Loving Letters of the Dragon

Reading the collections of essays and letters by Bruce Lee is fascinating and inspiring on many levels. The legend who lived only to thirty two was a contemplative, intelligent man. He starred in twenty Cantonese-language films before the age of eighteen, founded schools, taught and developed new techniques of martial arts and continued to write, philosophize and make films his whole life. Everyone knows that Bruce is someone who sought to express himself authentically through his art and life.

I am reading two books. One is Artist of Life: a collection of notes and essays by Bruce. The other is Letters of the Dragon, which is a collection of Bruce’s letters to friends and family, often sent from America or Hong Kong. To read the personal writings of someone who was adamant in expressing truth is a wonderful thing. Letters are already a medium of personal richness and for the author of them to be so full of life himself, they are truly a pleasure and insight into a caring, persistent and well-rounded person. As Bruce Lee might say, “Man! So cool.”

Yet with all his magnificence as an individual, Bruce was confined to the collective framework of human beings in his time. Thankfully, we have a collection of letters because of it, as supposed to a multitude of text messages. The care of writing a letter is something that strikes me as a more expansive way to communicate. Reading Bruce’s letters reminds me of how technology has changed our interactions to a global level. We can quickly call, email or send information across the world. We can physically travel to anywhere in a hurried pace and have the knowledge of where we’re going and what it’s going to be like before we even arrive, through our world-wide cloud of information. It is the inspiration for care that I feel through Bruce’s life as a human being who deals with common struggles of us all. Mundane elements such as financial concerns to deeper truths such as death, the art of expression and the cultivation of inner peace.

Bruce was an explorer with a respect to an inner calling that shaped his actions and perspective. It is inspiring to have those who have walked their own personal/impersonal path of authenticity and wisdom. It is with continued appreciation that I read books of the great minds that are now left like footprints in the snow. I will never know Bruce Lee the man, but as legend, expression and wisdom, his essence lives on as a guidance and inspiration. From his readings, I hope to gain a deeper appreciation for the simple gifts of each moment. To see with freshness as the situations reveal themselves. Like Lee’s own jeet kune do, there is no way to the Way.

Our paths will all intertwine, like Bruce’s to mine, yet each moment is unique for us alone. From pages of his words, we can carry the meaning of a live well lived into this unique moment, expressed as what is. The care of this sacred place in time and space will change us more than we can imagine. This can inspire others to have that same sense of freedom and feeling of the truth of being, in all our layers of exchange with this world. The words of Bruce Lee inspire me not to take any friend, foe, moment or sentence for granted. This holds true to the dearest part of my heart.

With love and care for the essence of Bruce Lee,
Yours truly,
Anthony

“I will give you my heart, please don’t give me your head only.” - Bruce Lee

My current process to create an illustrated novel

In this post I'm going to share the steps that my brother and I are taking in a streamlined, non-messy fashion. Of course the actual process has many steps and other aspects that are integrated or left out of these several clear steps, but these are the necessary components of how we're getting our ideas onto and into a finished copy to publish, after much exploration and more to come.

Step 1) Writing

Most of the writing is done on paper by hand or on the computer in Libre Office or X Mind. The scratch notes and ideas are then compiled and interlaced into an actual scene that contains characters and flow of conversation, rather than journal notes, incomplete phrases and monologue inquiries. It's passed back and forth through programs, but X Mind has a nice way to organize the actions of the characters or scene on the left, and the colour coded dialogue of the different characters in lines on the right. Then it may be taken from this format and re-placed into Libre Office to print and work on the scene on paper again as needed.

Step 2) Layout

Once the writing is done, the Layout is a simple process of getting a basic, rough idea of where text and images go together on a single page. The layout of this book is likened to something like Dinotopia or a children's book, but with words more spread out than single large paragraphs on each page. Each page has sketches like stick men or worse at this point, and scratchy coloured pencil to mark where the words of the characters will be placed along with the illustrations. We as authors can barely even understand what we're looking at here, but it's a necessary step in the process. When we can draw really good, really fast, this step will be more integrated with the next.

(Words in red coloured pencil. Super rough sketches in pencil.)

Step 3) Better Sketches

The next step is to draw out some images that would be understood if someone were to look at the page. We are taking standard office paper and sketching out each page in a rough, but much clearer form so that we can see where the final piece might end up. This is a big jump from the stick men, pillow head drawings from the Layout phase. This is done without adding any words to the page.

(Just one sketch example - different from the whole page as it's described)

Step 4) Photoshop text

I then scan these preliminary drawings into P.S. and throw them on a fixed template page that will eventually be the final format and file to print and publish. After doing this, I copy and paste the text from our Writing files and place them accordingly within the scanned sketch pages we have pasted and arranged in the document. This may require some adjusting and resizing of the images and words to make them fit together and not overlap. It is still in a rough format, but it is readable with the words and pictures together for the first time.

(Not an official sketch page. More images and words would be there.)

Step 5) Style Guide

The context of our story inspires many types of art. As a way to continue studying artwork in an academic sense, but directing this studying into a streamlined focus on moving the finished pages of the story along, I've started to create Style Guides for each page. In a sense, it's like doing colour thumbnails for a complete book, such as James Gurney did for Dinotopia, or others would do for movies and so on. In my approach, I'm using other people's artwork that I like and would like to emulate as an overlapping template to guide the visualizing of the finished page. The images carry a certain tone or style that symbolizes and emphasizes what I'm feeling from our story in this page, these words and image. After adding the text into Photoshop, I create a folder with many layers of other artwork I've dragged in over top of the sketches. The art is placed over top of the sketches as a guide to see the whole page with a representation of where the art could be in the end.

(The content of the artwork reference pictures won't necessarily match the content of the illustrations needed for the story, but the style and visual reference will influence the final versions.)

Step 6) Studies and Final Page Creation

With the Style Guide in place, I will first do master studies of the artwork I've selected for each page. Then I will draw the images on the page as they need to be in the story. I will carry some essence of my studies into my own artwork by aiming for the greatness that I see in the referenced art and at the same time creating a new piece that is directly framed into the story and the final pages of it. It will be as good as I'm able to do it at this time, and then I will move on to the next page. I may also have to do additional studying before drawing the final image. Say for example I have pasted a certain style over top of an area where I'm going to draw a character's head, but I don't know how to draw the character yet. I will have to draw the character, based off whatever photo reference or ideas I have for them, as well as the style inspiration, then combine the two together. I have to learn to study while I create this story, rather than learning to eventually create it one day far in the future when I'm 'better.' This is the surest way I've come up with to apply my education in art to the actual goal right now, which is the process of bringing this to a complete stage of readability. Thus, after this step, the images are all compiled into the printable Photoshop document to be read and enjoyed with flow and harmony. Then, we are ready to show it to everyone.

(Example: You'll see when it's done.)

What do you think? Share in the comments or on Social Media.

- When Anthony Was

#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.