Teachers are sparks, sparks are seeds and seeds are trees

BY ANTHONY ROSS

What I think a good teacher is, is a spark.  Like a fire, a spark can ignite something moving, that takes on a flame of its own and a movement or energy of its own.  The momentum gets started.  What is momentum of a quality.  What is it to be sparked by another person, so that something in them inspires something in you or through you?  So that you can begin to move in a new way and so that the spark may flower into a fire of its own that is sufficient and uniquely your own.

Thus the teacher, with a seed, launches an inspiration for you to water this seed yourself.  As you water it, the seed will eventually become a tree that can bear fruit, and a fruited tree is unique to itself and inevitably a seed bringer for others like it.  The seed also brings the essence of the tree into being at the moment it calls for water.  That to which it inspires, is a spark.  It brings more of the same, with change.

What kinds of seeds are you attracted to?  These are the desires of our lives.  The momentous qualities that we accept or deny as an infusion into what we embody in our day to day lives.  What is it that transforms us into a more beautiful, graceful individual(s)? These sparks, the very existence of them, inspire me, and today I thought about what it is that these are in themselves.

A spark like this comes in many forms.  One form is words.  One can express words from their quality or essence of energy that expresses these words.  The words themselves can be picked up in many ways, and sometimes in a way that is a powerful energetic change.  Someone speaks in a way that brings light to something you knew, but couldn't place into words.  The vocabulary of another can acknowledge the place your own has in the ability to understand and express your understandings, as they are recognized.  You can see the power of words in another only because you have different or similar language in expressing the similar but different understandings within yourself.

In this way, sparks are all around us, everywhere we have a sense. The acknowledgement of them is a tool of reflecting on what it is they are for oneself.  There's a sense of learning about yourself in relationship with yourself with everything you also relate to.  That's always transforming and it is in this place that I acknowledge the tremendous beauty in discovering the sparks that help discover and uncover my true Self.

#writing #reading #blogging #books
Brain Pickings and Wonder

"A blog, compared to a book, may be read consistently for a long time."
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     

BY ANTHONY ROSS

I love books.  I have a collection of books I haven't read, and I'm sure that collection will grow as I read them, and other books that show up at random occasions.  Books are special things, and as much as they do fall under the analogy of 'things that spoil as quickly as a banana on the shelf,' they have great wonder and meaning.

A blog, compared to a book, may be read consistently for a long time.  Such as the 'blog' of Maria Popova, 'Brain Pickings.'  Brain Pickings is a wonderful resource of highlights and quick notes on books of all kinds, primarily what falls under the tab of Creativity, Design, Science, History, Psychology and Art.  I don't read it daily anymore, but often will go rummaging through pages and pages in a short binge session, due to her sophisticated linking and 'mind' mapping of the website's articles.

Books though, will never be conquered.  Even Maria Popova, who doesn't write books, reads them consistently.  They are mini sacred treasures, full of wealth of clarification that a blog post and most definitely a social media post cannot prescribe.  That's not to say that simplicity isn't a factor.  Some things can be stated with little words, others may take a thousand and it is still not enough.  Even the same thing may be fine in one thousand words for one person, and two to another.  The good thing is that we have these options there for us whenever we need them.  I salute readers and writers alike and look forward to more of it myself.

I like Brain Pickings for what it's theme is.  Articles about books and interviews, podcasts etc.  She doesn't write much outside of what the article itself is about, but connects links to other things like it, so that the endless reading can continue.  That's nice, but it's also nice to, as a writer, write whatever it is I feel like.  It may not be as consistent, but it develops things for me.  In Artist of Life by Bruce Lee, there is an essay that is one page long.  It was found between two pages, tucked into Alan Watts's book, 'This Is It.' Bruce Lee wrote it while reading, and then years later it was taken out, typed out and put in a book.  That's a treasure.  I bought the book, 'Artist of Life,' after reading about it on Brain Pickings.

#studies #adventure #sketch
My first plein air excursion in gouache

"...bring out my gouache box, brushes, and paints."
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     

BY ANTHONY ROSS

Yesterday I sat on a cold bench at the beach.  It was a cement step, and I opened up my bag of goodies to bring out my gouache box, brushes, and paints.

It was my first outing with gouache paints and with this little box.  It worked pretty well, tight around my waist, with the little easel holding a small illustration board of 2.5 " X 3.5 ".

The sunset was beautiful, and changing all the time, but I was interested in the house complexes near by the water.  This wasn't as vivid as the sunset, but had some appeal.  I lost my smallest brush, so painted with a bit of a thicker brush than I would have liked on this small canvas.

And my finished painting after an hour and a half of sitting.

#context #adventure
Questions That Answer

"My questions lead me to all kinds of discoveries about my own pursuits in art."
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     

BY ANTHONY ROSS

This morning I went on James Gurney's blog, 'Gurney Journey.' I watched a video of him painting a tire store in the super moon.  It was inspiring in many ways.  His playful energy and dedication to his craft of painting on such a consistent basis are awesome.  It's nice to have people who exemplify certain qualities through whatever it is they do.  The art, and the blog he posts on on a daily basis is the version of his life that we get to see.  It's a pleasure to have these bits of expression in all kinds of ways through out the internet.  They allow us as curators of content to jump back from the computer into other realms of play and then return to it and share it.  Obviously there's stuff to create on the computer itself, but you get the point.

I thought about what questions I might ask James, since I have the ability to do so.  He answers questions on his blog, and so with the amazing technology, I can connect with James Gurney through virtual space.  I'm able to ask this fantastic artist anything I want and he will likely respond with some kind of answer.  It's tough, when the options are open.  My questions lead me to all kinds of discoveries about my own pursuits in art.  The questions gave me answers before asking, and more questions to answer in the contemplation of them.  I got a lot out of thinking about what I would ask this inspiring artist.

In the end, I did ask a question.  A simple one regarding how long it takes him to do a study.  I had wanted to ask about his beginnings as a painter, but the question isn't formulated yet.  It made me contemplate mine and learn from that, and that was enough for today.  The fact is that there are too many things to say.  This naturally brought me to reflecting on my art training at the Watts Atelier.  A teacher like Jeff Watts or the others there would be able to cover much more of what it is to learn to be a representational artist of a high level, like James Gurney.  Over the internet I can just get a short answer, or even a long short answer.  It's just not the same as a direct connecting and correlating with someone in person.  It's not the same to ask the questions online, so the questions have to be different.  The best part is that it's an option, and that there are amazing people sharing amazing things relating to every topic there is.  It's the wonder of the world that Gurney inspires me to honour in myself.  It's these relationships that you can use to reflect upon for yourself.  It's to ask the question of, "What question would I ask?"  There's your answer.

James Gurney in his studio.

#organize #philosophy
The seeing of separation

"This is a message of the quiet world."
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     

BY ANTHONY ROSS

We live in an interesting time for publication.  Anyone can make anything and put it in a virtual space that's open and shared everywhere.  It's becoming a world that is less and less separate, from mentality to information.  I think it is in the same way that we are becoming less separate that the separation is becoming more evident.  The awareness of it is coming into us and so it is everywhere on the news, internet and wherever the loudest voices are.  The quiet world, the one that is completely shared, doesn't have to announce itself.  It is easier to show off and be noticed than it is to not show off and be noticed.  The loudness of the world is only half of the whole.  The quiet world is more powerful, but less often on stage to the larger audience.

We're all tired of seeing the same old things.  The internet, though a valuable tool for sharing, has more spam than good.  It is an expression which the loud and quiet worlds both use.  The quiet videos may not have as many views, but can change somebody's life for ever more.  The loud videos speak of change, or improvement, but often are skewed in their vision.  They do not see the whole.  They do not see the way that things are is because of the way they are.

The quiet world, knowing that reality changes on observation, sits and is still.  The quiet people give the universe at large it's say, and stop trying to control it with tools.  Thus their world functions in little chaos, because it is the way of the world, not the way of the people who misunderstand themselves and what they are.  They think they're separate from the world, but are not.  They announce this separation to anyone they can, because they are insecure about their idea.  It has to be proved, or else they would be running in circles in life.  This is what they are doing, unconscious people, but they have built ideas around as a false sense of stability.  If only clouds had walls around them, and we would never have rain.  It is not for us to decide how the laws of nature accord, it is for us to accord as them.  Otherwise, separation is, and conflict continues.  This is a message of the quiet world.

#play#philosophy#writing
The child is free at play

"The other is the child, who plays free and in what seems like utter chaos, but with a closer look is a harmonious rapture of energy."
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     

BY ANTHONY ROSS

I think there are many people who end up writing books from what they write on their blogs.  Whether fictional or non-fiction, the blog is a good place to digest ideas for oneself and to express things to a broad audience.  Anyone can have a taste if they care to read.

I've started writing again on a consistent basis.  Partly to digest what it is that I might write and partly to write what I'm digesting.  It is, unlike other social media, a medium where a greater expression can be given.  One that's not broken down into pictures and a few words.  In these last couple days of writing, I've noticed a theme.  The theme is play and the struggle I have with it.  This would be, perhaps, the book I would write.  As someone who struggles with play, I would learn about it and use the context of writing to explain to myself what it is I'm discovering and applying regarding this subject.

Play to me is a struggle.  Why?  I think it has to do with the components of knowledge and ignorance.  When I say ignorance in this context, I mean lack of knowledge.  In starting out life as a child, we know nothing.  We feel our way through life and we do what we must do, without understanding how others may perceive it.  We cry, eat, poop and sleep.  Crying is our language and the others are our necessities.  What happens later in life?  We start to have ideas about things and without connecting with the feeling of necessity or the language that we created without any secondary hand outs, we are forced into a world of symbols.

Terence Mckenna once spoke of how the magical bird that may appear outside a child's window becomes a mere 'bird' when the parent comes in and tells them what it is.  The bird becomes the word, in a non-musical, non-playful way. Though there is a magic to this symbolism, I might argue there is a greater magic to the unknown and to language that comes out of feeling and is not entirely guided by the intellect.  I don't know the way out of this, because we do need to communicate.  The key is to not be over run by verbal communication and to 'think' in different ways, through feeling, intuition and in less linear faculties of intelligence.

Play is not an A to B to C type of moving.  It develops well with a good foundation, but it is as unstable as the ocean.  Unstable to the mind and the intellect, that is.  The play itself builds an order within itself.  Play is a flower.  And the water, sun and nutrients the flower must have to grow are like the parent who feeds the child and is there for safety.  The child itself is unbridled in its movement, like the water that nourishes.  We don't know where the child ends up, we can only watch with a caring appreciation and keep it safe.  So as one who attempts to play, I see myself as two people.  One is an adult, watching with wisdom and nourishment.  The other is the child, who plays free and in what seems like utter chaos, but with a closer look is a harmonious rapture of energy.  It is the responsibility of oneself to be these two people, so that the freedom is there, so play is the flower it is and remains innocent like the sun.

What doesn't work is when the adult says to the child, "You must play."  As Alan Watts puts it, "this is a double bind."  As the adult, we can't force the child.  This is putting the adult's point of view on to the child's order, which is free of 'the old.'  Our knowledge is limited to what the child knows.  And the child doesn't understand the adult, who is usually rather confused with too many thoughts.  The two work separately, yet together.  This is the balance of living as an adult, or one who grows up to learn the symbols placed upon reality.  Keep the little bit of madness alive, however little it may seem.  That is the play.

Ceci n'est pas une oiseaux.

#work #play #resource
Playing with the Buddha Board

"These ideas are not reality."
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      

BY ANTHONY ROSS

The silly smile.  What else is there to live for?

Let's talk about something I was playing with today.  It's called a Buddha Board and it's fun.  The reason it's fun is because it's in the moment.  There is only the essence of what you are painting on the board before it dries up.  The way the board works is that you paint with water.  The water dries up and changes as it does.  Once it dries up it is no longer visible on the board.  It's fun because of change.  Everything is fun because of change.

My reasoning for what's not fun is because it is stale.  When I say 'it' I am referring to anything that feels like it is permanent.  Key word being feels.  We all know that change is a constant, but we forget.  When we forget that we as well as all our conditions, as well as the way we relate to those conditions changes, then there is nothing to worry about.  One can't worry in a state like this, because one doesn't know where to begin.  There is joy.  Worry doesn't come into being.

When drawing, there is a time for doing messy work.  This is in the early stage of coming up with what it is to draw.  I find this hard, because I want to develop clean and skillful drawing skills, and doing fast ideas is always doing your work with less care, in the skill-oriented sense.  It is all about getting the essence.  I've used a black ink pen and water brush quite well in this area before, and the Buddha Board replicates that, but does an even better job in lightening the pressure to do a clean piece of art.

I am playing with this idea today, not just the board.  Change is a constant.  Permanence is an illusion.  The one who controls is confronted with change as a constant battle.  They get distorted and illusioned with stability.  That stability is stale and hard.  It creates conflict and struggle.  What action is not struggle is action that comes from the essence of joy.  When joy is something that can't be held on to, but something that moves.  There is no final piece of art work in our lives. :-DEach piece moves in and out of the framing of how we are perceiving.  That's a beautiful painting.

Buddha Board in the studio.

#work #conditioning
Soul-Project Challenges

"These ideas are not reality."
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      

BY ANTHONY ROSS

It's a fine thing to have a soul-project.  A project like this is both captivating and challenging.  It tests your will and it inspires you like nothing else does.  The challenges that come up with it are what breaks the patterning or conditions that one is accustomed to.  The project brings them up and inspires greater growth to places unknown and not yet reachable, or something.

The project I'm working on is super secret right now, but at some point it will be seen by the public and will be critiqued by many.  I am the artist on this project, primarily.  Meaning, all the pictures to it are my responsibility.  Such huge responsibility.  A lot of the times it's overwhelming, even though I am placing this on myself, and I know this, it is still something I am taking as a personal development project and something that I want to be good.
I realized that I had fallen into a trap here.  The trap is that I was thinking of myself as my work.  If the work fails, I'm a failure.

I don't think I'm alone in this, as someone who has done that to themselves.  A mental clinging to what you do, and the effort in which you do that thing.  This doesn't actually make the work better or the work more enjoyable.  Though, I think it's a fine line in these areas to determine how much 'want' you need to do a thing well, rather than just the doing of it with a detached ideal to do it as such. So the question is, can the desire be there without the attachment?  Can the understanding of what the result should be be there while the process is free to not have a conclusion?  Can I work on what I want to work on without feeling like I need to?  This is a bit paradoxical.  This is the very question of playing and of how to describe it.

It is fortunate to not have the conditions of life play the part of pressure on an individual.  In actuality, it is rare for most of us to have the pressure of conditions in such a manner.  The real conditions are mental, much more subtle, and they, when unconscious, control your ideas, action and aspiration.  So in this fashion, I continue to witness the coming and going of waves of uncertainty regarding finances, security in general, and future happenings.  What will I be doing if I don't do well on this project? Am I doing enough financially so that I can work on this project and will this project help me have security later on or should I do something else that's financially stable in the meantime?

These things have nothing to do with the art, and are of importance for anyone, yet, their importance must be secondary to the real wealth of life and of qualitative being.  If you plan for these, you could be missing a great deal of actuality.  These thoughts occur and they bring my attention away from my work, because the feeling is that there is not enough in them.  I run after these conclusions to what would be my preferred conditions, and I lose the unconditional and detached sense of well-being and peace. These ideas are not reality.

These same ideas of 'not now' can infuse any topic into their sense of self.  Meaning, I can think 'not enough' or 'not good enough' about just about everything.  This is also saying that 'now' is not enough.  Without a detached understanding, these mental convictions will contain themselves in the projects and things that we are most observably influenced in and by.  They will contain themselves in everything we see as conditions.  It's in this way that this project of mine is so very difficult and exciting.  The difficulty is something I attach to when I go to work on it.  It's the idea that it should not be difficult 'now' (when I work on it), when I try to do a 'good' drawing.  I have the conclusion of how it should be and the effort is to keep that conclusion in tact.  That is the way one must work to have something come out as good as they feel it can be, compared with other things.

I know what good art is, so I want to make my art good.  To know what that idea of good is and not be swept up in it is a skill.  It's basically having the space to be a complete failure that is detachment.  Anything goes.  When anything goes, one ends up playing.  When one ends up playing, the art or project generally turns out nice, or at least the making of it is fun.  When the making of it is fun, the result is secondary.  That is just how finances and security must be secondary to the fun that is the detached understanding.  So the question is, how does one work on anything with this detachment?  How does one remain in this detachment, and still do something that is just for fun?  Again, it seems the doing of something just for fun is an odd idea, and that maybe the fun is also in things like the difficulty, which are found to be so NOT fun so much of the time.  Thus the chasing of the conditions which is seen as fun is short-sighted.  Real fun is understanding these mental blockages we have in anything we do.  In that understanding, they transform.  Then everything we do is fun and free.

#analysis #study #fineart
Hans Fredrik Gude

"To live the world of a painting and not try to be something it's not."
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      

BY ANTHONY ROSS

When I looked at this picture the first time I was stunned.  It arrested me.  It looks realistic, but at the same time I can see through the artist's eyes the necessary placement to make this more than just a photograph, to capture the details of life in a way that transcends reality and that connects us to it at the same time.

It's a painting that has a few focal points in which I gravitate to. One is the boat which is far out in the water and on the other side is where you see the man's head standing in the boat, located on another third of the image.  I'm also quite drawn to the little kid, more than the lady who's hand he's holding.  (He or she...?)  It looks like the 'child' is wanting to pull the woman towards the steps, down to where the boat is.  There's a triangulation of where the viewer's eye goes with this piece from those three objects, and there's a nice resting spot on the rock which is in front of the boat, near the shore.  There's quite a bit of contrast in that area with the whites of the waves being the highest point of brightness in the picture.  Yet, it feels as though it's a secondary focal point.  There's also some noticeable white placed around the boy/child and the mother.   The white behind them really silhouettes the dresses or the clothing they're wearing.

The background is just placed there for comfort, in a way.  It really brings the mood of the piece.  It's really important to have there, but it's definitely not that much of an attention grabber.  It's meant to be in the background.  I like how it's very realistic and how it makes me think of places that look like this that I've been to.  It makes me understand what it's like to be there and to look at that, because I'm just seeing it, in the painting.  Yet, at the same time, I'm only seeing it so positively because all the other things it could be is set aside and it's been, I believe, composed of the various elements of composition and color and light and everything that makes up a painting, to stand out as a painting.  To live the world of a painting and not try to be something it's not.

I love the way the wood guides us.  It's almost another triangulation.  It's almost as if the first post moves your eye up through the posts that make up the rail of the dock right to where the boat is.  It's centered straight up the dock, and it brings you straight down the dock as you look at that back to where the post is.  It's a nice area of interest you can just look into.  The water over the dock is very nice too.  It adds more of a dangerous feel.  I think if that wasn't there, even the waters as they are would look a little calmer, less like a stormy day that has a bit of unease to it.  It's calm and peaceful, but you know that's the ocean and that it's a raging, wild, natural phenomena.  I think the large boat in the distance adds to that too.  It says, there's vastness beyond...

Maybe that's what the child doesn't know.  The mother doesn't want to go closer to that danger, but the child is unaware of it.  And these men in shadows in the boat.  I don't know who they are.  Where do they come from in that long vast stretch of water?  Maybe they've been gone for a while, but I don't think so.  Just a short amount of time.  Just a day trip, a short trip, but still they have to be careful.  It's a very captivating piece.  I believe it's by Hans Fredrik Gude.

#travel #study
Watts Atelier Boot Camp 2016 - Part 3

"You're a serious dude."
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      

BY ANTHONY ROSS

I'm not sure that I've gathered up all that I can say about what it was like to be at the Watts Atelier Boot camp, but I'm ready to write this anyhow. It was definitely a boot camp, with long hours of drawing and painting each day.  The schedule went like this:

So at least six hours of the day was spent on drawing or painting, if you intended the uninstructed model time from 7 pm - 10 pm each night, which I did.  Some days, it was 9 hours of executing artwork, but most days we had a three hour demo where the teacher would paint for us and we could watch, ask questions and take photos of their process.  Here's a process and final image of one of the demos.

I found it most valuable when a teacher would draw on my pad or paint on my canvas directly.  Whether over my previous drawing or not, it was great to watch them articulate their visual language so fluently.  Jeff Watts talks the most out of the teachers and he is fun to listen to because of it.  Though, after simply watching the other instructors draw or paint without verbal speech, I came to realize that when I go back to watching Jeff drawing or painting on the online school, I will be muting it on and off to see it without the verbal.  After all, this is a visual language, and I picked up on so much that isn't able to be said.  I think the talking distracts from my observation of what is happening on the page and all that I can learn from just watching that, which is lots.  Verbalizing it can both give it clarity and confusion.  Good to have both, but nice to be able to have either/or when you like, as the online school gives the option to.

After half the course was over, I could feel the beautiful sensation of excited learning.  It was really great to have these eight days structured with waking up, meditating, doing yoga and sometimes getting some groceries in the morning.  Later, sleeping in.  Then, going to class for 9:30 am or 10:00 am and working til 1:00 pm. Having a good lunch break and talking with others, about art, mostly.  Working from 2:30 pm to 5:30 pm and then having a dinner and break to go back to my hotel, which was a short walk, and coming back to class for drawing at 7:00 pm.  The break time was short and often lead to me doing little errands between them in a stream line manner, like cleaning my hotel room, getting ready for the next class, or eating, checking emails.

The teachers were incredibly kind with their time and energy.  Jeff showed us his personal studio one afternoon and a new book he's working on.  Each teacher took a look through my portfolio, offering all kinds of different advice and things they saw that were good and bad with my work.  It was also really great to be able to walk around to see what the more skilled artists around me were doing on their pictures, and take that understanding back to my work a moment later.  Basically I finished the course with a notepad of notes and all kinds of pointers on what not to do.  For the amount there is to learn, there are certain ways of doing things that will greater benefit me than others.  These are things that I picked up on that I will now be applying to how I train in the arts.

Jeff and I talked about some things like Alan Watts and working on big projects.  He said I have a lot of the right things in place, and it's time to bring them all together into a working combination.  There was a lot of things that I felt I could have asked him that I didn't, before and after the boot camp.  It's an interesting situation when you are with someone for only a short amount of time and they have only so much energy to spread around to the students of the entire workshop, plus all the other things they have going on outside of class.  One of the last things Jeff said to me before I left the Atelier was about how he knew there was a lot more behind everything that we briefly discussed, from meditation to the projects I'm working on.  It's just not possible to cover it all in eight days.  I don't think there's any regret here, or things left unsaid.  It's just the fact that sometimes the questioning is the answer, or the listening.

There would have been no way to go as deep into discussing the important parts of my life, which I take (often too seriously), in such a short amount of time.  Philosophies and ways about things I knew resonated with Jeff from listening to him online and from our short conversations that I would have loved to discuss with him more.  Often I just didn't have the words to ask, or to know how to begin talking about one of these philosophies that are close to my way of life. We related together as determined individuals, trying to find a sense of humor with it all, being too serious about doing good.  Near the end, I mentioned to him how I felt generally pretty serious through out the course and he added to that, mentioning our odd open-ended interactions in and between classes when we would make small talk.  He said, "You're a serious dude."  I laughed.  It was a good enough conclusion to our meeting.  I don't know that I could have gotten anything more from the work shop than I did.  It was a wonderful adventure of art and being around artists.

When I returned home, I continued to do a self-boot camp.  My jobs allow the same kind of schedule of drawing and painting from 10:00 - 1:00 pm and 7:00 pm - 10:00 pm most days.  Even on the extra day before coming home from San Diego, after the workshop ended, I still drew for six hours in my hotel.  I've slowed down for a moment and need to pick up the pace again, I feel.  Though, the intensive work I've done since April is probably something that I need to digest a bit so I can start up the momentum again with a smarter direction.

Now that I'm back I have been studying in ink for #Inktober2016.  It's been fun, but I am not spending time on the key exercises from the Watts program.  I'm looking to organize my time to go through that program, Schoolism classes, and Premium Proko exercises, as well as having the goings on and happenings of life.  Sincere art training is a part of my life that I started in April.  I've felt the grounded strength and thrill it gives me to work diligently on this craft.  I will be continuing and sharing my work in various ways, but I've also witnessed the burn-out of working too hard and not having enough balance with the rest of all that is.  There is also the egotistical building of an image on social networking and such that has distracted me more than helped my training, at times.  This is just another thing to bring into perspective.  To be an artist of life, to have that balance and equanimity with all things, is an art in and of itself.  It's sometimes worth it to put the pencil down, knowing why you're doing so.  Then you pick it up again and the admiration for it is present again.

#travel #study
Watts Atelier Boot Camp 2016 - Part 2

"Enter the dragon ride..."
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      

BY ANTHONY ROSS

I arrived in San Diego two days early before starting the Boot Camp at 10:00 am on Monday.  They have one of the most dangerous airports in the world, I was told on the plane ride there. It has a very short run way that's difficult to land and take off from. The planes come in to land in the center of downtown, being as high as a two story building near the end of their descent.  As I shuttled to my hotel, I saw just how close they were.  Nearly as low as a lamp post.  The whole city is built around this airport.

It was really nice arriving this early, because it gave me enough time to see some of San Diego and get settled before the course began.  As you'll see, the Boot Camp aspect of the course was prevalent, and it was a lot of drawing and painting every day, without room for much else. Of course, that's not a complaint.  By the end of these two days before the course started, I was very inspired to start working with my newsprint paper.  More on that later.

On arrival, I did the ordinary things such as get groceries for the week and find the school.  When I walked over to the school, a 5-10 minute walk away, they were starting a class, waiting for the teachers to show up.  At this time, I saw Erik and Meadow teaching drawing and painting, both on each side of the Watts Atelier, which is divided like this.

Easels on one side of the room in a semi circle facing the stage.
Drawing benches on the other side in the same fashion.  Each divided by a short wall that you can walk around to get from one side to the other.  The school was smaller than I imagined, but didn't need to be any bigger than it was.  They used to have another room that you'd access by going out the back of the building, but it was never in much use when they had it anyway.

On the walls were many framed images, which they would circulate out every few months for new ones.  Most of the pictures were pieces done by artists who got to a really high level of proficiency at the school.  Others were by masters of the craft that Jeff had often met personally.  I took pictures of all of these for study reference in the first couple days before the Boot camp.  Here are a few.  Many more of the same caliber can be seen on the Watts Atelier Tumblr site.

I met some of the artists doing the Summer term and some who have been studying there for even longer.  It was nice to connect with them and a change to be around people studying in the same fashion as I had been with the online course.  We went to a movie, restaurant, to get ice cream and walked around the town of Encinitas, talking mostly about art.  Some of them took the Boot Camp with me, but most didn't.

The next day I rented a bike and used it well, going to a local Farmers' Market.  Later, I would find out that I biked passed Jeff's personal studio on the way there.  I also biked to the next town over and visited the gardens of the Self Realization Fellowship, seen below.

The following day I returned the bike and took a bus to Lego Land.  Not having checked out the prices before arriving, I was a little surprised, but payed the $95.00 to visit one of two attractions like this in the world.  Ultimately, I think Lego Land could do a lot better. Lego is an interactive toy, and there was very little interactivity.  Some recommendations would be to incorporate what the rides offer into the walk around areas.  Enter the dragon ride, and you'll see dark caves with goblins and moving dragon Lego heads.  Why not have that same design in an area where you can get more out of seeing it and not pass by it in a few seconds?  The sections with large cities and replicas of real life buildings are well done, but lack the charm that kids would bring if they could play with it.  It reminds me the Lego Movie and how Will Ferrell had DO NOT TOUCH signs everywhere.  The art itself was cool in certain respects, but also could use a touch of diversity in the way it's put together and how it's presented.

Ultimately, there is more to be said here, but I was disappointed. There wasn't even a professional Lego builder building something for people to watch.  It was a large money grab, and mainly for parents to bring their kids, though not made for the kids real interactive soul-enriching play.  After leaving Lego Land, I had a clear understanding of what my trip was for and why I had come all the way here to the Watts Atelier.  The mastery of representational art, as Watts teaches, is not a quick fix.  It is not some high stimulus novelty.  Learning this craft of drawing and painting is work of character, building patience and perseverance as well as earned and substantial rewards, instead of fleeting and less developed ones. Lego Land was a pointer back to the fun stuff that reaches the depths of what life is all about, back to my newsprint paper and charcoal pencils.

#travel #study
Watts Atelier Boot Camp 2016 - Part 1

"When the ideas in your brain start coming out better on paper and canvas than they were in your head, something changes." - Jeffrey R. Watts
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      

BY ANTHONY ROSS

In April of this year I signed up for a month of the online Watts Atelier courses.  It was about six months to a year before that when I first listened to the talk Jeffrey R. Watts gives in this video: How to Train to Become a Successful Working Artist.  The video covers the basic fundamentals of what Jeff Watts, founder of Watts Atelier, has understood from 25-30 years of teaching and training to be a professional artist from a very young age, tapping into all genres and a large variety of industry jobs.  After I listened to this, now multiple times, I was very inspired to pursue the excellency in this craft, to fall in love with improving and working to get better and to work as an artist in the kind of way that I've always dreamed of.  In other words, I was inspired to get intuitive in my craft by doing hours of visual memorizing through drawing and painting.

I was taking Schoolism classes and had been inspired by Bobby Chiu and the other artists on this site.  I had gone to a Schoolism workshop in Vancouver before knowing what Watts Atelier was and began to draw more with a better understanding of what to work on to get better.  It was very inspiring and it lead me to taking Schoolism online classes, which I'm still taking, because they are great lessons and affordable.  That being said, it wasn't until Jeff Watts's articulate speech on what it takes to be professional that I really felt the inspiration to promise myself that I will work hard to get there.  The words, "When the ideas in your brain start coming out better on paper and canvas than they were in your head," struck a cord in me.  That's the stuff that I want to get to.  Jeff's philosophy, articulation and approach to learning the craft lead me to signing up for the Watts courses.  That was in April 2016.

Not long after, I signed up for the boot camp, as a self-motivating trick to get myself to draw more, to be ready for the boot camp.  I began to draw more than I ever had before, working in the charcoal pencil technique that Watts instructs.  It was a style of drawing that I resonated with very much.  I also came to know that most of my life I was only dabbling in art.  Never had I studied how to draw a hand and learned it inside out so I could draw it intuitively.  Rather, I had only drawn 50 or so in my whole life.  I looked through all my drawings and this was the case.  More and more I was overwhelmed by the amount of practice there needed to be done to get to where Jeff was pointing.  And yet having Jeff as a coach through each lesson was continually motivating, as he commented on all the sides of what I was observing as I started to become more serious and focused with my practice.

As it came closer to the course, I had talked to Jeff a few times on the phone and I was very excited for being able to talk about more philosophical things when we met.  Also, it dawned on me that I had never had a really good artist draw over my work to help me understand how to make it better.  It was extremely humbling as I continued to practice and understand just how much Jeff and the other teachers of Watts Atelier must have practiced to get to where they are.  Representational art is hard, there is no question about it. Gradually, I could feel the momentum of getting better, of practicing and of understanding how to go about practicing.

From listening to Jeff, I understood that eight days is not much time for learning art, but it would be a time to get some better understanding of where I was at in terms of being intuitive and consistent with my craft and how to continue practicing with intelligence.  That is exactly what it was, and so much more.

#philosophy

"For the love of wisdom...  Why people do these things."
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      

BY ANTHONY ROSS

While doing Vipassana today, I came up with a comparison between this mental practice and the teachings of Abraham Hicks that I would like to share.

Abraham's teachings rest on three main components.
1) An intention.
2) The manifested intention.
3) Receiving this manifested intention.

She uses different words to explain these three steps, through many contextual talks and conversations, but for simplicity's sake, that's what I've labeled them as.

An intention simply means a wish.  If your intention is to be happy, that is your wish.  If your intention is to get something that you think will make you happy, then that is your wish.  Intentions come in many forms and most forms come with some form of contrast.  She talks a lot about this.  When something unwanted happens, you generally launch an intention of something wanted to happen.  When something wanted happens, you launch an intention of wanting more things like it to happen.  So you can ultimately, be joyous and live a fulfilled life.  That is most people's ultimate wish.

Number two is the understanding that what you've intended already exists.  At this step, it is just the knowledge of it, and not the experience.  Number three is the experience of number two.  Though, each step kind of happens altogether-at-once.  When you have an intention (1), the universe actualizes it (2), and then you have to match its actualization to experience it (3).

How do you meet your actualized manifestation?  Well, Abraham speaks of the emotional guidance system.  Each one of us has our emotions as guidance to let us know if we are on the path of resistance or on the path of receiving what we've put in place with our intentions.  Step two is the universe's way of granting us our wishes.  When we have an intention, it is done.  Step two only occurs as a 'coming into' our manifested intention.

When we are resisting, we won't ever get to step three.  We will constantly be pulling the strings of our intentions, never coming to see the reality of them and experience them.  This is where I want to bring in Vipassana.  Vipassana isn't about intentions.  It's about seeing what is already there.  As I said above, these three steps of the Law of Attraction are all actually happening together.  It's not that you do one step and move on to the next, but they intertwine, as one constitutes the others.

We have all this contextual 'stuff' from our lives that is ready to be experienced.  Once we have equanimity, then our intentions are clearer and the manifestation of what intentions we had is upon us.  Additionally, the things you want aren't the things you want.  The feeling from those things is what you want.  Abraham has said this to her audiences, and it reflects this experience of equanimity.

Equanimity means having balance.  In Vipassana, you maintain balance not with thoughts or objects, but with the sensations that are experienced on the body.  The theory behind this is that these are at the root of your reactions.  In other words, your intention starts there.  After all, any intention you have starts from where you are.  With no observation of where you are, at the depth, all your intentions will lead you astray, even if they are manifested. Sometimes people go so far astray with outward manifestations that they find their way, but that is the long and difficult route to equanimity.  Having balance means that the ultimate goal that is most intended for, true happiness, can exist at any time, regardless of what reality has manifested itself.  The point of dealing with sensations and having equanimity with those is that that is the first reality that comes to be and everything stems from that.

Therefore, in my personal experience, Vipassana includes and clarifies each step within the Law of Attraction system.  Both the law of nature (Dhamma), and the Law of Attraction are universal laws.  They exist within everyone, everywhere.  To have a greater understanding of them proves to be beneficial, since they are there regardless of our ignorance, working consistently.  To develop equanimity of the changing body sensations will paradoxically skip the need for manifesting anything, and enhance the way this system functions.

Step one will be clearer, by being more in touch with the depth of the mind/body experience, so the intentions will have more heart at the base of them.  Step two will be easily recognized with a greater balance of change and the manifested reality will be received with ease when it is not pressed upon to be seen.  The whole process, with the base of wholesome equanimity, provides greater freedom and true happiness.  Thus, the ultimate goal, with every step.