printmakers and thiefs

My favorite etching plate is a line etching I did of my friend in Italy. I wish I could do a portrait of every single person I care about on a small plate like that, drawing from life, directly onto the (with a layer of the red transfer paper) plate.

Last semester I had the idea of doing a series of memory drawings of different objects and people and impressions. The problem is my memory drawing is shit. I hoped it would be that good quirky shit drawing, that is not actually shit, but just a little off in an interesting way. Unfortunately that idea was only good in theory. Maybe I'll write a series of memory drawings instead of actually drawing them. Then everyone could just imagine how awesome the drawings could be. Probably, if I just drew more in general, I could do drawings without too much appropriation. Maybe the secret is that all those people with the seemingly spontaneous drawings do it the same way I do. Steal steal steal. Although is drawing from life stealing? Not that there's anything wrong with that . . .