Writer worship

I am not a religious person, but that doesn't mean that I can't be spiritually moved. Poignant music, an evocative poem, a beautiful spring morning—sometimes they choke me up. And sometimes it's wonderful writing that resonates with something deep inside of me. Some of that writing has been authored by Ursula Kroeber Le Guin. People label her as a science fiction writer and therefore ghettoize her writing to some extent; but she was simply a powerful, brilliant, and deep author of books that sometimes feature strange gods, inhabitants of other planets, dragons, or the first peoples of California.

I chose today to continue my somewhat haphazard plan of painting authors, and I decided to do Ursula. I undertook this with trepidation that I didn't feel while painting someone like Joyce Carol Oates, whose work I respect but who does not evoke any deeper feeling for me. Ursula is one of my top five of all time, so I had to do her justice.

I don't often surprise or impress myself by feeling like I have done the best I could do when painting a portrait, but I can say with 98 percent sincerity that I'm really happy with this one and that I feel I have outdone myself. I contemplated putting a quote on it, but how could you choose just one from her oeuvre of brilliance? So Ursula's face speaks for itself, and the background gives a little hint about who she was and what she loved. 

Pencil, Uniball pen, Daler Rowney inks, watercolor, on Fluid 140-lb. cold-press watercolor paper, about 7.5x11 inches.

P.S. My favorites are: The Dispossessed, The Left Hand of Darkness, the Earthsea books (six) and The Telling, but I also love almost everything else she has written, especially all the books in the Hainish Cycle.