lift me up with steady hands...
For me, art is therapy. The place that most of my works start, the place where I find peace with myself and with god is in my sketchbook. There have been many over the years and there will be many more to come. The images below are a sampling of both personal/therapeutic and academic sketchbook pages.
sketchbook cover. moleskin softcover journal.
newspaper clippings + stick pen
![[untitled]](https://static.wixstatic.com/media/6a53bf_96e5d026f86a495fabb0c6d67c8dfa26.png/v1/fill/w_676,h_572,al_c,q_90,enc_avif,quality_auto/6a53bf_96e5d026f86a495fabb0c6d67c8dfa26.png)
sharpie pen
sketchbook cover. moleskin softcover journal.
searching for light
personal
​​
For a few years I did very little art, afraid of what I would find if I explored the depths of myself. These few sketches are from a period of deep depression. All of them date between September 2009 and February 2010. By January I had started on antidepressants and began the painfully slow process of recovery.
![[untitled]](https://static.wixstatic.com/media/6a53bf_711eefb5ae05491ebaaa1f49ffefaee9.jpg/v1/fill/w_586,h_742,al_c,q_85,enc_avif,quality_auto/6a53bf_711eefb5ae05491ebaaa1f49ffefaee9.jpg)
![[untitled exercise]](https://static.wixstatic.com/media/6a53bf_ccae160ae8004b208cb6ce584b8e79bc.jpg/v1/fill/w_600,h_800,al_c,q_85,enc_avif,quality_auto/6a53bf_ccae160ae8004b208cb6ce584b8e79bc.jpg)
Study of positive and negative space
Purchased for $5 from a homeless man in Philly.
street lights
personal
​​
A miscellany of sketches, notes and meditations from a time that was characterized by hard times in my family.
circa Summer 2005.
![[untitled]](https://static.wixstatic.com/media/6a53bf_2360bb16237b443aabad495615fba388.jpg/v1/fill/w_980,h_1307,al_c,q_85,usm_0.66_1.00_0.01,enc_avif,quality_auto/6a53bf_2360bb16237b443aabad495615fba388.jpg)
charcoal on newsprint
figures
academic
​​
My undergraduate major required that I take an introductory drawing course. I hated every minute of it, except when we had 2 weeks with a live model. Apparently, while endless white-on-white or random-collection-of-objects drawing is a snooze fest for me, the human body is not. I went on to take two more drawing courses, specifically, figure drawing, and loved every minute.
blue
acadmic
​​My first, and probably still my favorite, academic sketchbook. I used this 2.5 in thick monster for two terms - Visual Studies 102 and 103, though most of the images included are from VLST102 in Autumn of 2004.
A combination of course notes, conceptual brainstorming and exploratory sketches.