Visual rhetoric

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_rhetoric - that's what I'm talking about.

Destroy and keep

I'm trying to figure out what art is supposed to be. What's valuable about it for you – and for me? What is art supposed to do, anyway?  Art is undervalued by society, and, as a result, living artists are ignored and artists don't get paid fairly – given these disincentives, why do I still want to make it? What's my connection to art, in a how-do-I-and-it-fit-into-this-particular-lifetime kind of way? Why, if it's easy for me to paint fluidly, do I revolt against easiness – why is art about difficulties, for me?  I want to know these things because, because. Just... because.

If my question about resisting easy expressiveness were a fight, I'd call it "Art-and-How-and-Why-Does-the-Hand-Execute-It?"  In one corner, I'd put Fluidity, Facility and Ease. In the other corner, there'd be Imperfections, Breaks and Variations. Which corner has the good guys? The latter. Fluidity, facility and ease seem dishonorable somehow, and even make me feel uneasy. Why is this so?

I found part of the answer in Healing Spaces: The Science of Place and Well-being, a book about healing, architecture and spaces by Esther M. Sternberq, M.D. In it, Sternberg writes that a healthy heartbeat is more chaotic than one that's near death:

"[Ary] Goldberger has shown that heart-rate variability patterns, which appear chaotic, can be analyzed mathematically and reduced to relatively simple equations. The more complex and variable a system, he pointed out, the healthier it is...

"Goldberger likes to show his lecture audiences a series of graphic patterns, and ask them to pick the one they think looks healthiest and the one that looks the sickest. Often people choose the smoothest, least variable lines, or the ones with the most regular squiggles, as the healthier patterns. Goldberger [says they're] dead wrong. He points out that the condition in which there is the least variability in heart rate is death. In death, there are no rhythms at all-the body generates only straight lines. A desirable image is one in which variability is high. There are lots of squiggly lines oscillating around the horizontal, in what appears to be a chaotic pattern. This is the image of health..."

Chaos is the signature, the essence, of life.

Just like that, art can't ever be about easiness. That works for me. Despite being viewed as an anti-survival, time-wasting exercise, art has been made by people in all eras, in all cultures. Despite society's conscious devaluation of art and living artists, I think we read art subliminally as a sign of health, an expression of who we are at our best. And so it persists.

For the fresh understanding of connections between life, health and art, and the partial answer to one of my questions, and for many other things learned, thanks to Dr. Sternberg.

You can find Esther M. Sternberg's "Healing Spaces: The Science of Place and Well-being" at Amazon (in hardcover, paperback and Kindle versions), and elsewhere, too.

Sketchbook planning: a sidelong glance

A busy week...  no time to draw.
Still working on what to do with the sketchbook.
It's boiling down to:
- old dreams: fish, feet in the turquoise sea, riding the Central Asian steppes, discovering ancient ceramic Chinese horses & riders in the earth.  & patterns.  & jewels. the looming moon that later explodes?
- framing the shots, & the style: left page flat, right page dimensional, with some bokeh effects maybe, or fading into the unknown.
- first shot question: first dream? or owl & pussycat in their pea-green boat? nahin to the latter... ip rights issue with the original poem.  adapt, adapt, bring it home to my experience.

- - -
(What's this about?  It's The Sketchbook Project (2012 edition) from Art House Co-op.)

Sketchbook planning: paper

Did the pastels.
They work wonderfully over the inks.
Sketched lots.
Using a small Daler-Rowney wirebound.
Like the tooth & how it works with inks.

The arm & shoulder are slowing down.
Confidence exceeds fluency right now, but that's OK, if I had to choose, I'd stick with confidence.
Got pastels on my fingertips.
Used a chamois.
Laid down brush pen washes, then inked over.

Almost marked the "official" sketchbook, but: didn't.
The paper's really thin.
I don't want to stick pairs of pages together...
I'd rather work out something that doesn't show through.
Maybe the inks will go -- at least the dark ones.
We'll see...

I was surprised at how hard it was to stop working.
That's the way I want it, but I was afraid it would take a while to get there.
My words are choppy, direct, spare, now,
like the way I was working.

Uncharted waters, thinking maybe east to west to east to west.
Fuschia fields, embroideries.
Don't forget owl, pussycat & pea-green boat.
And the blue blue sea, or is it the wild one...

Hey, angel!
x

- - -
(What's this about?  It's The Sketchbook Project (2012 edition) from Art House Co-op.)

Sketchbook planning: practice

Kya karoon, I don't have enough time.
Tuesday was supposed to be a day off, but it wasn't.  Friday was too, & Monday.  & neither were.

My Tuesday practice was about brush pen strokes, fills & blends.
It was enough to show how to go:
gotta get out the pencils...
need to try the pastels on the official sketchbook paper...
gotta plan the styles, the characters & the storyline.

Been listening to The PropheC's Forever album on Spotify.
Been watching Dil Se on Hulu.

The confrontation between my culture and India's is at the core of my novel-to-be and the theme of this sketchbook.
My understanding of Hindi and Panjabi still grows organically, little by little.
My understanding of mores and body language has grown far beyond my initial understanding of my own limitations regarding these aspects of Hindustani culture.

Experiencing The PropheC & Dil Se tonight is re-drawing my own outline, to me.

It's what the sketchbook is about, will be about, after all.

- - -
(What's this about?  It's The Sketchbook Project (2012 edition) from Art House Co-op.)

Sketchbook planning: speculation

Like this:

Horse.
Tent.
Cooking.
Weaving.
Sewing.
Designing.
Loft building.
Party.
Car.
Ferry.

& closeups:
- profile with jewels
- sheep
- flowers
- hands
- bike

& long shots:
- mountain
- obstacles that are also path-like, like cliffs & ridges
- steppe
- river valley
- lake
- bridge
- city skyline

& process.

Check some of Jamaal Bradley's animation process blogs - he's a Dreamworks animator -here's one on teaching about Mother Gothel, the Tangled character..

note to me:  time flies when you're having fun.  matlab: I'm working more slowly than I thought I would.
note to me:  there's no step-back in analog process.
note to me:  every accident is a success/failure node.

- - -
(What's this about?  It's The Sketchbook Project (2012 edition) from Art House Co-op.)

Sketchbook planning: touch

Doing brush pen practice -- the tools are new to me.

Cymbidium!
What about other Central Asian & northern subcontinent flowers?
Azaleas & rhododendron, for sure.  What else?
The Wikipedia article on the Geography of Afghanistan is a good place to start.

Turkumen jewelry, from the Met Museum.

Sketched a head directly in brush pen -- strokes too loose, will need to rough-in in pencil first... & slow down.  But I like the fluid feel of both brush & pen, and the blending's OK.

- - -
(What's this about?  It's The Sketchbook Project (2012 edition) from Art House Co-op.)

Sketchbook planning: magic

Anomie theory.
Diana Wynne Jones.
Kalevala.
Kiran Desai.
Asimov's Foundation Trilogy, & the lost titles & authors of other SF books I read as a kid.
Hans Christian Anderson.

Connecting me at roots level to Hiyao Miyazaki: HCA via the Russian animated The Snow Queen.

My Flash Magic Box.

"Designed to illustrate the magical and mysterious sensations a child feels early on a dark and frosty Christmas morning, the magic box in this Flash movie opens on different scenes and sounds, depending on the number you choose from its menu.  The artwork: the box and its little scenes were stylistically inspired by Arthur Szyk's extraordinary illustrations for the 1945 Grosset & Dunlap edition of Andersen's Fairytales (transl. by E.V. Lucas and H.B. Paull), a book dreamed over throughout childhood. (If you like Szyk's work, check out the resources at the Arthur Szyk Society web site.)" - me, from WindyHill Design's Design Portfolio.

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(What's this about?  It's The Sketchbook Project (2012 edition) from Art House Co-op.)

Sketchbook planning: media & arcs

Like this:

It'll be pastels, & Tombow brush pens (Jp. fudepen) in manga colors.

The theme is "uncharted waters". 

 
Arcs:
- going back to first HG dream
- then the JFD days of songs & madness
- then connect
- then going to sea in a pea-green boat
- then fear & love
- then fights & punishment
- then distant songs
- then hand to hand
- then some eternal thing with no resolution.

Ending, vis Jade Warrior (Jadesutori):
- Betrayal through selfishness on one side, shaken faith on the other.
- And death hope.

Now practicing loops.

Hidden lands within known realities.

Balance the known & the unknown, like Hayao Miyazaki's work, esp. Howl's Moving Castle.

Use a daily artifact from real time to start each day's path.

A prayer to what's good.

- - -
(What's this about?  It's The Sketchbook Project (2012 edition) from Art House Co-op.)

Rafael Guastavino!

Rafael Guastavino... via @nytimes: slideshow of Gustavino's work with curved volumes in NYC!

Here's one of his best-known spaces:

tulous

a tulou is: protective housing for extended families, offering safety, warmth, community. an ancient form of clan-based housing that developed in China's Fujian province.