Imperfect Lines, Honest Presence
This sketch is not perfect—and that’s exactly why it’s alive. The bold figure, the dissolving hat, the tilted chair: all of it feels unfinished, fleeting, caught in motion. It’s what the Japanese call wabi-sabi—finding beauty in the imperfect, the impermanent, the incomplete.
But there’s something deeper here too. A quick sketch is not just what the eye records. It’s what the soul permits. To draw without fixing, without polishing, is to admit the world will not hold still for us. Life slips past. The lines break off. And yet, somehow, the essence remains.
When you sketch this way, you are not the master of the moment—you are its guest. The pencil does not carve permanence; it pays attention. The act of drawing becomes an act of being present, of honoring what is already vanishing.
So here’s a challenge: grab a pencil and sketch someone near you in sixty seconds. Do not erase. Do not perfect. Let the lines falter. When you finish, ask yourself: What truth did the imperfection reveal?
Perhaps presence itself is the real art.
Caged is a collection of healing through deep inner journey work. Note: this is part of the process included while writing the final draft of my upcoming novel.
Shes served her best Christmas with an enormous train led by Brain Tanaka. I used charcoal and pastel brushes in Rebelle 6. I wanted a really simple composition so I could focus on her dress and their pose together. Happy Holidays everyone.
Apparently, Blixa Bargeld of Einsturzende Neubaten and Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds fame actually did this to his school back when he was a lad! I needed an idea for a convoluted weird-as-they-come title, and after reading that story I knew I had something, heheheh :)
