Portraiture Lost: Twenty-nine Paintings Behind

W.I.P. ~Work in Progress
by Pat Darnell
When younger, I started sanding off the back of my guitars, and drawing on them... and I don't know why. Here is the oldest of them that I have saved over 34 years. The date says 1974, but I remember this as my first guitar I bought for eight dollars way back in 1964, at an open air shop in Acapulco. I had to retire the guitar because the action got to be 1/2 inch from string to neck, as the top panel began to warp from tension of strings and natural warpages... The wood this drawing is on is of the "I don't know" type, and the rest is the same category. It really is India ink put down with a stylus...

The scene is pretty much self-explanatory as a sort of Garden of Eden work in progress.

I remember now that I planned to go back and add the residents, Adam and Eve later. But my mom found my sketches of nudes, and really slammed me with it... and got Dad involved. So I shied away from those subjects... well... to this day.

Moms can be our first moral compass; no lie. She still looks for the "nudies" that I might collect or study, and dabble with. I have to put them behind stuff before she arrives, to this day.