A Through L

I've given myself little drawing projects to do.

My house received new Yellow Pages the other day. I thought it would be really fun to use one of these huge things as a sort of really incredibly cheap sketchbook. The problem is, I don't have a phone line provided by Qwest since their customer service is so atrocious as to have the US Government fine them millions because of it; and so I don't get a phone book.

Their offices are located in one of the tallest, if not the tallest building in downtown Denver. On top of their building is a giant blue neon sign that proudly displays the company logo. Pretty neat idea, huh? No. The logo itself breaks some sort of regulation, so Qwest then pays a daily fine of thousands to have the damn thing up there. And I swear, you cannot get away from its other-worldly glow. It haughts you while you can't sleep at night. Perhaps this is why I now have a basement apartment...

So, when I stole the last of the Yellow Pages that were lying around next to the mailboxes, I didn't feel too bad. Qwest: turn off the sign, I'll stop stealing phone books.

I took the Yellow Pages to Penelope's work, ate some pasta, drank some coffee, ate some pastries, drank some tea and got to work. I brought ink and a few brushes I bought for a buck at the local art store that I found in the kid's section. I am going to, before this break ends, fill up each and every page with a drawing. Good loosening up exercise.

But it's actually interesting.

You can either chose to use the text and imagery that's already printed on the page as content to the drawing, or choose to ignore the text and just use that as sort of... texture to the painting.

For instance, on one page, I drew a line over every single name and left just the phone numbers. The page, for intensive purposes, is now useless in its original purpose. What's the use of the numbers without the label associated with it? On other pages, I outlined the boxes created by large ads and used the colors on the pages themselves as shapes and such.

I had moved from cheap kid brushes to a piece of yarn Julie gave me from her knitting scraps. I soaked the yarn in my ink water and and anchored on side of the piece and swiped the other across the page like a compass and made sort of interesting design - one of the more interesting pages in the book. I looked closer at the page and realized that it contained the listing for my school.

I also started to read a book on Synchronicitythat I found on Penelope's bookshelf last night.

There's absolutely too many things you can do with a mirror, a silly t-shirt, a camera and someone licking you.