Our turn to shrug it off

It is still only a game :)

The English must learn to shrug it off (according to Darwin, the French already do, which may prove handy).

Helplessness, Impotence: Shrugging the shoulders.—When a man wishes to show that he cannot do something, or prevent something being done, he often raises with a quick movement both shoulders. At the same time, if the whole gesture is completed, he bends his elbows closely inwards, raises his open hands, turning them outwards, with the fingers separated. The head is often thrown a little on one side; the eyebrows are elevated, and this causes wrinkles across the forehead. The mouth is generally opened. I may mention, in order to show how unconsciously the features are thus acted on, that though I had often intentionally shrugged my shoulders to observe how my arms were placed, I was not at all aware that my eyebrows were raised and mouth opened, until I looked at myself in a glass; and since then I have noticed the same movements in the faces of others. In the accompanying Plate VI., figs. 3 and 4, Mr. Rejlander has successfully acted the gesture of shrugging the shoulders.

Englishmen are much less demonstrative than the men of most other European nations, and they shrug their shoulders far less frequently and energetically than Frenchmen or Italians do. The gesture varies in all degrees from the complex movement, just described, to only a momentary and scarcely perceptible raising of both shoulders; or, as I have noticed in a lady sitting in an arm-chair, to the mere turning slightly outwards of the open hands with separated fingers. I have never seen very young English children shrug their shoulders, but the following case was observed with care by a medical professor and excellent observer, and has been communicated to me by him. The father of this gentleman was a Parisian, and his mother a Scotch lady. His wife is of British extraction on both sides, and my informant does not believe that she ever shrugged her shoulders in her life. His children have been reared in England, and the nursemaid is a thorough Englishwoman, who has never been seen to shrug her shoulders. Now, his eldest daughter was observed to shrug her shoulders at the age of between sixteen and eighteen months; her mother exclaiming at the time, "Look at the little French girl shrugging her shoulders!" At first she often acted thus, sometimes throwing her head a little backwards and on one side, but she did not, as far as was observed, move her elbows and hands in the usual manner. The habit gradually wore away, and now, when she is a little over four years old, she is never seen to act thus.

Darwin, Charles - The expression of the emotions in man and animals, London, John Murray, 1872(page 265).You may read it here.

Musical Indiscretions (4)

Once I read in one of R. E. Hale's books something to the effect that the problem of representing motion has never been fully solved. One usually deals with repetitive motion, for instance, by placing the actor either at the beggining or at the end of that motion ( right at the instants, therefore, when he is in fact standing still). One never draws a man banging on a nail while the hammer is actually halfway down, but rather when the hammer is at the top of its path or has just hit the head of the nail. Our knowledge of the action completes the picture.

Another way is just not to choose, and actually draw the hand, the arm, the body, at various positions throughout the motion, superposing all such drawings on the same sheet. This is usually frowned upon as a comic strip technique, but I find that objection to be mere pedantry. There are a lot of artistically valid solutions stumbled upon by comic book artists over the years. They, unlike some oh-so-modern breed of artists, are at least keeping up with one of Michelangelo's main commandements: Shut up and draw a lot!

(Btw, yes, this is (was supposed to be) you, M. Thanks for the invitation :))

Musical Indiscretions (3)

Today

I was blinded, just blinded. Turned mute, also. And dumb. Oh, so dumb.
Sometimes the world is just too beautiful...

The music stops for a second for this unexpected, silent, intermezzo...

Musical Indiscretions (2)

Musical indiscretions (1)

In a physical sense, listening to a concert is quite a static experience (mentally, of course, listening can and should be quite active). Often I find that state of physical inertia (and also the excessive rest of my visual brain) somewhat disturbing. The best way for me to listen to classical music is to sketch at the same time. Then the whole experience becomes quite vibrant. I find that the hand moves at the sound of the music - literally dances along with it - very naturally, and the nature of the line changes with it. Like the grooves in a vinyl record, the drawing keeps a physical imprint of the transient sounds - sometimes I wonder if I could read the music back on a microscope! Although sometimes the act of drawing will distract me from the act of listening, at its best it will merge with and actually enhance my awareness of the music, creating something altogether more resonant.

You can't win them all

Well, I guess you can't expect much from your first try...this painting thing is rather oily business...but rather instructive...once more, rather like drawing,

painting has very little to do with the crap that stays on the canvas after the act...

I used to see in shades of gray, but since I began to paint, I see colour everywhere, no matter where I look. And they are the most amazing, unexpected colours. There's nothing like the feeling of the beginner's mind to remind you that the world is always a brand new toy...

Indiscrições de Santo Antonio (3)

Indiscrições de Santo António (2)

Indiscrições de Santo António (1)

One year (and 234 posts) later...

...drawing is STILL only accidentally related to the act of sullying paper.

Still working on the goddamn thing

oils are hard.....:( (hurrah!)

Curiously curly cherub posing

This is my favorite subway indiscretion in a long time. This guy looked somewhat like a curly cherub with a candy fetish. The lines were just beautiful, I was very happy with the result.

Subway indiscretion 020606

Raw(er) Umber

Raw Umber underpainting for (one hopes) my first portrait in oil. We'll see how that goes...

ToriToon

Dear Tori, I am afraid I turned you into a cartoon :)

It's been a while since the Globe, hasn't it? :) Hope you're doing fine...

Done!

Well, good enough for government work, I guess...:p
Next!

Retrouver les arts

"Car les arts se perdent très facilement mais il faut
beaucoup de prière pour les retrouver" - Albrecht Dürer

Art School - Rum, Sodomy, and the Lash

Gracious master and friend! It has until now been the custom in our Germany to put a great number of talented lads to the task of artistic painting without real foundation other than what they learned by daily usage. They have therefore grown up in ignorance like an unpruned tree. Although some of them have achieved a skillful hand through continual practice, their works are made intuitively and solely according to their tastes. Whenever knowledgable painters and true artists had occasion to see such unplanned works, they smiled --not without reason-- about the ignorance of these people. Nothing is more annoying to men of understanding than a blunder in a painting, no matter how diligently it may be executed. Because such painters have derived pleasure from their errors has been the sole reason that they never learned the art of measurement, without which no one can become a true artisan. It is the fault of their masters who themselves were ignorant of this skill.

It is this skill which is the foundation of all painting. For this reason, I have decided to provide to all those who are eager to become artists a starting point and a source for learning about measurement with ruler and compass. From this they will recognize truth as it meets their eyes, not only in the realm of art but also in their proper and general understanding.

Dedication of Dürer's A Course in the Art of Measurement with Compass and Ruler, 1525

My friends at Art School seem to be in the course of learning for themselves. Teachers are afraid to teach hard technique for it might kill their blooming originality. Their greatest edeavour seems to be how and how soon to find their style - their selling point. All has in fact been sold to this single endeavour.
If trial and error and constant practice is all that's left then what do you pay teacher's for? Only for evaluation against an unknown canon, and for whiping you into constant practice, like slaves and undisciplined kids might need.

I humbly propose the thesis that learning technical matters does not stiffle creativity. And that the way to not become stuck on a particular technique is not to shy away from teaching a technique but instead to teach so many different ones that the mind has no choice but to understand how wide the gamut is and that there are many more still to learn or to create or to adapt to one's tastes.

It is in fact the ignorant, "free" mind, that usually gets stuck to a fixed technique. For reaching any acceptable technique in ignorance is so hard that only the bravest will have any chance of leaving a safe ground after it is reached, and all the rest will usually settle into their first acceptable technique for the rest of their lives, and mistakenly call that their "personal style".

And I put further to consideration that personal style is not something you strive for, but something that comes from different men striving for some same altogether different purpose - for instance, for technical mastery of their field. For if different men of different abilities throw themselves against far more than they can handle, is it not clear that they shall reach different strategies to accomodate themselves, that will reflect their own strenghts and weaknesses and even their tastes and life experiences - just like one who is too tall or too short will sit on an average sized sofa in different ways, with dangling feet or bent legs according to his own habits and conveniences and physical characteristics? So will different artists unavoidably reach their own style -styles, in fact, for they will change if the artist grows- as they painfully climb uphill, facing difficulty on their way, each style being perhaps no more than a particular campfire built in the night, on some ledge where you get much deserved repose before next morning's climb.

For are the artworks themselves after all no more than a campfire - not the point of the trip but merely a witness to it, and a source of comfort and sustenance - in the financial sense even - to the climber. I have long thought and expressed the thought in these pages that art is about seeing and expressing, and that the artwork itself is no more than a side effect - the crap that stays on the paper after the act - fodder good for tourists and couch potatoes who don't dare themselves to make the climb.

The fact that the critic and his metier has become so central to the art process - taking the centerstage even among art students who will spend more time making rationalizations, excuses, justifications for their works than actually working on them - is exceptionally perverted from this point of view. For the profssional critic is usually no more than one of those pesky tourist guides writing about the shadows of a beast they never faced.

La géométrie d'Albrecht Dürer

La géométrie d'Albrecht Dürer et ses lecteurs

par Jeanne PEIFFER

The $100,000 animation drawing course, for only $8! (via boing boing)

The $100,000 animation drawing course, for only $8! (via boing boing)

Dürer

But when great and ingenious artists behold their so inept performances, not undeservedly do they ridicule the blindness of such men; since sane judgment abhors nothing so much as a picture perpetrated with no technical knowledge, although with plenty of care and diligence. Now the sole reason why painters of this sort are not aware of their own error is that they have not learnt Geometry, without which no one can either be or become an absolute artist; but the blame for this should be laid upon their masters, who are themselves ignorant of this art.

Albrecht Dürer - The Art of Measurement. 1525.

River of blood with glaciers (extra rare)

my kingdom for a plumb line

I was so distracted by all the shiny colours, I forgot my sense of gravity!...

Learning Colour Theory

I have been trying to learn Colour Theory. Unfortunately, the field is full of books (and web pages) written by retards who think that the most basic logical reasoning is somehow detrimental to art.

Get this:

A colour can be defined by it's Hue, Value, and Saturation.

Ok. Now they define Hue:

Hue is the Colour itself.

We have all become slightly more brain damaged after learning this. I feel my brain cells commiting suicide.

People who are able to write such a thing should be shot on sight. People who ask why should be tortured, then shot.

One day I shall write a treatsie on Colour Theory. I shall call it, in full XIX century reactionary pomp:

"Colour Theory for the Rational Gentleman"

Burning Bush

I love the trees at night, especially with the right kind of light and the "wrong" kind of white balance...

Major Eye-rection: AF-S Zoom-Nikkor ED 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6G IF DX VR

Oh, baby, I need it bad. Give it to me hard!

Calling all stations. Moderately young man, more noted for enthusiasm than technique, will perform sexual services in exchange for a AF-S Zoom-Nikkor ED 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6G IF DX VR.

Right here. Right now.

As alternative, will clean public toilet with tongue and call it performance art (but only if lens comes with hood).

My Umber is very Raw

Dabbing in Oils. There is nothing quite as sweet as the smell of something new. Except for the odour of turpentine, of course. :)

Intelectual lunacy

Several examples of "intelectual property" at its best.