Back to Paper

Dagon, 2.5" x 3.5" by Elaine Cheung

Sooo... I gave it a go.  I don't like technology after all.  Confirmed.  Fini.  Done.  It was great for awhile.  I did a portrait of my friend's dog....  so, it's not da Vinci.  Then I did a few sketches while out and about and I have to say, I don't like the feel of it.  There isn't the friction of the pencil on paper, there's no tactile sensation.  I can't get my lines fine enough.  The picture that comes out is way too colorful and because of the back lighting from the screen, everything glows.  It's just all wrong.  I give up on technology.  Technology is great for word processing.  It's great for watching netflix and looking things up on wikipedia, but for art, it is lost on me.

I think technology and I were doomed from the start.  Even when I was in school, taking notes for run of the mill classes, I would only write with a fountain pen.  No modern ball point pens for me!  It had to be ink.  And I preferred the non-cartridge type pen, the ones with the ink bladder.  I would have used a quill and ink at the time, but I couldn't find a source for tail feathers and it would have been burdensome to be sharpening quills in the middle of class anyway.  Still, I have to say, it was very, very enjoyable to write with a fountain pen, a pleasure. 

So, these last few weeks, I've completely gone back to just pen and paper.  It's simple, portable, infinitely more pleasurable than tapping a stylus on a glass screen.  And, there up above, to my utter relief, the simplest of pleasures, is my latest work... Dagon.