The notion that we, as visual creatures, are all trapped within our own personal soap bubble of visual constructs was something I thought about constantly at that time; hence, the title of this series: Circumscribed.  The almost walled in quality of this picnic scene is what made me think to include it in this series.  What occurred to me while working Outing was that the experience of the depicted person was essentially obscured.  It seems divorced from the somewhat picturesque surroundings.  She is not only reading (a more interior mental process that transports the reader away from her visual environment) but she is also wearing glasses - a kind of blinkering.  She is part of the surroundings - yet only a small portion of her is present in the frame.  The theme is not well developed here; but it is an indication of the kinds of things that will interest me in future drawings.

 

Outing was a bit of a milestone for me as it was my first  drawing of a person.  It is fellow Reed College student Kate (still Katie at the time) Christensen, now an award winning and relatively well known novelist. The technique here is a mish-mash of the line oriented shading of my earlier work combined with a more assured use of stippling.  The fabric is a good example.  Its various colors are represented as either line shading or stippling shading.  I seem more concerned with conveying the textures of the objects themselves rather than capturing the more precise interplay of light and shadow.  I chose line as the go to technique for the chaos of the hair; yet I chose stippling for the more intimidating facial features.