Solitaire

It never fails to amaze me how the things I pick up at random to read, however apparently unrelated, tend to bounce off one another in a weird coincidental way. After researching a little mesopotamian nonsense, I pick up a Conan story, and what do you know, there's a princess who worships Ishtar and some very Babylonian/Sumerian/whatever looking soldiers in an illustration...I haven't seen the pastiche Conans, but I get the impression they're far removed from the Robert E. Howard stories, which are fairly gritty (and, I'll add, break every 'rule' of writing fiction you can think of these days-yet the guy has a historical marker dedicated to him in Cross Plains, Texas) and heavily influenced by the history of the ancient world (and, naturally, a lot of racist tendencies). Apparently Howard used to dream at night he was a barbarian fighting in battles, which explains his alter-ego. Not unlike his contemporary, HP Lovecraft, who had night terrors and nightmares that he wrote down and turned into stories.

Apart from that, I picked up pencil and paper for about 45 minutes or so, drew a plant for half of that, did a brief sketch of an imaginary woodland scene afterwards for the rest of the time. I did discover that if I visualize I can draw near perfect circles and perfect straight lines, provided i'm not rushing; I still need to work on my technique with that, but at least i'm starting to draw small bits daily. Key to doing this, evidently, is to not look at your hand/the tip of the pencil. For the most part i'm still in a slump, but i'm starting to get moving again. Yesterday's big insight was that my ego works to stop me from drawing in much the same way it works to stop me from meditating (I keep thinking things like "This is pointless" "This is impossible" "I'm not getting anywhere" "I should stop" "I'll never be any good at this" "This is a waste of time") but if I persist through the period of doubting my abilities, my head goes clear and I get into the flow.

Something else I learned, incidentally, is to never draw on a piece of paper that's reflecting direct sunlight. I damn near blinded myself. Hopefully I didn't do any permanent damage to my eyes; everything was green/purple tinted after I went inside for about 10-15 minutes. On the positive side, it does seem like every time I sit down and get to work, I learn something new, some little trick or whatever, and most of them I was never told of or taught in class.

3 days into my 7 day workweek tonight. I'm not looking forward to work at all...I may or may not be posting for a long while, I've got this 7 day week, then 4 days in Florida for a wedding, then another day of work, then two days in Hatteras. Then I get to try a second shot at getting back into shape and building my back muscles up again, while I pursue all my other hobbies and probably look for a better job. I'm considering whether or not to put my Unnamed Motel Stories up online (I have a lot, they range from horrifying to hilarious). Probably not, but they do make for good party conversation.

Just been writing and drawing. Giving up painting til i'm better at drawing; if I weren't writing, I'd have time to focus on painting and drawing instead, but I need to write. Finally got around to drawing people from life, and did have a kinda amazing experience with it-even though they were moving around and I just did 30 second sketches of their outlines, on the drive back I kept having them flash into my head-their positions, etc, the areas of their bodies I was looking at. I was at a friend's house with some of his friends. We actually all wound up drawing at some point...I think i'm gonna carry a sketchbook around everywhere I go from now on along with my mechanical pencil (yeah, I bought it for detail work, it's .50mm, but it comes with an eraser attached and I don't need to sharpen it ever. I still prefer wooden pencils to it; they're much lighter, and I can put lighter tones down on paper with them.)

Apart from that, i'm noticing the current story i'm writing is heavily uninspired. But I have to slog through it before I can get my character to the next town and next task in the following short stories.

I'm finding myself addicted to Deviantart.com. Go check it out if you haven't already. My page there is at http://akamu23.deviantart.com/ . It's got less photos; I didn't feel like putting the older stuff up on it, so I did not do so. I continue to find myself blown away by what people are capable of in adobe photoshop and illustrator; if you click on digital art in the browsing menu, you'll see what i'm talking about. So, while I think I need to spend oodles of time working with traditional media and want to master them (there's something liberating about using small tools to do delicate work that a computer can't beat, regardless of how good its word processor may be), i'm looking forward to that time in the future when I can mix traditional with computer programs. So far my figures from imagination still (largely) lack form, but I have memorized proportions.

Another thing i'm getting out of the site is a sense of humility. There's so many wildly talented artists out there I can barely dream of ever matching them...

I'm finding most of my art books to be largely useless, though the writing ones are very helpful; I seem to pick up craft 'tools' for fiction subconsciously from reading about it and find myself using them when I need them. It's really bizarre.

Still jobless, and have not gotten any replies to my resume. I'm probably gonna have to be a dishwasher or something for a while (which I don't mind doing so much as I mind working for $6 an hour at my age; I certainly took a salary cut to get my last job). Or make pizzas, or whatever else it is (I probably shouldn't say this, but I will irresponsibly rant tonight) American society damns you to if you don't have a college degree, regardless of your skills (yeah, I know, I fucked up when I dropped out of school and did drugs, but it still pisses me off from time to time). As someone put it to me once, "You know, there's places in the world where they don't let people with potential sit and rot." I don't know how much potential I really have, I do know that i'm willing to work and not ABLE to until I get lucky with something. And I'd gladly go back to school if I could afford it, even if it wasn't for art.

I think i'm breaking my non-whining rule (yep) by saying all of this. Wait, I know what i'm doing wrong (the above paragraph just felt wrong as I wrote it-but i'll leave it there for fun, and educational purposes). I'm blaming outside forces for my problems, when I'm the only one who can change my situation, and otherwise making demands for exceptional treatment while not actually DOING anything to solve the problem (besides sending my resume out). Teehee. There's actually a Taoist story about a donkey and a well that illuminates what's "Wrong" about saying the above. (You can pick up the Tao of Daily Life by Derek Lin if you're interested. Chapter 7. It's a good read.) See, kids?

Maybe I should move to one of those places. Or, more than likely, pick up a trade to feed, clothe, and shelter myself until I can be a professional artist.

All right. Well, that post was different than most. A little bit of everything.

I'm going to go through my books and update this post accordingly-as they become useful. If I work my way through a book with little improvement, i'll say so. If I find one handy, I'll also say so. What i'm trying to do is save a beginner, someone with as much experience as I had to start with, time and money; there's art books that are useful, and there's some that really aren't or assume a lot of experience...

I will say this much. Buying and reading books is useless if you're too lazy to do the exercises and practice in addition to them. However, here goes...

The Complete Introduction to Drawing - Barrington Barber : Just got this one; i'm on page thirty five or so, been going through it, and i've found it helpful, it's already gotten me drawing from life (Today I drew a complicated camera and several views of a wine glass, in addition to scribbles). Judging from the look of the table of contents, it covers everything in depth...(oddly enough, I haven't found the other two books I have by him all that useful)

Drawing Landscapes and Seascapes - Jack Hamm : An excellent book, and useful. I will probably return to it as a reference when I need it.

Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain - Only worked through part of it; however, the insight in it about seeing properly is invaluable to the learning process.


To be edited later...

So that I can play around with watercolor and new technique in maybe getting a landscape done or something. If you're not familiar with watercoloring, you can buy a canvas (I got one for Christmas) or soak and stretch paper. I usually do the latter; it's cheaper, and I have no idea how actually using a canvas would work out. It's been months since i've done any painting, probably not since before I was with my previous employer. Drawing, yeah, but painting's a lot more daunting at this point...i'm thinking of making a goal of painting on days off from work, and drawing and writing and reading daily for the new year. A goal, not a resolution; the UN makes resolutions, and look at what happens to them?

Today I went to the fine arts museum, and just by dumb luck, they had a graphite exhibit. They'd taken away some of the avante-garde type stuff (I don't know what it was, one was gouche on a gigantic canvas, just a bunch of crossing stripes of color at random angles laid over each other. I have no idea what, if anything, it was supposed to express. I'm with Ray Bradbury on this one; I'd sooner do sci fi and fantasy art.). Anyway, I forget the artist's name, but he did studies of people back in the late 1800's, and they were all gorgeous. The rest of the stuff in the VA Fine Arts Museum was mostly the same that'd been sitting there for as long as I can remember, the stuff in their private collections. I mostly skipped over it. But it's not the first time they've had a nice section devoted to one of my mediums; a year or so ago they had some of the oldest (and finest looking) watercolor landscapes i'd ever seen in my life, some done entirely in one color.


Edit: Now i'm waiting on all the paint to dry. Did a grey tree, blue leaves, purple and magenta background. I've discovered the following: I'm clumsy with a brush, I need a tub for soaking paper in, not a table top and a spray bottle, (the paper buckled even though I wetted it down, causing for some annoying friggin effects), and I seriously need practice. The graphite tree I used as a reference was much, much better...I'm guessing it's not a straight jump from drawing to watercolor, it's practice with both daily (and writing! eep!).

What pisses me off is the other two papers I stretched will probably buckle as well...

Something I learned last night was that the whole reason I haven't been working as diligently at my painting and drawing is that copying is BS in comparison, and working from imagination is an incredible high. Even more so when done with a level of success.

Unfortunately, I'm going to have to do much, much, much, copying to learn anything.

It's a lesson that an illustrator who gave me four three-hour lessons a year or two back (before I bummed off into not working at all) tried to impress upon me, with little success (since then, the only education I've gotten is a few weeks at a community college. It was horrible. I failed out for missing one day.). I wanted to do photo real work. I'm guessing I'll get there eventually; I know it's possible, at least from photographs (maybe from life if I can ever afford a pair of glasses). Oh well. I guess I'll have to mix work and play.

It's the same way with my writing. Fiction, I can churn out about ten pages doublespaced in a matter of hours, on a daily basis (after much, much practice), yet what I really want to do beyond that is work well with watercolor and graphite media. To get the imagery out of my head without having to use words.

This is easier said than done...