Flight of the Cranes 1.0

 Hi All -

Well it turns out I did manage to find enough time to get the image finished🙂

You will noter it is called Flight of the Cranes 1.0  The 1.0 is because I have a couple of ideas as to how to do some background work that might result in versions 2.0 or whatnot.

But I kind of like this clean white background as well, which is going to see its own place in my "gallery.

Anyhow, here it is. 

Little Tiny Wall

 While I always told my students to simply do their best, and not waste time comparing their efforts to the G.O.A.T. (Greatest of All Times), sometimes we should look to the goats for inspiration. History has it that Leonardo da Vinci tried to bring innovations, new ideas, to every project. Sometimes with mixed results when he would abandon "bad ideas" midstream. Which may explain why we have fewer than 20 paintings attributed to the brush of the master. 

For example, da Vinci received a commission for a mural commemorating The Battle of Anghiari, to glorify Florentine forces’ victory over Milanese troops in a 1440 battle. Well, one story is that Leonardo left the mural half-finished when he unsuccessfully tried to combine oil paint with the fresco technique and the whole thing sort of slumped down the wall like a child's finger painting with too much water. Well, nothing ventured nothing gained.

Which is an extended explanation of the new process I am exploring with the cranes image I showed you in the last post. My normal process is to do the complete black and white "cartoon" of the entire image and then add color, sometimes putting in a single color, red or yellow, whatever; everywhere it goes in the whole image.

I am trying a new style with cranes. I am going to treat each crane as a separate composition, with it's own internal design and painting. This is the first one. That leaves only five more to go. I doubt I'll share each one before completing the final version. Travel etc., will most likely disrupt the process, but hopefully I'll avoid Da Vinci's problem.

Forgetting What Came Naturally

 I write and draw between a couple of screens and a drawing table, surrounded by a couple dozen of favorite images on the walls. Favorite images that I created over another few dozen years. They are good company - mostly. I say mostly because recently they have come to display a disconcerting side. Let me explain.

When I am creating the black and white line drawings for a piece, if I get "stuck" for ideas I will often kick back and look at the images around me to jog my memory and get the juices flowing. It usually works, but recently I have begun to encounter a disconcerting glitch. I'll look at an image and realize "I don't know how I did that." 

Take this piece for example:

It is called Look Through any Window, it is 4x5 feet, and I did it back in '03.    Everything in the front portion of the image, the yellow wall and its windows and flowers, were hand drawn as black and white images, but all the "coloring" was done in Photoshop - the shading, fading, etc. In addition, the upper portion of the image is heavy on Photoshop. The outlines of the buildings and the openings for windows were hand drawn. The bricks, however, were sort of "Photoshop assisted." To avoid having to draw each one, I would draw a block of windows and then copy and paste to fill the walls.  The contents of the windows in that upper section were "cut and pasted" from photos I had taken previously, pasted again via Photoshop.

So, yes, I can explain how I did it, but now when I open the software to do something it has changed. I don't mean Photoshop has changed, but my hands don't know where to go. Let me explain again. The best analogy I can think of is one I regret never having availed myself of, except in the most modest sense - playing a musical instrument that requires two hands. I stumbled through adolescent attempts at both the piano and the guitar. I have no recollection of piano at all, and can recall but three chords on the guitar, C, D and G.

The point is that folks who are actually proficient on those instruments don't have to think "right hand does this and left hand does that." It just happens. Muscle memory flows smoothly hitting the right strings or keys at the appropriate time to make music. Photoshop used to be like that for me. I had a stylus in my right hand to interact directly with the screen and my left hand would do the alt-clicks and whatnot for color, shading, whatever. Point is I didn't have to think about it. It just happened. 

No more. Photoshop is an incredibly powerful piece of software, and if you don't know how to tickle it just right, it just sits there and stares at you. It is, of course, my fault. The old "use it or lose it " syndrome kicks in. For the last few years I have used the software pretty simplistically to help create outlines from my photographs - or when "borrowing" images from Vermeer or Michelanglo. My emphasis has been more on the "filling in the blanks" part. Remember my version of "Girl with the Pearl Earring?"

Soooo. Not sure which way to go. Recently I did some "cleaning up" lines - go over 3 pixel width drawn lines with a five pixel cursor to sharpen edges - on a self-portrait (which didn't really help - so that image will live in the "never mind" bin). Nonetheless, I felt a bit of a pull back to the old full-featured Photoshop. 

I have just started a new image based on cranes in flight. Given the nation's current cultural and political chaos, I felt a need for their timeless tranquility. There is space for Photoshop in there somewhere. I'll let you now how it turns out.

Living in a State of Lovingkindness

The California fires, and the seemingly insurmountable challenges looming in their aftermath, are but one of the most recent reasons I hesitate to open my news sources in the morning.  At least they are not examples of humankind killing each other off over some political, territorial, religious or philosophical spat. Still they serve as a devastating reminder of nature's ability to overwhelm our arrogant and ignorant attempts to ignore, or control, the forces of the natural world. In my old home state of North Carolina, folks would repeatedly insist on building lovely seaside homes despite centuries-long histories of storms that allowed the waves to gleefully tear them down. California's recent display of the awesome, unleashed forces of nature does nothing to lessen the frustrating impotent compassion we feel for those still in harms way.

In addition to shying away from tales of natures fury, I am dissuaded from clicking on my many news feeds because I have never felt a need to winter or summer in Greenland. My parents lived in Nova Scotia for a few years. It seemed part of a pleasant country, but surely Alaska would resent no longer being the largest state. And Panama? Cool hats, but really, what is that Trump guy smoking? 

I spent my younger days in the sixties listening to hazy riffs that began with, "Listen man, seriously, wouldn't it be cool if we could, like, fly, or walk through walls, and maybe, like, live forever. No wait, wait! Like, change into an animal of your choice? Not forever man, but, like, for a while? Like, maybe for a hunt?" 

Grow up. Musk has wandered across the line that separates genius from insanity, and Zuckerberg seems to be willing to let these ravings pass unfettered into the misty world of "could be, might be, may be true. But who knows what is true these days, so why try to figure it out?"

But as bizarre as these "news stories" are, I am even more alienated by the unceasing reporting on the drum beat of the wars that simmer unrelentingly across the globe. People killing each other - men, women, children - largely because other men, yes, sadly, largely, if not uniquely, men - have declared that some other man has insulted their omnipotence and so they, and all their kith and kin, must die. And we recently took a pass on electing a woman who might have introduced a different perspective.

How did hate and evil rise to such prominence? Is this really how our nation might encourage the world to become "great again"? There is a better way, enshrined in most, if not all, the predominant religions, faiths, and philosophies that surround us. 

Lovingkindness.

It is not terribly complicated. "Treat those around you as you would like to be treated." Ring a bell? Sure. So why has it seeming lost out to "Smite those around you, less they smite you first!" I think it is because lovingkindness is harder. Hitting is easier. But I would assert that loving is happier.

Lovingkindness is a naturally occurring existential sphere that, while potentially all encompassing, is, in may ways, fragile.  Let me ramble on a bit.

We seem to love in spheres. Ideally, the sphere encloses one's family - biological or emotional. We don't have much trouble defining this sphere - "these are our loved ones." But there are dynamics within that sphere. For each of us it seems that there is an anchor, a central locus - a person who is the nucleus of the sphere if you will.

It is the power of the anchor that begins to reveal the potential fragility of the lovingkindness sphere. Imagine that the all the members within the sphere are connected by lines that define valences - varying degrees of attachment if you will. Life tests those valences. The divorce rate in the US [between 10 and 20% according to the National Center for Family and Marriage Research, at Bowling Green State University] is one clear indication of the possibility of the sphere's fragility. 

A pair that may have provided an anchor for a sphere dissolves their particular valence - which sends shockwaves through the entire sphere as children, friends - anyone who was part of the previous sphere - reevaluates their ties to the now individual parts of a previous alliances. It is often a mess. I believe that is the correct psychological term.

Each member of the previous anchor pair tends to create a narrative that explains the reasons for the split. The narratives are usually widely divergent or the split would have been resolved, and sadly the members of the previous sphere, despite intentions to remain neutral, tend to accept one version of the competing narratives and reject the other.  Yeah, a mess.

OK, now take that explanation of fragility in the sphere of one "family," and expand it to the relationships among larger spheres - schools, states, political parties, and nations - and we can see how "smiting" gains the upper hand over "doing gently" unto other. Lovingkindness is just harder.

My son-in-law, Rabbi Samuel Rose of Temple of Israel, in Greenville, SC recently delivered the closing benediction at the South Carolina Commemoration of the 80th Anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz in which he introduced me to a phrase I love, "the dignity of diversity." A concept apparently alien to the bouncing bevy of billionaire bullies currently attempting to rewrite both our form of government and our perception of reality. 

But the dignity of diversity in an important piece in the puzzle of lovingkindness. For how do we "treat those around you as you would like to be treated," if we randomly delete some of those around us simply because they are somehow different from us?

And yes, I am aware of the seeming contradiction in my advocacy of lovingkindness and the unkindness of my remarks regarding our current administration. Those remarks spring from despair as opposed to an exclusion from the possibility of a dialogue based on lovingkindness. 

Let us jump back to the idea of anchored spheres. Consider a sphere anchored by a set of parents which includes their children. Further consider the possibility of friction between the parents and a child that goes beyond the usual differences of opinion and lifestyle, into the darker realms of criminality or addiction. Lovingkindness declares the necessity of dialogue, not exclusion. So that friction must be addressed through dialogue, including a willingness to include professionals from outside the sphere to assist in the dialogue. All channels must be left open. 

I have no realistic expectation of dialogue with either the President or his proxies, so my criticisms of those in power are one side of an attempted dialogue that I anticipate will reach neither the ears or seats of those elites who currently hold sway in Washington.

But I am ready to listen, which is, after all, mandatory in any dialogue that seeks the difficult path of lovingkindness.