Off to adventure

I'm leaving in a couple of days to go visit my brother who is at the Air Force Academy.
So, since I doubt I will have access to a computer much in the next two weeks, I will most likely not be posting.
I'll be taking my sketchbook, so hopefully I'll have a few new sketches or paintings to share.
In the meantime, Tea with Tiffany has some interesting posts related to wonder and delight.

Wise words on beauty and suffering and reflections thereon

Reflected Light (bethimpson.wordpress.com) has several essays worth reading, including one on beauty and one on suffering.

Reading them, it makes me wonder about my visual art. Do I paint Truth? Does it include suffering?
I'm not sure it does. Part of it is that I have yet to gain the technical skill.

Upon reflection however, there are paintings. I do not have time to dig them up now, and they are far from good, but I will describe a few.

There is the girl in the karite tree, looking into the sky, with a bit of longing. There is the storm around a rock with a cleft, in which a girl is hidden. Amazingly, the rock is in the shape of a hand (not planned by me).

There are the attempts to draw hope. There is the girl with the broken heart, and the subsequent ones drawn of her giving it to her Father, and then, hugging the new one.

So why have I walked away from these paintings?
There are probably several reasons, but I am afraid the biggest one is the same reason I have had trouble sitting down to write recently -- I am afraid. It is slightly scary to do a reasonable sized painting one wants to get right technically when one is still learning to control the paint. It is another thing to walk the fine line between beauty and suffering.

Not that there isn't a place to see and watch the wonders of the stars, and to portray the wonder of the shepherds (the painting I am slightly scared of). There is, but as Dr. Impson wisely says, we cannot ignore suffering. She says, building on the wisdom of others, that it is only by going through suffering can we find joy, and more importantly, to have our eyes opened to know God.

I think I need to pray.

gifts and unexpected opportunities

Sometimes gift can be used in places and ways one would never expect, even small gifts.

A couple of summers ago, I went to India for three months as a teacher's aid.
The school had a small collection of learn-to-read English, about which was nice, but not enough for a classroom of twenty to thirty children.
So one of my supervisors, a very dear lady from England, took the words from the books and wrote new stories for them on giant card. She then asked me to illustrate them.







A friend of my mother's, reflecting on her own mother's life service, said that it was likely that the decorating she did for various friends living overseas was among the greatest service she had ever done. My guess is that this women thought she was just helping out with what she enjoyed doing.

I hope to remember that, even when helping is little more than being the dog running to get Dad.

addendum

I cannot sleep knowing that I ended rather simplistically.

If God is loving and in control, then why so many wrong things?
Why human bondage?
Why was a bird that was not a bird flew up into the air, to be shot in cold blood?
Why are so many were raped, imprisoned and beaten?
Why did L. M. Montgomery suffered as a pastor's wife?
Why did my brother die?

The answer is complex, I think, and I am far from understanding it.
This much I know, however: Jesus wept at the tomb of Lazarus and over the city of Jerusalem. Evil things happen, and God allows them, but He still cares.

Anne, beauty, wonder, and life

I really like the story of Anne of Green Gables.

Initially it was just a good story about a girl who was a kindred spirit. I was six when I first read Anne, and started spelling my middle name, Ann, with an e. That went on until my mother caught it and explained I'd been named without the e for a reason.

Then, as a teen-ager and on into my twenties, I began to feel akin to Anne, because I too was "of Nowhere in Particular." There is no particular place I felt I could say I belong to. Gradually, though, I came to accept that I was adopted into God's family. Like, Anne, I am no longer of Nowhere.

Recently, I've come to appreciate her wonder in life around her. Anne had been through a lot in her early years, and yet the beauty of the world around her never ceased to give her joy.

Later in life, it would be tempered and enriched and deepened by sorrow, but it was not destroyed.

A young man about to be executed wrote his fiancée that the natural outcome of sorrow is happiness, if one would let it. I think Anne wisely let it happen.

The world is a lovely place. Sometimes it seems too lovely.

I remember walking campus after hearing of human trafficking, and seeing the soul-stirring beauty around me, and almost crying out at the dichotomy. It is not always an easy thing to reconcile.

And yet--
in a way it speaks of hope.
There is much evil and wrong, but the God of beauty and order and love is still in control.

I know L.M. Montgomery struggled with life, and I have yet to read much of her life, but I like to hope that like Anne, some part of her clung to the wonder in the world and God's goodness.

Phantastes reading meeting

Phantastes

In distant past when days were shorter
When Bryan's boys and Bryan's girls
Few in number Knew each other
Then a Junior Joy by name
Not yet travelled Never been to other worlds
Heard the call Come to Narnia

With five others Found the way
Through the dead land Damned by Jadis
Who despairing, death Dealt with a word
That word of secrets Since forgotten
Word of terror, Winning nothing
Save the pride Of the Speaker of doom




There the witch
They saw awoken
By the children Brought from our world
And through this
They entered Narnia
Watching how the Witch came also
Seeing Narnia New created

(Here the several lines become illegible, ruined by water, reportedly
in the great flood of Robinson Hall, or North as its name was called
in the ancient times).

On they went Through days and months
Seeking always Some adventure
Others joining On the way
Then at last They spoke together.
Chose a regent Ruler of them
Formed a club Phantastes named it

(Here the rest of the poem is lost, blurred with water. Most scholars
believe that it contained more information concerning the formation of
the club and the adventures continuing afterwards. The following
portion was discovered in the kitchen of Robinson, being used as shelf
paper. While some scholars debate the authenticity of the manuscript,
most agree it is the ending of the poem).

Still the Narnians* Seek adventure

Thursday now They travel on
Still the Regent Sends out e-mails
Calling Narnians Come and travel


*Although the group was officially called Phantastes, a letter
recovered from an e-mail account of the original Lord Regent shows
that among themselves, they used the name Narnians.


These are pictures from the sketch of the original Illustrator, yours truly.

I was not one of the original six, but was there when the club was formed. We met once a week in the evenings to read children's literature, passing the book from one to another



I almost always had a sketch book along. Others would bring knitting, paper cutting, sewing

- and yes, even homework...















Goodnight

Improvement = Practice : a visual representation of what practice can do

The above picture was a simple sketch done five years ago. To be honost, I thought it was pretty good at the time and compared to what I did five years previous to that, it was.

The picture below is a simple sketch done a few weeks ago. I haven't taken any art lessons, though I have likely picked up a few things from books and looking at other's art.

What made the difference is constant doodling and experimentation almost any time I have a writing implement on hand and some paper. My family will tell you - I have been known to decorate napkins with burnt matches before.

The thing is that I tend to draw people, with some animals and other things occasionally thrown in. So while these are decent people drawn off of the top of my head, if you asked me to draw, say a car without something to copy from, it might look quite a bit strange. I haven't practiced. Yet a boy I know might well be able to pull off a wonderful car, while only drawing a basic person.

It's amazing what can happen when one practices.

A Wedding Card

A good friend of mine from school just got married last Saturday. So after much long thought, I created the above painting to use for their card.

I started out by doodling out the design. I knew I wanted verses from 1 Corinthians 13.

Initially, I thought I'd like to do a portrait of the couple, helping each other with the dishes. The problem was that I only had a sketch of my friend, not her fiance, and having only met the chap twice, I wasn't too sure about attempting to portray him from memory alone.

Then, I remembered that they both liked hiking. This fell into place with trees, the memory of a very stylized plate another friend designed for her own wedding, and the song " Like a tree planted by the water."

Two trees, crossing each other, branches and roots forming a heart took place in my thumbnail sketch.

I penciled the outline while driving with my mother to pick peaches to dry for the winter.
After the peaches were taken care of for the day, painting began.

I worked slowly. Although watercolor is relatively forgiving on the right paper, this was an expression of love for a wedding - I wanted to do my best.

I hope they have a blessed marriage.

Small deeds

I long to soar - to live life to its fullest.
Yet I do not see that little things like helping a younger sister enjoy math, planting beets for harvest later, drying peaches, cooking supper for my mother - these are all things of beauty and of worth.

I once read a story about the knights of the silver star. The most valiant among them would have a silver star appear upon his shield at the moment of some great deed. A battle arose, and all longed to go out and fight - and all did so, save one young man, chosen to stay and guard the castle gate. All day long he fought his feelings of despair at having been chosen for such a lowly task. Worse yet, he had to face the taunts of visitors, who called him out to the battle, and finally the news of one old lady who informed him that his friends did poorly. Still, he held his trust, bitter though it was. And it was well, for his mockers, and yea, even the old lady, were the castle's enemies, trying to breach the defenses. So it was that that young knight won his silver star.

There is a time and a place for daring-do and great deeds, but there is also a time and a place for small and quiet deeds. "For the want of the nail, the shoe was lost ..."

I hope I can be faithful in little, and not look too far ahead.

Thank you Helen Keller

A couple of years ago, I had the honour of playing Helen Keller in a movie based on her essay, Three Days to See.

The essay, for those who have not come across it, is Helen Keller's call to the seeing world to pay attention to the details around them. In it she imagines what she would see, if she had only three days to see.

Helen saw and heard with her fingertips. So, I had to learn to see with mine. To this day, I'll sometimes stop and stare into the distance while running my fingers over something. I began to notice things I never did before, such as how uneven a grass plot can be.

In the three days, I had to think on seeing everything for the first time. Truly I think it would have been a wonderful, overwhelming experience. A thousand little details: the colors of the flowers, the glory of the sunrise and set, the joy and wonder of friends faces, the face of a baby- and unreadable characters on a page.

I love to read. Helen loved books. It was therefore one of the saddest things to eagerly snatch up a book, only to realize that Helen wouldn't have been able to read her dear books that were not braille, had she been granted the gift of sight for three days.

There are times when I am lazy, and don't truly see everything, but I do see a lot more now,and take time to deeply drink in the visual beauty of the world around me. Thank you, Helen Keller.

Sketch book images: Peaceful War

Wonder in darkness

Silvia Tarniceru was a women inspired by wonder. In her biography by Harvey Yoder her musings from a time when she had just been moved to a drab colorless concentration camp are recounted:

"Perhaps it is because the lives of these men, these police, have no meaning," I mused. "If we have no direction for our living, we become insensitive to beauty, to attractive surroundings.[...]

"I thank God that my parents taught me to appreciate beautiful things. Even though Mama was busy with her work, she would always let us put a bouquet of wildflowers on the table.[...]

"I believe God wants us to love beauty. He made a beautiful world. The hill behind our house when I was a child held so much beauty. The deep, dark woods; the fragile wild flowers; the musical thrush; and the delicate ferns."

God Knows My Size

I hope that when hope is deferred in my life as it was for her (she had just been sent back to Romania after having escaped to Yugoslavia), I will be able to praise God and reflect on the wonders of his creation as she did on this occasion.

I didn't do it today. A small thing had been deferred, and rather than praising God, and looking at the wonders of the woods around me, I was crying out in despair.

Perhaps though, it is not a bad things. The psalms in particular are full of cryings out to God. The thing is, most of them end up with either praise, or the choice to continue to trust in God.


"Praise the Lord, I tell myself" Psalm 103:1a.

Penciless outlining for watercolours

I realize that the picture at left is a bit fuzzy, and I apologize for this.

It's illustrating a new technique I've discovered: outlining in orange. Pencil tends to show through.

Usually on small paintings, I just paint. However this painting is in fact close to 8 1/2 by 11 in real life. Much more detail therefore is required. Hence the outlining in light orange.

I discovered long ago that orange paint diluted with a certain amount of water creates a nice lighter skin tone. Now I have found it works for outlines too.

brief thoughts and advice on movie making

I suppose an art inspired blog can include movie making thoughts.
Especially since the first short film I made was based on Helen Keller's Three Days to See, an essay on the wonder of sight.

If you are making a film:

Write, rewrite, write again a screenplay. Focus on visuals. Film is a visual medium. The film professor at the college I went to wanted all his filmmakers to begin with a silent film for this reason.

Per Walter Mirch: Story is King. Does an element further the story? Emotion is Queen. Is an element emotional? Rhythm is Third. Does the story have good flow? (This is more important in Post-production).

Consider making a silent film. Sound can be tricky, and an added dimension of worry for the director.

Get as many people to help out with various jobs as possible. It's hard to do everything at once.

If you are director, try to avoid anything but a minor acting role in the film. It will enable you to focus more on your job rather than splitting your time between two very different focus areas for the film. I ended up being a main actor in both of the films I have made so far, and regretted it both times. I love acting - but it is hard to do both, especially as a beginner.

Watch movies. Take notes. See how shots are done. Turn off the sound and see if you can follow the story. Figure out why.

Consider drawing a storyboard - even simple lines can help a lot. Again film is a visual medium. Think visually.

Plan your shoot. Have an idea of what you want. Don't forget to take shots that can be used for cut-aways if necessary. This enables the editor to work with various visual and continuity problems. It can also add wonderful texture to a film.

Write to your capabilities and resources. Explosions tend to be expensive and dangerous. Your job is not to imitate a favorite action movie (unless you are deliberately doing a campy spoof), but to the best with what you have.

Get white noise. This is where one yells "quiet on the set" and records several minutes of pure "silence". It helps your editor work with annoying shifts of sound, and makes your movie sound more professional.

If you are recording sound, aim for the best sound possible. So many great beginning visual films that are dialog driven fail because the sound isn't good. I struggled with this on my second film.

Add music, but do so wisely. Copy-righted music limits what you can do with a film. Royalty free music exists. Imcompetech.com is one good site with royalty free music.

These are not but a few thoughts, and things I'd wished I'd known, but I hope they help someone.

Mainly : have fun, and as my professor always said: make magic.

The wonder of the storm

Have you ever stood in the wind, and watched as the clouds gather, and the trees lash, and been amazed?
Yesterday was a particularly amazing pre-storm, as it was both light and dark, and the play of light on the dancing trees was eerie. Then, in the midst of the rain, a rainbow stretched across the sky. At that point, we were driving to church, and the streets were flooded, causing huge jets of spray - not fun to drive in as the driver, but ...

BBC's reading list - a glimmer of the origin

Many people have been passing a list of books around saying that BBC believes most people have only ever read six out of the hundred . Wherever it is from, it is rather an interesting social phenomena, as many viral Internet things are.

Curious, I did a quick Google search. It turned up nothing besides others who marked the list. Doing a search on BBC initially only produced a couple of lists of 100 favourites and a mention of children reading six books over the summer holidays.

Determined, I tried again, this time selecting the first 6 books of the list as my search words. An article referencing the top ten books from 2007 was the first thing I uncovered. All ten books mentioned matched the first 10 books on the list.

Unfortunately, further searches failed to turn up the original Top 100 list of 2007, if that is indeed what the article references. Still, although the origins of the "6 out of 100" story remain obscure, it is highly unlikely that BBC considers such a thing as people's favourites are usually widely read.

It makes sense that the list would be of favourites, for it is an extremely eclectic list - Enid Blyton is a children's writer.

Having now expounded upon my meager attempts to solve the mystery here is my own check-offs of the list. Books that are in bold are ones that I have read. Those with an X are ones I liked a good bit.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen X
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien X
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling Jury is still out as to whether I like the series or not
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee X
6 The Bible X
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens

Total: 8

11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott X
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare - Not all, but several
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien X
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot

Total: 2

21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell 1/2 - 3/4
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams X
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll X "Beware the Jabberwock my friend...
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame X

Total: 3 1/2

31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens X
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis X
34 Emma-Jane Austen liked, but no so much as her others
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen X
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis X
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hossein
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne X

Total: 6

41 Animal Farm - George Orwell 42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery X
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan

Total: 2

51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen X
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens liked, yet didn't
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Total: 3

61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas Another liked, but didn't
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville - Bits

Total: 1

71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens X
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett X
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Inferno – Dante
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome X (Unfortunately I've only read part of the series)
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray

Total: 4

80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens X
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White X
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle X
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton (I don't think so)

Total: 4

91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery Liked but didn't
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams Again liked but didn't
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute X
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas X
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl X
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo - On Facebook, I said i had read this, but upon reflection, I think it is still only excerpts, so I shall subtract it from here.

Total: 7

Final Tally: 39/100 (and bits)

Hand Palette

Painted hand
When I was in college, I used to attend a reading group called Phantastes every Wednesday night. Since it started at nine and often went to 12 or 12:30, I would take my sketch books and paints along.

Without a place to truly mix colors one night, I tentatively used my other hand. I soon began to use it for my palette almost exclusively. The control it offers is marvelous. Of course I only do so with non-toxic water colors.

Wonder, joy and art

The brilliant colors of fall leaves. A gust of wind. Rainbows in the grass. Diamonds on the water. All of these stir my soul and create a wonder and a longing C. S. Lewis calls joy.

Since I was little, white pages have never been quite safe from me. Pictures, and later words, had a tendency of spilling across the page - initially done by the accompaniment of tuneless singing.

Once, bored in school, I even experimented with marker-soaked tissues and the desk. Needless to say, that didn't go over too well, though it did result in my being moved up a few grades (I had been put back because I "didn't read French").

Perhaps the joy and wonder always inspired what I did, since I had the tendency to color boldly, initially without care of lines. Gradually I learned to be more careful, and to make and sing (and play) things others would enjoy.


I'm still learning. These pages will hopefully contain the record of the journey, and of my awe at the work of the greatest and first Artist of all.