#bonehorsesketches

Oh, brother. Here we go. Hashtags and art.

It’s okay though. It’s okay. Generally, I’m mixed on social media. Sometimes you love it. Sometimes it wrestles you to your knees in a fiery stranglehold of dissatisfied comparison and terminally crushing self doubt. Whaddaya gonna do.

But it truly has its benefits. What started as a way for me to collect and edit imagery (the social aspect of Instagram and Tumblr were lost on me when I first joined ‘em 50 years ago…  derp.), has grown into a legitimate way to disperse work and connect with like minds.

Being an extroverted introvert and an artist, it’s really nice to have web and app platforms with which to bravely launch your stuff out into the world. Then after clicking “Share” scuttle away into a dark corner to hide so you can privately review everything you’ve ever created and decide it’s probably all crap. See? The magic of navigating this process in its entirety from the safety of your own home! Thanks, Internet!

I don’t get all of it, though. I’ve yet to fully grasp Twitter. I’m a picture person. I just use that thing as a way to send people to pictures. I get Twitter for about two things: Comedy, and staging real-time revolutions in the Middle East. Since I wasn’t part of the Arab Spring, I never really saw the need to put a whole lotta thrust into it.

Otherwise, social sharing is pretty fantastic for creatives who are timid or don’t have an established voice or reputation IRL.* And also great for those who do. When you create online, you are creative director of your brand. Unless you get realllll illegal in some way, ain’t nobody gonna tell you to take your crap down. I wrote a post comparing making art to making a poop. Total creative freedom. Good thing that 1) my client (me) has no sense of propriety, taste, or line-crossing and 2) nobody (hopefully) reads this stuff. Ta daaah! I’m such a great CEO!**

The other thing I love is bits. Bits and bits. I don’t finish paintings fast. If I finish them at all. Art takes time. And I spend a lot of time sleeping, working, eating, staring at the wall, staring at blank canvases, eating peanut butter from the jar, staring at Instagram, thinking about doing laundry, watching YouTube videos of dogs, staring at the paper some more, and so on. I can’t be bothered to make finished works of art. I’m very busy. You understand.

But even at the end of a long day, I’ve usually still got it in me to make a few marks. It can be too daunting to set up to paint if you’ve only got an hour. Or when you’re just weary from the grind.

So I sketch.

I sketch before bed. I draw for friends. I outline ideas for paintings I’ll do “someday” and I’ll spill out my heartfeel into a drawing just to feel like I’ve done at least one thing that day that was not created for money or progress. But for a tangibility of an otherwise futile feeling of lifecycle. So that the moth-wing delicateness of my body and my time seem to result in byproduct of some small worth and beauty.

These have piled up, my Bone Horse sketches. One at a time. My little somethings. Posted on Instagram. So that I’d have the tiniest sense of accomplishment as an artist. So that I might connect. Just a little. It’s not a hundred hours into a portrait. It’s not a gallery-quality body of work. But they bear great heart when they come out, and I actually… really like them. They are my imagination’s diary. They’re very simple, real, and visceral to me. Other people seem to like them, too.

Pretty often, my favorite pieces in a retrospective of a renowned artist are the collected sketches. On torn, dirty paper. Barely surviving. It’s such an intimate appropriation. Snuck from a pile, hung in a museum. Lines drawn in secret, like a private conversation between the artist and the idea. Only to be displayed after death when the artist could not be present to protest. Unadulterated, unshared lines, never meant to be seen.

But that’s only because they didn’t have Instagram.

You can follow the collection as it grows on Instagram: @thebonehorse

Or you can click here to see all the photos tagged #bonehorsesketches

*I’ll save you the trip to Urban Dictionary: that means “In Real Life” if you’re generally out of touch, like I am.

**Diana was fired by Diana shortly after posting this. Fortunately, Diana stepped into talk some sense into Diana about Diana’s creative direction and Diana has since been reinstated as Creative Director/Editor-In-Chief. The entire board of Dianas concurred on this decision.

Diana Wilson graduated from the Groucho Marx School of Business and holds an M.B.A. in Counterintuitive Marketing, specializing in Glacially Slow Brand Growth, and Nonsense- and Drivel-Based Content. She has spoken at many conventions and summits, giving such lectures as: Making Funny Noises In Boardrooms, Fart Jokes In Social Media, and Being Your Own Boss Instead Of Getting Any Sleep. Her book “Don’t Go To Art School, Kids. Get an MBA.” is not even close to being a bestseller. But it probably should be.