Jim's Andy, Doubt and Direct Experience

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Anniversary Reflection - One Year of Art Training

Just over a year ago. Two days over in fact, I signed up for the online art program by Watts Atelier. www.wattsatelier.com. It was April 1st, 2016 when I began my traditional training as a representational artist. I dove into the program and watched many videos, with little practicing. Of course I was also doing that with Schoolism courses, and it took me a while to realize that the practicing of art is essential to developing skills, not just listening to lectures about it.

A month or two later, I signed up for a workshop in San Diego to go meet Jeffrey R. Watts and the other instructors at the brick and mortar school. This made me want to practice more, to have some skills when I got to the workshop and get the most out of the instruction. This attitude of getting really good to supposedly impress the instructors in some sense was unrealistic. Not that I really was going for impressing them, but I was expecting growth that just doesn't happen in a summer of beginning this approach to drawing.

As I continued, I realized the effort needed to develop these skills that I had never tried to develop. My inspiration continued from the content I gathered from Watts Atelier, both for free on Youtube and from the month of taking the online program. The respect I had for these teachers and the work they must have put in to get as good as they are also expanded as I tried to do this myself. The balance of life's other activities and the practice and learning of art had to be understood and reflected on over and over. I've done a lot of pointless practicing and useless time spent browsing artwork or skimming over lessons without doing the necessary practice to actually learn these. This was done before this last year of practicing, but also during this last year when I was learning how to train in art properly.

Some of these things became clearer after the workshop with the advice from the instructors, like how to navigate the variety of things that can be drawn for practice, and to spend time on the right things to be a well rounded artist with a long-term progression in mind. In other ways, this wasn't entirely clear after the workshop, because it needs practice to be put into practice. The understanding of how to comes with the doing, and there's no real answer to how to navigate this learning, even now. It's a constant metamorphosis of learning how to learn this content, but I have some much better ideas after trial and error. Even with the guidance of the Watts team and other artist talks I've listened to, one has to figure out how to do it, especially without daily contact and guidance with one of these teachers who has already gone through these trials. Even then, it's up to one's own discretion.

I feel that I've experienced many of the symptoms of beginning a serious art discipline that Jeff Watts lists as commonalities for students in their early year development, spoken of in his inspiring Youtube video: How to Train to Become a Working Professional Artist. It's been good to have that talk to reference, to understand that I'm not different than other beginners when it comes to learning how to spend your time and energy wisely, schedule your training and follow through with the practice. I think the approach the Watts school takes with 3 hour training sessions/classes, with 20 minutes of drawing/painting and then a 10 minute break, repeated, is beneficial for focusing, memorizing and committing to the work. After jumping around with ways of creating practice time, like an hour and a half session, or 1 hour sessions, or no sessions and just working whenever I can, I've returned to the 3 hour Watts way and found it is best.

One thing I've realized too is how to be balanced and do a lot of work. This is also a changing understanding, but something that I am developing is a detached intensity. It is not healthy to get frustrated over lack of practicing, but it is not going to help your skills if you don't practice at all. It also doesn't help to be frustrated and go into your practice with that mind set, thinking about how you need to do more and losing your attention on the task at hand, which is your practice. A wise man needs to be calm among the chaos. The chaos is learning art. The wisdom is doing so with a deep sense of balance and a view of timeless practice, all the while scheduling the sessions of time to develop this. It is this long term, or eternal (timeless) view of practice that is necessary, but the understanding and urgency to do it today that makes for healthy work. Something that helped with this was spending some of the time doing sketches for fun, inventing imaginative work and working on personal projects. The more playful, 'do whatever you feel like' work is just as important for balancing the academic work. It has helped me have more fun so I can keep learning and see where my skills are lacking. It inspires you to do the academic work and makes you understand why you're doing it, which is usually to express yourself in an authentic way, tell stories and create worlds.

In January I started to make Youtube videos, so that there will be a consistent video log of my development. The videos are not tutorials by any means, though at some point they could go there. I'm learning from Schoolism, Watts Atelier, Proko and Aaron Blaise, so I'm going to reference those to people wanting to learn, rather than teaching in videos on the web. It will be interesting to see the many videos I make (2 per month) as years go by. It may be an inspiration for someone in the future who is beginning to go through all this practice like I am. I'm at a point now where I feel I can see my mistakes as I make them, and therefore am beginning to learn quicker. It is good to have this understanding and you'll see it in the videos as I continue.

As last April started my real training, this April is considered to be an anniversary for my art. It is now that I begin with more vigor and have the goal to do 40 hours a week of training. Half of it will be learning academically and the other half will be creating worlds of my own for my personal story. Yesterday I came across an old blog by Stan Prokopenko, who now teaches on Proko.com and was trained at the Watts Atelier. The blog post went through every year he was at the school, and what classes he took. It described in a short paragraph what he had learned and what was a good or bad choice in how he directed his training at this time. It made me hopeful in the sense that his first year of training was slower than the other years. He practiced more as he continued, and I feel the same desire to do so, knowing that it's the only way to get as good as I need/want to be to express the stories I write in an authentic, beautiful way.

At the same time, balance is needed. It's a greater skill to learn how to work 40 hours a week on art while being aware and content, rather than losing your mind and your sense of well being through frustration in training, or guilt with "not good enough, need to practice more." I don't have the bad job I need to get out of, or the living conditions that are determining factors for some people on why they want to do something else with their time. They do it to escape current conditions and this can often lead to unbalanced attachment to the thing they use as escape. My conditions are perfect when I'm peaceful with them. I understand this more and more in my experience, with wisdom. To consistently do something to improve, but remain peaceful and unconditional with it is a skill to appreciate. I'm basically understanding what a path of mastery is and how to walk it, using art as my main context. I also have a passion project of a story to write and it needs nice pictures to give it more life.

I continue my training with a 3 month plan in mind. Every 3 months I will switch 'courses,' as if I am taking a slightly longer term at Watts Atelier. (They do 2 and a half month terms there.) I will incorporate each class into a 3 hour session once a week. Just to be clear, I am not taking classes other than studying online and from books. In this way, I'm getting lessons, but have to self-direct my training and motivate myself without guidance or a determined 'class' to attend each week. In this way, while I work two part time jobs and other things happen, my self-taught 3 hour classes won't necessarily fall on the same day every week, and they may have to be divided into more than one session (two 1.5 hour sessions for example) if needed. Each course title is based off Watts Atelier courses that they teach at their school, as well as set up to work with what programs I am currently in online and the resources I have available to teach myself. The classes are divided based on the skill level I feel I currently have, what I need to practice and how to be well rounded in portrait, landscape, still life and figure. They are based off this previous year's understanding of how to learn and practice on a day to day, week to week, month to month, year to year (one year so far) basis.

The courses are as follows, listed with the details of what I'm using to train in these areas.

1. Gouache Portrait Painting
(Once a week, paint a gouache portrait in monochrome and/or watch demos on it)
- Schoolism class: Realistic Portraits by Jason Seiler
- Painting videos on Watts Atelier Youtube in Gouache
- (perhaps Gouache online course on Watts Atelier school)

2. Head Drawing and 20 minute head layins
(Once a week, do head layins (20 minutes each) or a longer (3 hour) head drawing from photo reference or a model (friend/local life drawing class))
- Schoolism class: Realistic Portraits by Jason Seiler

3. Figure Drawing - Design and Invention
(Once a week, study figure drawing from books and online courses)
- Figure Drawing (book) by Michael Hampton
- Force (book) by Michael D. Mattesi
- Gesture Drawing (book) by Alex Woo (received at Schoolism Live workshop)
- How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way (Stan Lee)
- Watts Atelier online school
- Other (Youtube etc.)

4. Intro to Tonal Drawing and Animation
(Once a week, work on fundamental geometrical shapes/2 value construction)
- Watts Atelier Fundamentals Phase I and II content - online school
- Aaron Blaise lessons and begin animating with simple shapes

5. Head Fundamentals
(Once a week, work on head fundamentals)
- Watts Atelier Head Phases I and II online school
- Other (Andrew Loomis books)

6. Inking Essentials
(Once a week, study inking from other artists)
-Mark Schultz
-Robert Watts
-Watts Atelier inking class (when it comes out)

7. Anatomy of Arms and Legs
(Once a week, study anatomy of arms and legs)
- Watts Atelier
- Aaron Blaise
- Proko
- Other

8. Basics of Perspective
(Once a week, study the basics of perspective)
- Ernest Norling books
- Scott Roberston Youtube
- Watts Atelier and other

9. Still Life monochrome painting in gouache
(Once a week, paint a still life in gouache - photo or observed from life)
- Watts Atelier

10. Figure Drawing and 20 minute figure layins
(Once a week, draw figures from photo reference or life)

(The following classes are associated more with inventing and creating the worlds of my story)

11. Plein air/Urban sketching and invention
(Once a week, observe nature and use local environments to develop and create your own)

12. Level/Puzzle/Game Design
(Once a week, study game level design and perspectives and develop your own.)

13. Storyboarding/Comics
(Once a week, study existing comics, storyboards and develop your story's layout)

14. Creature and Character  Design
(Once a week, develop your story's creatures and characters and study other artists' work)

As Stan Prokopenko's blog post (and many other things) guided me to start this structure of classes, and document it as I learn, so may these blog posts guide another learning artist to practice and develop the skills to live a healthy, balanced life on the path of mastery.

Wish me luck!

- Anthony

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.