tara busa

Danny + Dubby

Uncle Danny + Grampa “Dubby”, Graphite on Paper

“When it all goes quiet behind my eyes, I see everything that made me lying around in invisible pieces. When I look too hard, it goes away. And when it all goes quiet, I see they are right here. I see that I’m a little piece in a big, big universe. And that makes things right.” {Beasts of the Southern Wild}

Portraits.

Now that I’m settled back in from California, I’m breaking out the charcoal and getting back into drawing portraits.  I’m finding myself drawn to using older people that have a sense of youth to them as subjects.  

Here is one of my most favorite quotes about art and seeing people:

“Anybody can look at a pretty girl and see a pretty girl. An artist can look at a pretty girl and see the old woman she will become. A better artist can look at an old woman and see the pretty girl that she used to be. But a great artist, a master, and that is what Auguste Rodin was, can look at an old woman, protray her exactly as she is…and force the viewer to see the pretty girl she used to be…and more than that, he can make anyone with the sensitivity of an armadillo, or even you, see that this lovely young girl is still alive, not old and ugly at all, but simply prisoned inside her ruined body. He can make you feel the quiet, endless tragedy that there was never a girl born who ever grew older than eighteen in her heart…no matter what the merciless hours have done to her. Look at her, Ben. Growing old doesn’t matter to you and me; we were never meant to be admired-but it does to them.”  - Robert A. Heinlein

Photo taken driving through the Big Sur

Let’s Talk About Socks, Baby.

Listen up dandies and non-dandies alike.  There is no safer way to dip one’s proverbial toes into the world of style than by wearing a pair of patterned socks.  So plain socks be damned! Go forth and grab a pair.  

I really like these ones at Jack Spade and Paul Smith via Nordstroms.

Sunny + Joe

Sunny + Joe, Graphite on Paper

I’ve been finding lots of great inspiration from old photographs. Ones that I find online, or in books or antique shops.  Mysterious strangers in black and white.  But when I sat down tonight I wanted to draw something closer to the heart.  And for me, this finished sketch is just that.  

Its based on a photograph that I’ve been looking at since I was a little girl.  It’s a picture of my grandparents Sunny and Joe, taken while they were dating—probably sometime in the 1930s.  

My grandmother was older than my grandfather, which even now isn’t all that common.  But my grandmother shrugged it off, because she’d decided that she much preferred the company of younger people because they were more fun.  This mindset has worked wonders for my grandmother who is now almost 96 years old, still living in her own house and causing trouble.  

Sunny and Joe married and together raised a family of four—the youngest being my Dad.  They lived through the uncertain times of WWII, that took my grandfather overseas with the Navy.  And afterwards, were never far apart-building a life together on family vacations to the beach, baseball games, concerts and dinners with their two big Italian families.  

To each other they were Sunny and Joe, but to me they are Granny and Gramps.  Their life together is an inspiration for many people in my family, and for me this image marks the beginning of that and all of the good in our lives that has been made possible because of them.