Post square 013113 ~ Because He Had To Leave

In the summer of 2011 Javed Ahmadi, age 19, left his home in Helmand province to escape being kidnapped by the Taliban. He was headed for Sweden where his cousin, Zia, was waiting for him. He left behind his wife and baby daughter with the plans that he would bring them to Sweden, too.

A year and a half later, he had made it only as far as a small fishing village on the Aegean Sea. There, his smuggler crowded him onto a 30-foot wooden fishing boat with 22 other refugees. Just before leaving the shore, Javed borrowed a cell phone and called his father to ask him to pray for his safe arrival.

Just minutes after leaving the harbor, the small boat started taking on water. Within an hour it had nearly sunk.
According to the one survivor, when the boat capsized, Javed tried to rescue child. His body was found on the shore of the Greek island of Lesvos.

Zia found out about Javed's death through a television clip. He flew to Lesvos to identify Javed's body and arranged to have it transported back to Kabul so that his cousin could be buried in the family graveyard.

This drawing I did with the intention of being less obsessive and more expressive. Colored pencil on bristol.

Post square 013013 ~ Where Millie Dances

Every day, since the beginning of this year, I have looked at the main photo on the front page of the Washington Post and chosen one square inch to blow up into an abstract drawing, measuring approximately 4 or 5 inches square. I call these drawings "Post squares" and I number them according to the date they are drawn. I title them in a way that relates to the image of the original photo. I generally use colored pencil on bristol board.

The title of this drawing refers to my great niece (and she is great), who is a ballerina. She is eleven years old and has been getting some pretty cool dance gigs at the Kennedy Center in Washington DC. Millie was most recently a beautiful hedgehog in the National Ballet of Canada's performance of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

The square inch this drawing comes from was part of a photo of the Kennedy Center, which is due for an expansion. The only part of the celebrated building included is the white shape in the middle on the right side. I liked the shapes of what I'm guessing is the Watergate in the background and then what I think are probably headlights on the road shining into the Potomac River.

Post square 012913 ~ Patrolling the Streets of Gao

This was drawn quickly with charcoal pencil, mostly, and some colored pencil. I meant for it to be quite abstract, but I imagine you can tell pretty easily what this is. Amazing what one tiny square inch of a rather complicated photo can reveal.

The larger image, of which this drawing is a small part, is that of a group of Chadian soldiers on patrol in Gao, northern Mali.

Post square 012813 ~ The Mourner's Dress

Yesterday 230 people died in a fire at a nightclub in Santa Maria, Brazil.

When I started this project of, every day, taking a square inch of the front page photo of the Washington Post and turning it into an abstract drawing, I'm not sure how much I considered that some of the topics would be difficult. Like the soldier's story yesterday, and this tragedy today.

Yesterday, when I saw that the photo was from a video of a soldier under attack, initially I thought that I shouldn't do my project because I was afraid it might be taken as exploitive or disrespectful. But I decided that what I am doing is acknowledging. Terrible things happen, and they happen so often that I feel sometimes I'm enured to much of what I hear or read about, simply because it is so much. What doing this project makes me do is sit with the idea of what I'm drawing... and think about it. A practice of empathy.

This detail from the photo is not actually the fabric of the mourner's dress. It's part of the wreath placed by the coffin. The woman kneeling beside it is wearing a flowered blouse. Not the standard and depressing total black garb we don here in the US to attend a funeral.

Post square 012713 ~ Daniels Retrieves His Weapon

Instead of one big picture on the front page of the Post today, there were four small frames from a video. The video was taken by a helmet camera on Pfc. Ted Daniels' helmet. Pfc. Daniels was fighting in Afghanistan and the footage witnesses him being caught in a Taliban barrage.

The YouTube of his experience has been viewed 23 million times. That means that 23 million times there was someone braver than I. I don't want to watch a video of a soldier screaming for help.

He does recovery from his injuries.

I used the same approach as I did on the square three days ago, starting with a a print of one of my texture photographs. This was a photo of snow that had fallen off a power line onto the dark road. I inverted the contrast.

The colors were chosen randomly from my box of colored pencils, but I decided what section of the composition I wanted them to go in, instead of making that random, too, which is what I usually do. 

Post square 012613 ~ Silent No More

Wasn't feeling particularly creative or inspired to experiment with anything new, so reverted back to the random color pencil with just a little detail with pen.

I chose this portion of the top of a head because I wanted to use the organic shapes of the hair against the hard architectural edges in the background.

The hair belongs to an antiabortion activist with the Silent No More Awareness Campaign, praying outside the Supreme Court. 

Post square 012513 ~ Not Quite Enough

It was easy to choose the square inch I wanted to work from today. I was immediately drawn to the big shape of this snow saucer and the shadow under it. A six-year-old kid named Ivy is carrying it back up to the top of the hill to try to make the best of not quite enough snow.

I added acrylic to the mix this time. And watercolor, which I started with. Then went back and forth with acrylic and colored pencil, overlapping to build up the texture. There is some watercolor pencil and a brush pen, too.

I was looking at the paintings of Peruvian artist Nebiur Arellano for her use of surface treatment and color. And I meant to add some details from a book I was recently given on Aboriginal art, but I scanned it in before remembering that I wanted to do that, and then it was time to watch a movie...