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