SKETCHES IN INK: COMING SOON

 After the shock and awe of my son’s birth, I began making quick sketches done from imagination amidst the flurry of diaper changes, bottles, and laundry while caring for him full-time. These sketches—with stretched stomachs, engorged breasts, Cesarian section scars, round cheeks, pudgy ankles and tiny hands—function as a visual diary as I begin life postpartum, which is often referred to as the fourth trimester. Unlike my usual works, which are fastidious and time-consuming, these drawings are fast and frantic out of necessity. In them, a healing body cradles a new life, finds rapture in their quiet moments together, finds purpose in protection. I hope that these sketches capture the rawness and imperfection of motherhood as much as they capture its aching tenderness.

In these sketches, I used ink in a hue similar to the smoky, warmish, gray-blue of indigo pigment—a nod to my son’s name. I made these drawings after the pastel sketches, once our family began to settle into a routine and the tiny slivers of time I had expanded from a couple moments to longer fragments of maybe five or ten minutes, allowing me more detail and deliberation.