Believe it or not but I have not been only gallivanting around Japan. I have also been working in the studio. In fact I have several drawings that I am currently working on. Remember that these are not finished yet.

This one and I are currently struggling with whether or not I will go into great detail or keep it more gestural. Another option could be doing detail with this one and  then doing a gestural version as well. Two versions might be the solution, since I think I might have already added too much detail to go back.

This one is an experiment to see what happens if I do not use a base coat of gesso. The wooden panel sucks it all up. I thought I had given up on it but I recently started rethinking it.

I am still working out how I want to do those self-portraits. The previous attempts at the portraits seemed too stiff to me. I was also playing with black gesso. I had bought some in the past and had to use it up. For regular drawings, the black does not inspire me but it seems to work with portraits.

These are small experiments with black gesso. I cannot get the glow that I love so much. I am too busy fighting the darkness of the gesso.

This is similar to another drawing that I showed in Kyoto and at the Artcomplex Center of Tokyo. I thought I had almost finished it, but now I want to go back and rework this one to make it a bit more similar to the other one. This one needs more depth and more detail. It does not have the oomph that I want in my drawings. This one was too cold and too clinical but it is being changed.

This is either going to work really well or fail spectacularly. I still do not know what will happen. I am trying to combine my abstracts colour drawings with the figures that usually inhabit my etchings. I am also loosely basing some of this on some designs in Arita yakimono (ceramics). The detailed pencil work on the continent of Asia will either be enhanced, left as is, or become wonderful pentimento underneath a few more layers of colour.

Any ideas that might help? What do you think?