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Thursday, August 20, 2009

The Bundt - it's not just for cake anymore

Bundt Pan...a sketch
Yesterday, I spent a wonderful day with my friend Jo wandering through the Medina Antiques Mall. It is a pleasant adventure that we love but, with our busy lives, have not found the time to do for many years. What's not to like? Air conditioning....music....and plenty of visual stimulation....almost to the point of overload. It is not nostalgia that drives me, but the true visual pleasure of wabi-sabi-one-of-a-kind items, the counterpart to what we see in most market places. I am always drawn to items with visual texture....old architectural elements and cooking utensils. Lots of muffin tins, old boxes and relief carvings. These old pans are a perfect way to learn much about "the nature of things", which improves and refines drawing skills. We have to deal with perspective, two-point and ellipses, as well as the way light describes the many indented surfaces. The pans are rarely perfect, which adds a quirky element to the drawing. Fun. For an interesting drawing problem, then, we need not look any farther than our own kitchens. The rest is just cake.