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

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

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

Anicca... anicca... anicca...

Every once in a while we might come across some juicy bit of wisdom that we had known and lived, but forgotten, or seemed to have forgotten. I have a downloaded program from the old student Vipassana website on my computer that quotes a Vipassana teacher or a Dhamma scripture to inspire my daily practice. Every hour a quote comes up, along with the sound of a gong, if you set it to do so. I had the gong for a while, but it can be startling. Still, I get a quote every hour, and the one the other day struck me at the core.

"Anicca when properly developed will solve almost all your problems. It might not even be necessary for you to ask questions for answers. As the appreciation of anicca grows, so will the veil of ignorance fade away."

These words are by Sayagyi U Ba Khin, who shared the teaching of Vipassana with S. N. Goenka, who in turn taught it to me through video discourses at many a 10 day course. Anicca ("Ah-Nee-Cha") is a Pali word that is best defined as (the quality of) the arising and passing away. In English, our best translation is the word impermanence, though that carries a slightly different meaning.

In the courses’ instructions, Goenkaji will continuously say, “Anicca... anicca... anicca...” There is a book called The Meditator’s Handbook that has a part explaining the reason for this repetition. When something is repeated again and again in a school setting, it is likely going to be on the test or exam. Therefore, it should be remembered. Anicca is this cornerstone, key point that is on the final exam of Vipassana, right through to Nibbana. And I forgot the vitality of it til I was reminded by this digitized quote from U Ba Khin.

(Sayagyi U Ba Khin)

Why is it so vitally important? It is the basic, rooted observation of anicca within the framework of your own body that liberates you from your bondage of suffering. As one meditates, this is not so much ‘remembered’ as it is ‘felt or experienced.’ It’s not intellectual, though it is useful to understand intellectually what it is you’re observing, or beginning to understand at a direct, non-intellectual level. To return to the quote which says, “almost all of your problems will be solved with this developed,” is not an overstatement. To truly realize, with an understanding in spoken language, but also as a developed, inner knowing-ness that is as true as knowing that you have hair, or hands, or anything like this that is indescribably taken as a ‘usual thing,’ is to have an imperturbability to all of that which is phenomenal.

What does that mean? It means all things that come and go are no longer problems as they were before. To take some of the great, exaggerated examples from Neil Gaimen’s ‘Make Good Art Speech,’ I can say that if your “husband runs off with a politician, your leg gets crushed and then
eaten by a mutated boa constrictor, IRS is on your trail, or your cat exploded,” you will remain more
balanced with a innate understanding that both the bad things and the good things are ever-arising and passing away. As Neil says in the speech, when these things happen, you can return to the salvation of “Making Good Art.” I don’t disagree with that advice, knowing that it can help, but that doesn’t help you actually see these things as lesser problems, but rather is a coping mechanism once the problem has problemed you. Obviously these are examples of negative things, but even the positive or wanted things do not last forever. It is easier to intellectually understand that a painful, unwanted circumstance will pass away. It is harder to full-heartedly be aware of the fact that the most pleasurable circumstances will do the same. When we cling to these, we are creating problems with as much ignorance as we would if we were to worry about the bad thing that has or could happen.

(Actual cover on the left. Alternate 'anicca' version on the right.)

In difficult, pleasurable or also neutral moments, I’ve found that the clarity of knowing and feeling within myself that this is passing has sustained more vitality , joy and true happiness than any other bit of knowledge in this world. Words themselves don’t cut it. We need wisdom of the reality of it within ourselves. Otherwise we can forget and doubt this truth. Even with a daily practice of directly observing and knowing this, we can forget about anicca. In some way, the feeling we cultivate remains with us in moments throughout each day and night. The awareness develops to be used at all times, regardless of how terrible or elating a situation can be. Then, we can fully enjoy or fully experience sadness, and never cling to it, never make a story out of it that creates a boundary to our successful, aware living.

This quote hit home for me so much because of my development in experiencing this impermanence directly. It’s not just words to me, but truth of being. This truth translates into seeing all things, whether it’s writing, eating, working, drawing, playing, moving, sleeping, living - as change. I sometimes get caught up in mental stories. I create them for myself and they cause me misery. Yet it isn’t long before I bring my head above the water and cease the drowning of my ignorance. Again, I arrive at a peaceful place, treading the water of the phenomenal with a smile in my Self. There is a saying in the Vipassana courses that illuminates this truth. Goenkaji laughs when he says, “You’re on the path of Dhamma. Nothing can go wrong.” That is not an overstatement. Take one step in the right direction and keep walking. Walk on the path consistently and you’ll never want to stop. You’ll only stop out of your own ignorance, and you’ll be the first to notice.

Anicca... anicca... anicca...

- Anthony