I’ve been delving into the past again, looking at pictures of my older brother I took years ago. I originally took them to examine my relationship with him. Mike is very low functioning – what used to be called profoundly retarded, now called intellectually disabled; autistic and nonverbal. Until a couple of months ago, I was intent on analyzing whether I missed some kind of communication from him. On my last visit to him, with my mother and younger brother, I was so disappointed that I shifted my emphasis from performing a postmortem on our relationship to a looking for a way to express my own feelings visually.

Gone fishing

Last weekend I went fishing. California is having a bad drought, so the lake my brother-in-law, my cousin and I went to was down from the last time I was there. It was amazing. We saw the rope we tied up to once, at a favorite spot, 20 feet above us. We had a great time though, and each caught our limit of trout (they were all ~2 pounds). As a bonus, we saw two bald eagles!  Here is  a painting of our fishing hole.

 I can’t resist showing the biggest fish I ever caught. It was in Monterey Bay. I was stoked on my dramamine and was feeling fine. I caught half of a ling cod. The other half was eaten by a seal that poked his head up just as I hooked the fish. Then it disappeared. The seal swam faster than I could reel.  I’m sure glad I had better luck with this salmon:

Enough palette cleansing

Laugh Abstract 1

I tried a couple of more iterations of my watercolor studies of Mike laughing. They were intended to be more abstract. In the study below, I started out with a circle merged with a triangle for the laughing mouth. I fit the rest of the face around it. I felt that the odd position of the hand was an integral part of the composition. I’m not sure if it works. It is more caracatureish than abstract.

Laugh Abstract 2

This study below is more of a detail of yesterday’s painting than an abstract. I wanted to see if a more realistic mouth would convey the feeling of lightness or amusement. Again, the hand is essential to the composition. It seems to balance out the missing teeth in the laughing mouth.

Thinking ahead

I usually have an idea of what I wish to try for the next day’s post. In keeping with my altered mission, I must remind myself of what I am trying to do: attend to my feelings and express them visually. I suppose that my feelings don’t all have to be about my brother. That’s a thought!

I could also report about my reading about Paul Klee. I am reading a book about the Bauhaus in which Klee figured prominently. The author devotes more than 100 pages to this artist. It is a very interesting read.

Once again. Thank you, readers for your continuing interest.