WELCOME!

Anthony Ross is a visual artist based in Kelowna, B.C., Canada currently learning from online art programs such as Watts Atelier and Schoolism, as well as several others. Anthony has been developing the skills to be a well rounded illustrator since 2015.

For Anthony's most recent work, see his Instagram.

He works mostly in charcoal at the moment, following the method taught at Watts Atelier, yet is developing skills in a variety of other mediums as well, such as gouache, oil and digital.

The aim of this artistic development is to create soulful, awe-inspiring works and to have these works fulfill the vision of what is fantastical, imaginative, mystical and yet altogether true and completely creative at the core.

Anthony has many illustrated stories he is co-writing and co-producing which will give fruit to this aim and be the fruit of this development.

In the meantime...

Anthony may be seen as a portrait artist at various events, local markets and on the streets of Kelowna.

He is available for freelance work as an illustrator and has illustrated several books and album covers, as well as tattoos, portraits and other.

He is also a photographer and an actor, which add richness to his artistic vision and life.

Contact him at whenanthonywas@gmail.com
for any commission requests, comments or other information.

Thank you for your presence

Random Updates

1) I've quit my job as a cashier so I can save my tendons and hands for drawing and painting. My other jobs will give me more rest and be better for long-term art practice. One more week there.

2) My next Youtube video is going to be a long one. One hour of reviewing my figure lay-ins and the Watts Atelier live stream course I've been doing since October. Here's an image that won't be in the video and probably should be, because I think it's my best yet. Ha!

3) I ordered in smooth newsprint and realized how poorly my previous paper was taking my charcoal lines. It's like drawing on sand paper compared to the newsprint. The above drawing was my first on the new paper.

4) I received a lovely gift from Century Guild the other day for sending them an email with some kind words about how I don't mind the delay on my order of LE PATER by Alphonse Mucha. You never know how words may affect someone. I was very surprised and joyful in receiving it.

5) Only a couple weeks before I turn to the first month of my Frank Frazetta calendar. The art for the first four months before the new year is the classic Death Dealer. Nice to have Frazetta art on my wall and a new one every month!

6) Next term - the Winter term of Jan/Feb/Mar - I will be registering for some more live stream courses with Watts Atelier. For sure I will be auditing Drapery with Erik Gist, taking Head Lay-ins with Jeff Watts and maybe also taking Lucas Graciano's Foreshortened figure drawing. We'll see.

That's all for now.
Take care all you silly humans,
- Anthony

When I Learn - Life Drawing

I've started to notice incremental, tiny improvements in the way I think and how I draw. The acronym Jeff Watts often used is SIPDE. Scan, Identify, Predict, Decide, Execute. This way of drawing and thinking when drawing is much more effective than a chaotic, freestyle approach. Of course, there is also some practical use of not being rigid or of letting unplanned changes manifest themselves. It's a catch twenty two, in a sense.

Many people that I encounter draw in a messy style, without much thought about each stroke before, after and during the mark being made. That's not going to make the best drawing. Also, too much thinking will stop any happy accidents of occurring. A happy accident is something that turns out nice even though it wasn't a planned addition to the drawing. It may be a hand movement that wasn't what you were trying to do, but it looks better than what you aimed for. Or, at least, it looks good and you're glad it's done. It may have been less good than what you were aiming for, but perhaps what you visualized is not one hundred percent accurate for what was possible in that single stroke. Meaning, I might visualize something, draw something else that's good, but what I'm visualizing might still be better than what I drew. And in a way, I hope it always is, so I have an idea of how to improve my drawing no matter how good it is.

As I draw, my process of visualizing what I see, what I want to see and what I'm able to draw is all growing, mixing and changing. It's becoming more refined with each drawing session and with all the lessons I'm taking, digesting and applying into my daily practice. I gather a little more sensitivity and intelligence with my practice each day. How am I learning? What am I thinking? What state of mind am I in?

Listening, watching and playing. There's a whole movement to thought. All our changes of mind, constantly streaming through. As I draw, I have to be aware of this movement and see its benefits, but not get lost in it as one of its thoughts. There's a balance to observe and drawing is my tool to see it. My awareness contains these reflections, like a baby in a mother's womb. The mother is not the baby. She nurtures it and is ultimately the one who feeds it. We have to see how we feed our minds and what we feed, and know that our feeding is not the wholeness of what we are. The act that observes this feeding is whole, but the feeding itself, the movements of thought, are bit by bit. We can't think everything at once, just like we can't bring up the whole drawing at once. It is bit by bit, drawing the leg here and the head here.

We are an awareness that sees beyond patterns and recognition. We can see something new when we observe without an idea about the thing. Then we are learning. We are perceiving without the perceiver. When I draw from a live model, I know when I'm observing him without analyzing, or when I'm seeing the knowledge imposed over top. It is in experience. I can be present with the moving, living organism that exists there before me and put a mark down or I can be thinking about it in terms and knowledge. This Reilly abstraction here, this geometric shape there, this mark there... SIPDE. How is this mark? How is this representing what I remember about this anatomical form? Both are necessary to make a good drawing. We need to both see clearly and think clearly. They go together yet are in contradiction when relating this to making a beautiful piece of art, because beauty is not in the art, but in the one who sees.

Beauty, it seems to me, comes from a cultivated sense of awareness, clarity and care for everything. It does not actually have anything to do with a nice drawing. Beauty is inspired care. I'm learning art to have well cultivated aesthetics in how I see and in my execution of it. That's my knowledge and I can use those skills to express beauty as I feel it. However, just attending to nature as it is, including human beings, we are full. There is a completeness in observation that empowers oneself. It is both the mother and the baby nurturing each other. It is not one giving direction over another. It is a freedom in being beyond recognition. It is truly a miracle just to be alive and awareness as that. Freedom emptying into freedom, continuously.

- Anthony

Rant of Being Inspired

I'm so very excited to know that I'm learning how to draw and paint. It's an amazing gift and skill to have, to visually depict and see the world in its shapes and forms. I'm blessed to have wonderful teachers who inspire this joy of making art based on the world we relate in and to.

What I notice more and more is that my trips, outings, events and things I like to spend my time doing are geared toward wellness, joy and prosperity. And even when the thing itself isn't something that is directly related to these things, I find myself finding the little bits of wherever I am that compliment my inspiration and that keep me in tune with the truths and joys that I do flower in a little more each day.

I notice that the things I look for wherever I am and in whatever I'm doing are things that inspire both my art and my story. I'm a detective for these cues. Little gems appear here and there that signify new ideas, attractions and movements of energy that cut through the old, stale masks.

I treasure these cues and use them. I don't know what they are until I find them, but I play with what's there and here so I can stumble into them accidentally on purpose. I'm diving into strange lands and the powers of imagination and questions of what is true. It's my play time and responsibility to write this story. It's my joy and fulfillment to dive into my artwork with a growing sense of depth and care. I am these worlds that I'm creating. I am this art that I'm living. I am this exploration, this act of being, this permeating awareness of wisdom. I am these unknown cues of inspiration. I am an artist.

(Delayed post - missed Sunday)

https://www.patreon.com/whenanthonywas

Proportion of Light and Dark Shapes (Block-Ins)

I just completed Week 2's assignment in my Schoolism Essentials of Realism course. The first assignments were to block-in the light and dark shapes of an image, gradually getting more complex in each stage. Sometimes I would work backwards, doing a more complicated one and realizing I can simplify it. It takes a lot of squinting to see these shapes and a lot of thinking to know where and how to indicate them.

The following images are from the second assignment, where I'm no longer tracing over reference, but using comparative measurement to redraw a larger version in several block-in stages.

Learning lots from Jonathan Hardesty in this course and enjoying these challenging visual puzzles!

Thanks for reading,
Anthony

Jim's Andy, Doubt and Direct Experience

I doubt a lot. I doubt myself, my work, my path, my environment, my ideas, my contradictory thoughts, actions and just a whole bunch of stuff. I doubt people. All that I doubt in myself, I project doubt onto them about these things too. I doubt my projections. I doubt life itself, and I had for a moment a thought during meditation that maybe this doubt isn't so bad 'after all.' I doubt this too, a little.

I've found that certain things become more credible for me as tools to navigate life with as I use them and understand what their place is for me within the universal impersonal changes in life. Some of the things for me right now are practices. One is art (drawing and painting), one is dance (Mandala Movement), one is Qi-Gong and one is Vipassana Meditation as taught by S. N. Goenka. Another one is writing this weekly blog post and making a monthly Youtube video. And of course the last one, but not the least, is working on my story, (secret title.)

Richard Feymann had commented once that doubt is a key component of his personality and who he is. Science requires doubt, so that we can test our theories, know whether we're right or wrong and then start again. Without doubt, we could stop any scientific exploration and live as we are. That is the feeling I had during meditation, that doubt is the other side of the coin of exploration and creative invention. Doubt is the yin to consistent curiosity and exploration as yang. Of course, I doubt this when I state it as an intellectual point. I don't doubt it in the experience I have of it. The 'intuition' of it, one might say, but I'd actually rather not say anything like that either.

What my practices do for 'me' is bring me into the direct experience of something that has no doubt whatsoever. In hindsight, in my intellectual activity, I may look at it and doubt it. I may not understand it fully in words and theories. These full living experiences are not always result oriented and cannot 'always' have the 1+1=2 literacy. In a day to day existence, I can't say what does what in terms of cause and effect. I can have guesses, but it won't be one hundred percent accurate. When I'm practicing Vipassana meditation, I can experience this shifting take place without a measurement. It is undeniable, direct, choice-less awareness of reality. It's hard to put words here, because I feel when I say 'reality,' someone can say that that is a subjective 'idea.' It is NOT when you are experiencing it directly, which may be a bit paradoxical, or simply unable to be proven right or wrong, true or false.

It is unable to be truly calculated and one might call that insanity, but too much calculation is actual insanity. This analysis mindset breaks spontaneity, poetry, intuition, faith and experience. Attention is caring and the action required to live objectively. It is attention that we can rely on first, because otherwise any new discoveries will be based on old thought. Doubt can be a deep, fulfilling component to realizations and their explanations. Doubt gives us the courage to go into uncharted territory and come back with something to share, when we understand that doubt is our tool for growth. Too much doubt, on one hand, can be just like too much calculation. We think we know and therefore we get the results we've 'set in stone.' For example, my recent arm injury has become very clearly a direct representation of my mindset for approaching my artwork. A mindset that is detrimental and short-sighted. See the picture below. These examples may shine all around us when we know how to see them. We are also free to doubt them, but sometimes they deserve the credit for being so blatantly obvious, in hindsight.

~This says, "I have to get better" (at art - mental) on one side, changing into "I have to get better" (with my arm injury - physical). A direct translation, just a different context showed up because I needed to learn the lesson all the same and change my thoughts about myself. The thing didn't matter, just the application of it and thankfully I had the context change enough to show me what I wasn't noticing. 'Enjoying my pain,' because it helped me see.~

I was thinking about food and how someone might be a good chef. Their food is good, so we want them to cook and we want to eat their food. This is how we think, yet at another level, gratitude can change the quality of the experience of any food so drastically that we don't need to get someone good to cook, in a way. As I write this, I'm bouncing around my memories of Jim and Andy, a movie with Jim Carrey going into how he acted as Andy Kaufman in 'Man on the Moon.' He experienced something surreal with this performance and permeated it into the cast and the process of making the film. He doesn't fully understand it in all its levels, but it came together none the less and the movie was well made within that chaotic, emotional state of transformation and questioning. All context can be tools for this transforming and our transforming can give all context validity. Seeing representations of things can help us to put our observations in perspective, and help us observe more.

Other examples coming to mind are when the first picture of Earth was taken from the space station. The observation of the wholeness of Earth and how that's our home changed the perspectives of many people. The picture represented that and helped us see it. The other day I had not done something that I felt would have been fun. I reacted, thought too much about it and fell into a fearful stasis. Right after, my jacket strings got tangled in a mess and were tangled around my neck and head as I put the jacket on. I was like, "What's going on?!" The strings were choking me, as I had choked. I had to take my jacket off and work to untie the knot. Being a bit frustrated as I untied it, I stopped. I took a breath and thought, "this is a representation of the fear I just experienced. When I untie this knot, I'm untying that fearful patterning I just experienced." After that thought, the untying was easy, as if I was just aligning with what the truth of the situation was. The energy of that activity was no longer about finishing it, but about knowing what it represented. Here's some tangled headphones, which I can untie using that same mentality of processing, contrary to frustration.

When thinking about the value of meditation and the free mind that acts without pretense and with a freshness of creative insight sometimes beyond logical, comprehensive calculation, I found that it is in certain practices that I experience this knowing. With Qi-Gong, Vipassana, Mandala Movement, I am more 'with' the experiencing of it than anything else. "How can I even be anywhere else?" One imagines. It is with thought that I can identify with things that are projections and therefore feel elsewhere. I am not aligned with what I'm doing at the intimate feeling level and the total understanding of it through a direct, objective, universal awareness. I know the difference when I'm with that or living in ideas and projections. When I'm not IN it, or WITH it, then I am in a division between an idea or image of myself, other labelled things, and the perception of what is here and now. Basically, process V.S. result, but being totally with something can still lead to tremendous results, such as in Andy Kaufman's (or Jim Carrey's?) 'Man on the Moon,' and also in life itself. This doesn't just happen in the movies folks.

We come to think that we are finished human beings, that we won't change any more. There's a study that talks about how people think they would still like to see their current favorite band ten years from now, and pay more money to see them.  Yet, most of them wouldn't care to see the band that was their favorite ten years ago, today. This is our choosing to find that perfect chef, because he's what we think we want. When I'm truly present, I don't need anything. It's just like Jim Carrey says at the end of Jim and Andy, "I have no ambition." I am living life, when I'm living it, so what else could I possibly ask for? MORE than everything that my experience is? How can that be reached? This is the kind of 'new' common sense that I integrate into my psyche with every moment that I'm in creative process mode and not in quick, efficient result mode. I am understanding the balance and the connection of these two modes (as I doubt if they are separate) more and more.

What I get from my weekly, daily, monthly practices is a sense that what I'm doing all the time, no matter what the thing is, is more like a practice of moving energy, such as Qi-Gong, or watching my energy move, such as Vipassana. In typing this, I can write it as if I'm doing a Mandala Movement 'dance' and move in a natural, flowing way. I can feel as though there is a lightness in my work because I'm just playing with waves, trees and movements in the body. I can experience an effortless witnessing of these things that require a focus to come into fruition and yet not lose a clarity of boundless attention that it is aware of all passing, changing movements in freedom. Of course, I doubt my clearly stated words when I know in my experience I bounce around in my thoughts like a lunatic sometimes, but so did Jim Carrey as Andy Kaufman. I may sometimes be doubting or losing the battle against myself, or battling myself (and therefore losing), or just simply not too sure about what it is I should do, until I sit and get so engaged with reality that I don't miss a thing. Therefore, I continue to rest, return and continue, on all levels of my experience with what is.

Thanks for reading,
If you like this, please share and continue coming back every Sunday for a new post.

Reflections on Peace, Programs and Projects: Dynamism and Selectivity

In recent weeks, I've participated in a program facilitated by a friend and mentor of mine. She guided a group of eight of us through a booklet to educate ourselves about ourselves. In other words, we met week by week and would focus on some aspect of life, arranged week by week in the program to add to the previous week and build a supportive, integrative, deeper understanding of how we can be the change we wish to see in the world. At the beginning of this program I was reading a book by Paul R. Fleischman, m. d., called "cultivating inner peace." The book was inspiring on many levels. Paul is a teacher of Vipassana meditation and also a retired psychiatrist, poet and reader. His language is diverse and influential and he inspired my intention for peace, purity and the program. The other important aspect of my goal was to bring this peace into more productive work on my personal artistic project, a story which inspires the same spacious clarity that Paul's words do. Cue the sticky note collection.

Now, how do I approach beginning to summarize this book and remove these sticky notes growing out of it? No easy task. Necessarily, I had to review the entire program's booklet as well as Paul's book to fully articulate the new intentions the program has asked me to create in its final week of exercises. Throughout the nine week program, I've noticed several changes in myself. In summary, I have been more attentive and less judging, more spacious and less time-bound and planned as well as more spontaneous and less mentally abrasive. I set out on this quest for peace long before this program, but a little tap on the shoulder every week has brought to light some new insights and approaches to unlearning patterning that conflicts with fresh, desirable perception and harmonious creating of freedom. I also used these weekly exercises with a selective acuteness to accomplish my goal. At the beginning of this program, I set an intention for it. I wrote it down as follows.

Goal: To continuously re-energize a committed relationship of dynamic participation and reverence in peace and purity that permeates every moment of engaged life.

Quite a mouthful, but it hits a mark. "Cultivating inner peace" begins with a personal quest, at whatever pace you read, and in life. No matter the place, "always invisible, but present, peace is seen in messages from the cosmic ray of gratitude." As I reflect on both the program and the re-reading of my sticky-noted paragraphs, I am grateful for the "peace in friendship and in all things," and for my attraction to seeking it. I seek it in daily life and in the work on my personal artistic story. Is it contradictory to seek peace? How can one seek the "miracle of freshness?" Once the door is open, it is something to continually return to with care and diligence. I do this through meditation daily as a fail safe, but also as much as I can in every moment. Peace is a way of life and therefore our path to it is the pace of our lives. It is in our clear seeing and "courageous confrontations with suffering" that peace matures.

"Our lives are feelings, unfolding slowly with an invisible tempo." In recent months, I had to slow down my directed art practice of 40+ hours a week. Rest, care and attention were the dynamic components to an arm that's doing much better now. As "peace is the result of solution: getting things to mix and flow," I was forced to return to a simpler pace to balance my life. Peace is dynamic. It is "not an absence of problems, but a set of tools to properly deal with them." A tool set changes as our context does, and it is "necessary to have a dynamic relationship to your mood and idea of peace." With a refreshed returning to art practice and with the guidance of Jeff Watts' critiques, I feel more confident that my success as an artist is inevitable in practice. As the book Mastery by George Leonard states, "practice is a possession." I feel that I am possessing it more deeply with "respect for life . . . simplicity . . . a quiet pace, with time to wonder, ponder and observe, persisting in quiet, steady triumph with deep personal satisfaction." This attitude of reverence accomplishes much more in the creation of my story than I could plan.

(Yet writing a story still takes file organizing, however intuitive.)

"To concentrate on peaceful enterprises is doubly calming, from both the process and the content of focus." As I re-engage with my art and story, I know that it is not when it's done (result), but when it's done (process) that satisfaction must be actualized. An example in Paul's book is the Shaker people, who had "no division between daily life and worship. There was only the sacred world, no profane - the Kingdom of Heaven was to be actualized on earth." As we confront the old programming, we must select the new from a cultivated awareness and equanimity. "The first step is envisioning beyond each troubling circumstance in the direction of peace. Peace is interwoven with the character virtues of faith and persistence." Someone cannot live their whole life without peace and expect peace at the end of it. We create our karma and the universe matches you.

To create something new, I must feel new. The context of my life is dynamic and simple enough to provide the safety to listen, appreciate and receive instead of living in a biological mode of fight or flight. I'm grateful for that support. I select it to be so and it allows for these meditative hours to explore and accompany any suffering. Suffering makes me look deeper to learn what truly harbors unity and spirit to nurture this returning to attention, care and wonder. "The capacity to choose and sustain objectives of attention, to gate out the irrelevant, and to appreciate what one has, are aspects of self-regulation that enable both action and satisfaction. Satisfaction means to feel you've done enough." Recently, I had felt that I was not doing enough, artistically and in creating my I.P. It is in the realization that I am good enough to take the next step that I have abundance. It is in playing that I feel the nature of my process and success, the two uniting in one another, like the yin and yang. It is not later that I will have peace, but now that I have begun to walk. It is in a shared studio environment that I continue mastery as a way of life, not as a goal to be reached elsewhere.

(A joined work space with my brother. Two double monitor set ups and everything we need.)

To quote some peace-living examples from Paul's book, "The Nearings coupled a deep inspiration toward peaceful living with a dynamic sense of the process itself. The value in doing something does not lie in the ease or difficulty, the probability or improbability of its achievement, but in the vision, the plan, the determination, the perseverance, the effort and the struggle which go into the project. Life is enriched by aspiration and effort."

"Because peace can't be grasped or held constant, faith in its possibility and resolution to actualize it are its recurrent preconditions. The dynamism of peace precludes absolutism, rigidity, finality. Peace isn't accomplished, never endures beyond a moment, and must be reborn, recreated in the next. Peace is atomic."

Thanks for reading,
- Anthony

(Stay in touch on social media. Links in tabs above.)

Jon, Jeff, Claude and the Cool, Funny Illusion of Reality in Art

Quite the blog title. If you've been following my Youtube channel and/or my blog posts here, you know that I am signed up for the Live Stream Watts Atelier course, 20 Figure Lay-ins and I'm receiving a weekly critique video back from Jeffrey R. Watts each week. Overlapping this, coming up on November 13th, is a Schoolism critiqued class where the enthusiastic Jonathan Hardesty will be critiquing my work each week too. Both classes will end around the same time near the end of December.

The way that the Watts critiques work is simpler. Jeff prints out the images sent in by the students, sits down at his drawing pad and tapes one after the other, tracing over top of them and talks while he does it. We get to see all the students' critiques in the video we're sent, and our personal critique is somewhere in the pile.

Schoolism uses computers. Ha ha. The benefit of their more digital way of doing things is that Jon will be able to show me with a 'Bing' search (inside joke: Jon uses bing on his weekly live stream) what a certain artist does in this or that visual scenario. He can reference artists, show me their work and show me what he's describing and why they do it well etc. I found this super helpful in a ten minute critique he gave me as a preview, in which he mentioned a few things he thought were good and could use improvement on my work. I also think that since art is a visual language, it not only helps to have someone draw over the image, but reference the artwork that has done it well. Jeff will reference artists who do something well, but it's not visible when he's referencing it until you look it up yourself and usually he's moving on to something else unless you pause the video. Now that I'm mentioning that, I might do that more often.

I don't have much good artwork hanging on the walls in my house. It was earlier this year that I remembered why I have this print of Robert Bateman's.

I realized it was because he inspired me as a young artist. I still have the picture up, but he's not as inspiring as he used to be. His work is too hyper real for my interest. I appreciate it, but it doesn't capture the magic of making art as illusion. I think Jeff and Jon agree with me on having more of an appreciation of art that is suggestive and realistic, but not always rendered at every inch. Take this piece below by Jeff. It is not until I squinted my eyes that I could barely make out a fox hat on this man's head. That's COOL. And as I say it's COOL, it's even cooler that I'm still somewhat unsure if it's a fox hat. Ha! It's a bit over the top on this piece, as Jeff comments on his Instagram (Jeff's Instagram) yet it's still amazing and awesome, I think.

Richard Schmid is a master at this kind of loose realism, in which something looks real from a distance, but up close it looks as if a child scribbled in color. That color not only harmonizes as Jeff comments, but it is established while representing something of truth, like a man with a fox hat. (It is easier to see the hat when it's thumb-nailed super small.)

Recently I was at a thrift store and I decided to buy a Claude Monet print that was framed and a cheap price. I liked it for its feeling and atmosphere, but also the fact that I was picking up on all the things I've heard Jon say in his Essentials of Realism course regarding observing and depicting what you see, rather than what you think. I find there to be a great funniness in the sense of illusion that art brings in this way. When I can observe the thumbnail version, or a framed painting at a distance and have it be a person or landscape, but when I go close it looks like pencil and paint markings, I am impressed. I'm not only impressed by the technique, but the other day I was looking at the Monet in that way and I laughed out loud. It's hilarious, for some reason, to be able to make that kind of illusion. I think it reflects the way I perceive life a lot of the time, as a crazy nonsensical movement of energy and my changing perspectives on things. It IS humorous and this kind of art inspires that kind of perspective.

Here is a few close ups of parts of the Monet hanging on my wall and a distance shot where you can see the whole painting that looks real, but it's really an illusion.

A nice atmospheric landscape.

A sail boat and a man standing on it. Wait, is that a paint stroke? Is that man's head just a black smudged dot? That church looks like it has holes in it.

What IS THIS? Those are windows? I can still see the stuff I saw, but it's barely formed at all.

LOOK AT THIS! Amazing. It's just dark shapes, but somehow it comes together as a real thing.

A boat and trees. Really? That's all there is to it? How the...

I think Jon's course will help me identify what's after 'the...' He's a really good teacher for making things clear in the how's and what's of art. One thing I realized he says a lot that Jeff almost never says is to compare something to something else within the painting or drawing you're making. As in, don't say "it's just dark shapes," but ask "is that shape darker or lighter than this other shape?" Again and again, compare to understand. I've never really heard Jeff talk about comparing the values, edges, proportion, shape or anything directly within a single drawing. He'll say the broad concepts over and over, like this is a firm edge or something, but that idea of looking at it within the context of the single drawing is incredibly useful. I think he'll help me, bit by bit, to be able to see how to create an illusion like this boat. Within that close up, it doesn't look like much. Take it back to the big picture, and that boat has the context of the water line, people, church, second boat and so on. That makes a difference.

Thanks for reading,
Anthony

Reflections on the Watts Atelier LIVE Stream Course - Week 3

Ha ha!

As for some consistency in writing... It's 8:00 PM on the Sunday that I'm supposed to have a blog post, because I've decided this, and I'm writing it.

I had some ideas about what to write about. These things will come later. I want to share something else right now and share it fresh, writing it directly right now.

I've started the live stream course with Jeffrey R. Watts, the master draftsman and painter. It's fantastic to watch him draw with a direct over head camera when he does the demos in the San Diego school and his ten minute warm ups with the model. His execution is masterful and so is his consistency in demoing with clarity, fullness of content and love of the arts. I don't know how much I've gotten so far from the course, because there's so much to learn and I can only apply so much of it at once when I'm drawing something. There are many things that will take years of study before I'm saying to myself, "Yes, I'm on the same page as him with this." For now, it's knowing that I'm not there in understanding the technique (Reilly abstractions being a big one) and I am encouraged to trust the practice and teaching that I will be guided there with my own proper efforts and consistent practice. He is so far beyond where I'm at, yet can both touch the state I'm in, encourage it to go further and yet sometimes make a cutting remark of pragmatic nature that sparks the desire to be more skillful, yet also is the kind of 'tough love' stab because it is just so hard to learn how to draw. That is good teaching.

We want to hear where we are at fault, even if it was our best effort at the time. He'll say, "I'm going to tell you when your drawing's lacking. C'mon, you can do a better edge than that. It seems you just phoned it in here and ran out of patience." I'll think to myself, "Damn it, I didn't run out of patience there. I tried to do that well." Yet, it's what I need to hear. The same way that my eye doesn't know how to see proper proportions, edges, values etc. is the same way that I have unconscious patterning of any kind and can't see when I'm in it. Maybe there was impatience there to some degree, but it wasn't conscious. Meaning, when I hear that remark, I think about how I must be as conscious as I can be when drawing and solving the visual problems. And even when I am as conscious as I can be, there will be things that I can not pick up on within myself about how I'm doing the drawing. It's like if you're gripping the pencil too tight and aren't paying attention to that. Eventually your hand hurts, but it's after you've been holding on for so long with that intensity. If someone points it out, you can notice, but in the meantime it will take a lot longer.

(figure master study - NOT done in 20 minutes)

There have been some technical issues with the Watts program so far. It is their first time doing it like this. I also think about the olden days when there was no internet and nobody this good at art who could teach me this way. Even not thinking about the difference between now and how it used to be, the price is just as good as if I were taking a term at the school, which is a very reasonable price for the education, and I am getting a direct overview of his demos and the ability to re-watch them and all the students' critiques who are taking the online course with me. It is really great. Another thing from watching the critiques and all these things is that I am getting an essence of how Jeff Watts looks at art practice. More of an essence than the online school gave me, though it's been a while since I've watched those videos. More than the knowledge he's imparting, or along with it, there is a mood or atmosphere that emanates from the way he approaches the craft. This is probably more instructive than a lot of the things he's saying, in some ways, because the things are repetitive in nature. This essence is a new thing, like creation itself. It's the art of the artist behind the art from the artist. I can't explain it, but it's truly transforming for me.

My practice continues and I realize how far I am from being able to draw my story in any articulate way. Frustration comes in as I try to draw a 20 minute lay-in and it takes me 40 minutes or more to get something that needs a ton of work and has a bunch of visible mistakes before Jeff sends me his critique. I'm also still healing so sometimes doing one lay-in is what I end up with and don't have time to re-draw one and fix my visible mistakes. Then I'm inspired by the words of Jeff that say, "Frustration will make you work harder, or quit." I'm realizing how I should practice more and feeling like I have barely started to do things the right way. I may be wrong or exaggerating that, because I've done a fair amount with my few months of 40 hours a week and whatever else before that. Those few months where I did that much artwork and studying was probably double than I had done in my entire life before that. Of course, I don't really know, but I never practiced with diligence before so it seems it could be close to the truth. So, this is where I'm at currently with my reflections on my practice of learning how to be a good representational artist.

Thanks for reading,
Anthony

Fall Term - 1/3 Months - October 2017

It’s late before the due date of a Sunday blog post. I decided I would post every Sunday, to be consistent with that. So here I am, writing about consistency with practice and sticking to something to cultivate learning with the work. My work is to write and draw, mainly. It is also to live and be healthy and wise. As I had to postpone drawing practice due to injury, I realized a spaciousness and a more relaxed frame of mind with it. In this way, the break I had from drawing was for drawing. It’s added to my practice and is not viewed as a lack of practice, in my experience. Though, here I am, writing tomorrow’s post on the evening before it is due, because I want to.

I want to write this because the accountability is my own doing. I want to write this because the doing of it is helping me to write and be accountable. The accomplishment of this simple blog post is a continuing to develop and be consistent. Yet, I have not always done these Sunday posts. It is a relatively new idea that I’ve suggested to myself. Write something every 5 days is what I decided when I published my last Youtube video. Now I’m doing it once a week. Things change due to what feels right and how we can establish a consistency in our practices. I stopped drawing because I had to, but the understanding of the process and the ‘result’ I’m aiming for has deepened and solidified into a clearer, more self affirming source. I see what I could not see as clearly before, likely due to breaking from the practice and now from starting again with fresh eyes and with a different disposition, necessarily so, because the physical instrument is tuned in a way that can only do so much repetitive motion.

In the same way, the repetitive action of writing a blog post could be detrimental if done too much. That word seems strong for ‘writing a blog post,’ but the truth is that anything without balance inspires a surge of imbalance within a duration of time. How long? That’s on us. It depends on how we are in tune with ourselves, to notice whether or not we are tuning effectively or ineffectively to the circumstances and the processes of life. Our bodies and minds are functioning in processes. How much do we notice these and have the awareness and clarity to align with them instead of acting with an ignorance or disharmony to ourselves? When I intentionally repeat myself, it is something to see. When I write this post to have it done on a Sunday, I am doing something to cultivate a solidified contextual tool of some kind to develop with. As I have started to draw again, I have returned to what current context I would like to clarify in regards to practicing representational art. I have looked at what things I could continue regularly to establish a better understanding of this craft.

As I was doing before, I have divided the year into 3 month terms. The term I’m on is the Fall Term and it will end at the end of December. Conveniently, I am signed up for the Watts Live Stream Critiquing course (Figure Lay-ins with Jeff Watts) that ends on December 30th. The other course I will be doing soon (Jonathan Hardesty’s Essentials of Realism critiquing - Schoolism) will end around the same time. As I had done before, I have chosen ‘classes’ that I will do until January. Two of them are actual courses, as just mentioned. The others are things I will continue to work on along side these courses. This may change as things are always changing, but for now the framework seems like something I would like to stay within in a consistent way. I realized that my previous terms had been a bit ‘full.’ It is hard to select a few courses out of the many different concepts and curriculum I will need to learn over a life time of studying how to draw and paint.

I had 9-11 courses on average in these terms. I am simplifying my Fall Term to much less. This term is as follows. The main things I am studying will stay in these ‘classes.’ I would like to digest the information in these few classes as much as I can before the next term. It was useful in my previous terms to have studied with so much diversity. However, I feel that since I've tasted many angles of learning to draw and paint, it is time to give more attention to a given few 'techniques' and fully internalize them instead of 'biting off more than I can chew.' A good analogy may be that I would rather enjoy a smaller selection of foods and digest them fully than to have a small amount of many foods that would still leave me hungry, or something.

Schoolism: Essentials of Realism. (*Critiques starting mid November til end of term) Watts Atelier: Figure Lay-ins (*Critiques weekly with Jeff Watts til end of term)

(*Above are my weekly necessities) - like a Sunday blog post.

Then I have decided to put Feature Studies - mostly related to Watts Atelier or Realistic Portraits (Schoolism) content - as a daily necessity. Every day I must spend at least 20 minutes doing a study
of a facial feature from photos, life or other art reference.

(A digital study of Johnny Depp's eye.)

Along with that is to do one sketch of something weird, wacky and wonderful from my imagination on a daily basis. The other ideas I have that I am not 100% locked into yet, because it may be too much for me right now, are to include a weekly class of Portrait Lay-ins, as well as doing master studies and then improving on sketches for our illustrated story. As well, doing a weekly or monthly fun image that contains all of the characters from my story. It could be their heads, figures, or just some kind of montage that I can create over a time to have hung up on my wall. Some image I can do again and again and learn to draw the characters in my story, concept design, decorate my studio and see my improvement as I get better and better at creating vignettes and good design for these ‘posters.’

As always, there are some uncertainties with my planning. Things will work out as they should. Included in all this is a monthly Youtube video, which continues to evolve and move into different kinds of videos. We don’t know where all this is taking us and that’s why it’s fun. We just have to enjoy the process and do the work in whatever ‘consistent’ way.

Thanks for stopping by. Joy to you all.

- Anthony

A Shoe Story

In my last Youtube video, I shared some sketches I had done throughout late August and early September. One of the pages had this sketch of a pair of shoes.

As I walked around, I was thinking of Norman Rockwell and how he used to buy people's shoes off of them on the street. An old shoe has a story. It's been walked on, worn, stretched and taken on many adventures. I came across these shoes in the middle of the road, as seen in the picture below.

I sat down on the street cross legged and spent a few minutes sketching them, imagining stories about whose shoes they are, how they ended up here etc. In my mind, I pictured the person who wore them and how they wore them. What was their walk like? What kind of person leaves their shoes like this in the middle of the road? I finished my sketch and began to walk to the other side of the road for another picture of the shoes from the opposite side.

As I lifted my camera to take a photo, a car stopped between me and the shoes, blocking my view. I waited, but when the car left, the shoes were gone. The driver had reached down out of his car and grabbed the shoes, that were likely his that he left there. I was laughing at the situation and for what little I saw of the driver, I think the imagined idea I had of this person who wore these shoes was not far off from the real thing. At least, on some level, my vision held some accuracy to who the owner was. I never got the photo from that other side of the road. Such is the adventure of sketching on location. You never know what will happen to your environment.

- Anthony

Living Every Moment

Every moment is an opportunity for enlightenment. We graze the grass, hug the trees and see that in every single beat of the heart, inhale or exhale of the breath and sensory exchange, we are able to see a little clearer, with a little more joy.

I don’t know the truth for myself, let alone anyone else. I do have moments where it seems clear as to what is helpful to abide to the universal laws of nature and to deepen my connectivity with life, in contrary to increasing my disconnect or divisiveness with it. It happens through the breath, it happens through the body, it happens through perception. My scars are silhouetted into elements of a harmonious whole and what is realized is unity. Things that are causes of my misery vanquish when I’m in tune with what is wholesome. Then, I feel better than I did. I feel whole and unique in this wholeness, like a child playing in a bathtub in a world huddled to itself, free of the chaos and confusion on the other side of the curtain. We’ve unraveled the veil here, just a little bit, to see that it is really all “rainbows, smashed to smithereens,” and we are happy.

To express this authentic joy is to be it, to feel it and to live it. We don’t need someone else outside of us to attain it, but inspiration comes from those who are examples in their own action and perception on how they have peaked through their own ignorance. I am grateful for these people, and many are my friends, each having his or her own unique moments of unveiling day by day. I’ll admit that I’m a learning, wandering, lost-at-times being sharing the same questions we all have. Yet we all have the moments of clarity where we see beyond the veil into our selves of purity. It’s wonderful to witness the changes. Life is constantly changing, so to be alive, so are we. It’s a process. Observation is taking place. The moment ceases to have meaning when we contain it rigidly. Selectivity in one manner can help us define the things we carry with us on our path. However, too much and we are like a comic strip, trapped to the panels on one page, when it is every page that accounts for the context that gives us meaning and the framework from which to begin our discovering. One page is enough, when we know how to read it - how to see beyond the expression into the expressing and into the source of joy that inspires true freedom and authenticity.

Let us not be caught up in the mundane, trimming branches, when the root remains rotten. For anyone seeking freedom, dive into the way you see the world and yourself. Dive into the things you take for granted, positive or negative, these are the things you don’t usually notice. Each thing unnoticed is one passing piece of life that may offer some tools, context and enhancement of what can be reflected on. This is also not something to search for, because your attention is full already. What is it full of? We can offer our energy to fruitful, wholesome qualities, or demonic, destructive, unwholesome qualities. We are all containment of both. Human beings are examples of both and what we create and live in either state is our example to ourselves and the world. It is our framework to see whether it’s benefiting us or others. So each moment stands at the precipice of seeing or ignorance, reverence or concealment, light or darkness. As map, compass or flashlight, the tools are ours right now.

Here is something I wrote on a typewriter recently:

You are a master of limitation.
To think that you of knowledge and of time are bound to this creed.
Where bountiful freedom abides, there rests all unlimited being.
Bewitch the be-witcher, a guise of misery and complexity.
Stand where freshness begins and all form is in communion with this direct observation.
This seeing is truth without reaction. It is life unencumbered.
"It sees the false in the false and sees the truth in the truth."

“Even now, the world is bleeding. But feeling just fine, all numb in our castle, where we’re
always free to choose, never free enough to find, I wish something would break, cause we’re
running out of time.” - Overcome by Live

Find your freedom. Don’t choose it.

Joy to you all,
- Anthony

750 words a day - free flow writing

At the start of this month I began a free trial on 750words.com. The website is set up for a writing exercise that was inspired by the 'Morning Pages' from Julia Cameron's book, "The Artist's Way." It also blends in nicely with a simple exercise I learned from Natalie Goldberg's book, "Writing Down the Bones." The basic premise is to write in a quick pace for a certain number of minutes or words and stop when you are complete. As a writer, I tend to nit-pick words and their placement in a sentence. This exercise of writing without too much indulgence in sentence structure, proper punctuation or even clear ideas gives valuable insight into discovering new ways of writing, explaining and getting to the root of what it is you are saying.

(Piles of my notebooks and writings.)

This example given in 'Writing Down the Bones' describes how our raw language can be edited to lose all the magic it once held in its spontaneous, flowing nature as it came fresh to the page. The line she wrote was, "I cut the daisy from my throat." The inner censor that avoids the risk of, "Someone will think you're crazy," would instead say, "My throat was a little soar, so I didn't say anything." Proper and boring.' We like to swallow our hearts with our minds and hold back any sensitive, authentic wisdom that urges forth through us in sobs, aches, 'imperfections' and emotion. I say 'we like,' because we do it seemingly many times before learning not to. We polish our shoes, cars and houses, tighten our ties, appointments and attitudes and run down the rabbit circle we call progress. Ready for battle against all that naturally springs forth from the goodness that children, bunnies and flowers embody, we destroy sensitivity in ourselves and lose the understanding and faith in why it's so valuable and calls true to our essence.

As I wrote 750 words mostly every day of the month, my free flowing mind became less tight and I could write without concern. As I've stopped doing this practice as consistently, I've noticed the difference in how it is to write this blog post. The words are a little more like heavy rocks in the river of my mind, being weighed down for a while before drifting on with the flow again. The timed writing practice is the same, where instead of setting a limit on how many words you write, the limit is set with a number of minutes to write for. Essentially it is the same exercise. Get out of your own way and let the raw information and processing of all that you can write about show up on the page to re-shape the way you approach writing anything, be it a blog post, novel, article, essay or comic strip. The exercise is a freeing way to open unexpected doors, explore unexplored thought patterns and cultivate a discipline dedicated to the process. In some ways, writing in this fashion is like therapy. I imagine it would be hard to write every day and not naturally come to a reasoning of, "I'd like to be less of a jerk." Timed stream of consciousness writing is an open door to face ourselves without 'ourselves' getting in the way before the meeting, fresh and without make up.

Joy to you all,
Anthony