Three More Little Drawings (Ocean, City, & Orchard)

Strange Ocean World (Wayne Ferrebee, 2015, colored pencil on paper)

Well…it was another day that got away.  What with work and dinner and the grind, I failed to write about beaked whales.  Don’t worry: those magnificent diving experts cannot escape our pen forever, but, in the interim, we must fall back on my daily doodle book (which Ferrebeekeeper cognoscenti know is a little moleskine sketch book that I carry around and draw in during my spare time).  I have a big sarcophagus-shaped pencil tin too—which is full of colored pencils and markers to bring my drawings to life.  The first sketch however (above) only required one “Blue Denim” colored pencil.  It’s a little unclear, but I think it is a picture of the future oceans filled with bathyspheres, synthetic ocean life (to replace the fish we are recklessly killing off), and ships driven by fanciful propulsion.  Synthetic beings and post-humans fly through the weird clouds of this strange ocean world.  In fact, maybe it’s not Earth at all, but somewhere else entirely—an ocean world of oddly familiar alien marvels.

City with Glowing Crystal (Wayne Ferrebee, 2015, ink on paper)

Next is another troubling pastiche of nature and technology.  A happy monster ambles by a shambling city while a gambling demon tosses dice at a magic crystal.  Reptiles and weeds fill up the foreground as strange elongated opossums creep in from the sides.  It’s just like now!  This might as well be a CNN photo about the 2016 election.  This image may need to be colored in.  What do you think?

Succulent Fruit (Wayne Ferrebee, 2015, Colored Pencil and Ink on paper)

Finally, thanks to enthusiastic comments from my favorite readers, I included more fruit.  One of my tasks at my new day job is overseeing the fruit supplies for a big office full of desk jockeys who spend all day looking at important documents.  Because of ancient precedent, almost all of the fruit is bananas, and my colleagues beg piteously for different fruit.  I have provided their wants…in this fantasy drawing which shows a succulent world of juices, seeds, and glowing tutti-fruit color. It could also be that there is a statement here about our world of agriculture, selective breeding, transgenic alteration, and over-consumption…or possibly it is just a fun doodle I made at lunchtime.  As always, thanks for looking at my little artworks. I treasure everybody’s comments (though I realize I have been slower than usual to respond).  Let’s keep enjoying the rest of summer. I’ll keep drawing (and the post about beaked whales will appear soon). Cheers!

Still-life with Quince, Cabbage, Melon and Cucumber

Still-life with Quince, Cabbage, Melon and Cucumber (Juan Sánchez Cotán, ca. 1600, oil on canvas)

Juan Sánchez Cotán (1560 A.D. – 1627 A.D.) was a Spanish painter who had a successful career painting altarpieces,  religious works, portraits, and still lifes for the elite art patrons of Toledo.  At the age of 43 he closed up his studio, renounced the world, and entered the great Carthusian monastery of Santa María de El Paular as a monk.   In his final years of painting as an independent artist–just before he left for the cloister in 1603–he mastered a highly realistic style of small ascetic still life paintings called bodegones.    The subjects of these paintings were generally fruit and vegetables, although sometimes a gamebird or ceramic object is included.   The composition is spare to the point of minimalism: setting is reduced to a few matte black angles.  The dramatically lit fruits and vegetables cast deep ominous shadows.  Although the hacked up melon takes pride of place, the quince and cabbage hang dramatically in the middle suspended from twine.  There is an enigmatic and mannered intensity to these works–as though the humble comestibles have become protagonists in a great tragic play or a melancholic opera.  Yet the drama remains elusive and we are left with a tight realistic painting.  Perhaps we will never know why the ornate cabbage seems so downcast despite its flamboyant leaves, or why the cucumber is a nosy outsider, or how the quince seems to be flying away to grace.   Despite the objectively rendered precision of the painting, the beautiful produce of Cotán’s little still life jealously keeps its own secret meaning.