skip to main |
skip to sidebar
It's chestnut season! This is the best time of year in Japan, with chestnuts in rice, sweets, and ice cream. I don't know if this little guy is really called Kuri-chan but kuri is the word for chestnut, and chan is used like san, but for young and endearing things, so that's what I call him. I love the way the Japanese can make a character out of a block of tofu, a soybean, or a toasted bun.
I bought this stuffed chestnut from a vendor on the long winding walk up to Ginkaku-ji temple. How could I resist a chestnut with cheeks?
I brought this topic up because, lately, I've really had to reflect on the spine of my blog. I've been feeling more and more frustrated by exams and papers competing with the small amount of drawing time I have allotted. It feels like I'm trying to protect my little igloo in the middle of an avalanche.
When I started this blog I wondered what might come from drawing and painting as a daily practice. What I've discovered is that it's where I want to spend the majority of my time, not the minority. But that can't happen right now. Each drawing I do, I learn from, and I want to apply that learning right away. The two spines I drew felt like a warm up, it wasn't until after doing them that I began to really see. But as soon as I began to see, I had to stop.
So, in order not to throw my hands up in a fit of frustration, I've had to remind myself to return to the spine. That spine, as stated in my very first post, is to make art despite the obstacles. That doesn't mean doing the best drawing I could possibly do, it means doing the best drawing I can do in 20 minutes while exhausted and stressed. It is not to spend hours drawing, choosing to post the best piece of the day (Oh, how I wish it were), it is drawing something and posting it right away, whether I like it or not.
Returning to the spine can help you breathe again. It can guide you back home when you find yourself hanging too far off the infinite possibilities of creativity's many branches.
Carol recommended a book called "Eternal truths for every artist" by Harley Brown. It's out of print and expensive, but I splurged and it was well worth it. I drew this tea pot with Harley Brown's style in mind, though it's the information that he shares, not his style, that's important.
I just returned from a day long workshop on how to integrate yoga with traditional rehabilitation. It was excellent. I often think about the ways yoga and drawing connect,
and thought I'd share one of those ways here.I've noticed that my favorite drawings are ones that hit the marks but have a sense of breath. Meaning, they have correct proportion but the strokes retain a sense of life and freedom. Carol describes it as being loose but accurate. Drawings like that are very hard to do, but always look like they landed on the page easily. The problem is, in struggling to get accurate proportion you can lose the life of the mark, and in trying to retain a quick mark the correct measurements can be missed.
In yoga, there is action and resistance in every pose, meaning, that while one part is grounding into the earth, another part is rising toward the heavens. The feet are grounding, the arms are lifting upward. But even within the arms, the shoulders are grounding, the fingertips are rising, and even within the fingertips... And when you focus too much on the technical aspects of holding the pose you can forget to breathe, yet when you focus so much on your breath and forget your body it can be hard to come back down to earth.I think it's the most satisfying thing, to the eye, to the body, to the spirit, to be simultaneously grounded and free. It's hard to get there, and then to maintain, but ah, those moments...
I was unhappy with this drawing until I noticed how well it captures the way it feels after you've been at the fair a little too long and think you can handle just one more treat. A caramel apple wouldn't have been a problem if you hadn't also had a corn dog, fried dough, are overheated, and have been looking at too much airbrushed art. You feel like you just got off the Tilt-a-whirl, even though you haven't been on that ride in twenty years.
I love looking at all the art displays at the fair. While some of the work isn't my style and some may, perhaps, be "not good", I'm just in awe that so many people out there are making the effort to paint and draw. I mean, it's just so much easier not to.
