it again. I found a rehearsal of this same scene and it was fascinating.

[video: a scene from the Royal Ballet's production of Alice in Wonderland, in which the Caterpillar convinces Alice to eat a magic mushroom. It's mischievous and Arabic-inspired with undulating hypnotic moves; at one point the Caterpillar goes off stage and comes back with all his "legs," i.e. eight more dancers in a train behind him inside a long caterpillar costume.]

I particularly enjoyed this clip of a rehearsal of a ballet called Elite Syncopations, which provides insight into a production that I probably wouldn't have enjoyed very much in its finished form.

[video: the Royal Ballet rehearse Elite Syncopations, in which a comic coquettish trio dance to ragtime piano music. It's one of those choreographic beasts where every little wrist flick has to be perfect.]

I can't watch this without remembering high school tap instructrix Stephanie Hamilton standing at the back of the auditorium during dance rehearsals screaming "JAZZ HAAAAAAANNNNNDS!" out of the darkness. It seems it's always the petite people who can bellow loudest.