I’m sitting in my living room next to my dog. I was watching some New Masters Academy videos, a challenge I laid out to myself was to watch a video everyday. I don’t know how I could fail at that. If a person doesn’t have one stupid video they watch in a day that they could replace with an educational video, then they’re already the most productive thing I ever heard of. I was just starting to read some books when I remembered I should take care of my morning pages. I still haven’t done any drawing yet today and that’s fine because I have the live drawing tonight and know I’ll get in a couple hours. That doesn’t mean I don’t continue learning though. With my new perspective I was a little worried that I won’t be reading because it’s more important to be drawing from these books than reading generally. Not that they don’t have good information, but the person who has read every art book in the world and never made a stroke can’t create what they want to. The milage needs to be reached with the hands, that’s what I want. I said I didn’t draw yet so yeah there’s a bit of failure in that, the mindset I need to overcome is to go from viewing my progress by the minute to at least by the day or best assessing my progress over years. What leads to me burning out is every minute I’m saying to myself, “You’re not working this minute, so you’ve decided to give up?” I think everyone has a dark sided voice in their head, an argument for not learning is it just makes that bad voice smarter too. Though no matter what both the good and evil inside of us will only know as much as we do.
I really thought I had em last time
In writing this everyday, I write the date each day and I’m going to be screwing that up a lot. That might be the biggest change for me in the new year, I had to take a couple seconds longer to write the date. I did manage to stay up until midnight, the wife and I watched the ball drop on time square’s youtube channel. That is a sentence that wouldn’t have made sense to anyone from a time that I can remember watching the ball drop as a kid. I heard some people talking about how close humans are to bridging the gap between being able to think with a computer. Read a story about a blind guy who is able to code with his thoughts. These are very strange times. Does it mean that we would let humanity die because everyone would have a little more ease? What does it mean for the soul when the human brain and a computer chip are seamlessly connected? To me it feels a little bit like the “human” part dies.
I know I went off on a bit of a tangent there, but I also bought a big white board from walmart as a reward for accomplishing my 30 days of drawing. The next challenge starts tomorrow. Round 2 and this time I mean business. It’s just going to be grinding away with drawing. I feel like part of me is going to blink and the month will be over, then I’ll blink again and I’ll be celebrating my wife’s birthday in March. Last year felt like it flew by so fast that I’m afraid the years only get faster and before I know it I’ll be blinking and 20 years pass. As long as I’m doing what I choose to be doing, I see no reason to fear life or death.
The party hats will be ready by tonight
This is it, as far into the year as we’re gonna get. I’m writing this nearly first thing in the morning, a bit of a throw back since lately I’ll write at a random time during the day. Part of me is hoping to stay up until midnight and write my first morning page for 2020 then, but there’s a strong chance I’ll be in bed by 10 pm. Though I should stay up because it would be more memorable and it’s the only day of the year where staying up late means anything. Oh yeah, I think it was my intention to write down some new year’s resolutions. I figure shoot for the stars, so if we miss we land on the clouds. First, this year I plan to become the greatest portrait artist ever to live and I’ll sell my first million dollar painting. I hope to increase the time spent drawing every month, that also implies consistently practicing. A soft promise I’d like to make is anytime I leave the house, I take a sketchbook with me, and start using it for Gilgamesh’s sake! It would be nice to finish copying the Bridgman and Bargue drawings, but I honestly don’t know how long that will take. I will keep chopping away at it though. Other than continuing to work on those drawings, I don’t have any thoughts, goals, or desires with drawing and subsequently my life. Bridgman offers me short, medium and long term goals. Draw this picture, copy all the pictures in this book, become a better artist. Well the library opens in an hour and a half, so I’ve still got some time to kill before then, hopefully it’s not too cold. I opened the door to let the dog out this morning and was reminded that we’re still in the middle of winter. We had a few days of warmth to trick our senses, but now it’s time for work.
Take a seat, stay awhile
Back to the grind again, am I right? Everyday I write out the date I can’t believe it’s the end of the year. I was doing a little spring cleaning to get things ready for the new year. A lesson I’ve learned from a lifetime of failure is that life is going to happen. When life does happen, you can’t abandon ship and say there’s no point in ever leaving your comfort zone because every time you do, things don’t go according to plan.
That also doesn’t mean I shouldn’t plan things, so that’s what I was doing this morning. I’m preparing things so I am more likely to accomplish the daily tasks I have planned. If you need specifics, I had mentioned cancelling my membership at the YMCA and I was going to join a different gym that would be cheaper. In the mountains I decided to give home gyming another go because that’s even cheaper plus it saves on driving time. It is another example of working from home though and we all know how difficult that can be. The randomness that appears as soon as you sit down to do some work is what I mean when I say life happens. For me, what’s helpful in dealing with randomness is not treating what I’m doing as a precious activity that has to get done or my life was a waste. No one needs that sort of pressure, especially not when I’m talking about drawing and staying physically healthy. If I do what I can consistently, subtle but big changes happen. Take these morning pages for example, in a sense writing them is like doing nothing, but I don’t know if anything has had a bigger impact on my life. I hope I never stop writing them. A montra I like to live by is, “Know Thyself”. Nothing helps me do that more than taking the time each day to check in with myself.
I wish I could use a Beatles verse for every Title
Hey morning pages, I’m back home now. I had a pretty wild experience this morning helping a guy jump his car that I may get to, but I’ve been thinking more about my weekend. One of the ways I’ve been beating myself up is that I feel weak and beaten. If I feel weak after only a weekend of work, maybe I’m not cut out for this, but the angle I was thinking of now is that being exhausted is a good thing. I went out there to work all weekend and to the best of my abilities, that’s what I did. That’s not a pleasant experience, living at your office for the weekend. I don’t know if I told you, but I brought my office desk from home, so I essentially moved my studio to this tiny home where it was my studio and a bed. There was actually another bed in the loft, but I had a sketch board and books next to the bed. Shoot, I had about four drawing books and a sketchbook in bed with me, that’s a different experience than vacation. It’s a hard decision to make as well, it’s like going to the gym while on a cruise. The gym is open 24/7 and you’ve got nothing but free time, but oh look there’s a game of bingo and an open bar. I’ll wear my wounds with pride and attempt again in the future. I can only hope to be better as time goes on and if I keep trying to be better everyday; I’ll get there. In the mean time the trip helped me put together a good schedule to have going forward. It’s weird to say I had a lot of fun because I was completely isolated yesterday until 1 pm when I texted my wife. I got five hours of drawing in by that time. That’s five hours of pencil to pad too. I was timing it on a stop watch to keep myself from allowing distractions. I’m excited moving forward and looking towards 2020, is it something you think about? A new decade. What were the 2010’s about and what will the 2020’s hold for us?
Cookie Cutter Crescent Wrench
I think I hit my limit for the day morning pages. I keep telling myself I’ll have more energy to draw in a little bit, but I don’t think it’s going to happen. My eyes are hurting and it feels like I cracked my skull. It was a great day, I drew a lot and even finished my first sketchbook. Boy am I tired though. I could feel my eyes and hands were moving differently towards the end and that’s basically what I was after, push myself to a new level of working. I don’t know what the rest of the trip will have in store. I can hardly keep my eyes open, so I can’t look at art books too much. In my mind I basically have to wait and not give into boredom. Dealing with the bored mind is a constant battle and the more of those fights I win, the better I will become at it and will waste less time. The cycle I’m talking about is something like I want to draw, but that’s work so I sit for a minute until my mind gets bored and says I’ll watch a youtube video till I get the energy. Hours later I have a headache from watching too many videos and the day is gone. Today was a good day, it’s just hard to remind myself of that when I feel so beat. I think another element is I need reading glasses, but I don’t use them for drawing and I might need to. The way my eyes feel now is how they felt when I would read for awhile before I had glasses. In both cases the feeling could just be that my eyes are strained and exhausted. Maybe the glasses wouldn’t help and I just used my eyes more than they’re used to. Regardless these are just growing pains, which is good, I’m growing.
This Title is for Ted
Today is the big day. I’m going into the mountains for the weekend to draw. Wish me luck that I will be able to stay committed to the work I went there to do. Knowing myself I’ll try to take every out that I can. Part of the idea of this whole trip is to take away any excuses or distractions, but that’s the test. Does my mind create new excuses or does it say, “Okay, you win, I’ll do the work.” Whatever happens is still a victory in my eyes because it’s another step forward in dedicating myself to art. I decided after I’m done writing this to go to an exceptional used book store in town to see if I can find any good art books. I just heard about this manga called Lone Wolf and Cub that was well drawn plus I’ve had a gift card for the store since last Christmas. I always have a lot of fun just visiting that book store. The place is huge and they have so much that I never get past one or two shelves before it’s time to go. I’ll be honest with you, I’m scared about this weekend. I don’t usually handle my tests well, probably because I always set unrealistic standards which destroy me when I don’t meet them. To give an example of how my mind can work some times say I had a goal to draw for 30 mins and after about two minutes I’ll be saying to myself, “You’ve only drawn two minutes, you can’t do this, why do you try, you’re a failure, this is too hard.” I could very well be on the path to 30 mins, but I don’t even give myself the chance to see it through before picking myself apart. I’ll try to stay positive and conquer this beast.
Merry Happy Holly
Alright, Christmas is over and we can all stop being cheerful. Time to crack the wipe, get to work and start looking out for ourselves. Maybe today I’ll go out and make a trolly comment on the internet. I wonder if part of the way people act on the internet is they think their space is a so small that it’s like peeing in the ocean. Maybe right here I made it dirty, but there’s so much water no one will ever see it. The difference lies in an argument I make that once something is digitized, it is no longer infinite. That’s why I think there’s a big difference between an oil painting and a photoshop painting. They may both be beautiful, but the fact is there’s a limit to how many colors and patterns photoshop can make. Theoretically a computer could print out every single image that’s possible to make in photoshop. An HD image is usually 300 pixels per inch and each pixel can only be a programmable number of colors. On the other hand, you could make an exact copy of an oil painting and they won’t be the same. Taking this argument to the extreme, you could look down at the atoms of the paint and see this cobalt blue goes one atom further than the copy. We could even take it further and say the spins of the atoms don’t line up, but you get the point. We can never fully replicate the infinite. How all this relates to what I’m saying about the internet and ocean metaphor is that the ocean has systems to clean itself, algae and fish. Creatures who take nastiness and clean it, when something nasty is created on the internet, it’s permanently recorded. When a person has a bad day or misunderstands, that’s permanent. People will deal with that permanence differently, some will accept their faults, but if I know humans the majority have trouble admitting when they’re wrong. Those people are forced to double down, to explain how their outburst was justified and it’s made for some strange times. I think the 2010’s will go down in history as a strange time where people were still figuring out how to handle the internet.
This is for Marley, and don’t forget Marley
Merry Christmas! If anyone is reading this today, I’m grateful for your time and hope you have a wonderful new year. Last night my wife and I made a little pillow fort of sorts in the TV room and watched The Muppets Christmas Carol. I told you that I really like Dickens and that movie is a good exposure to him because it’s mostly muppets, but then there’s a line that’s music to the hears and you know it’s lifted from the book. An example is when Scrooge is haunted by the ghosts of his old partners, he says to them, “There’s more of gravy than of grave about you”. I’d love to use that as an insult someday.
The other thing we did yesterday was go to a performance of the Nutcracker. It was the first time I’ve been to a ballet. Right away I can tell I’ll be a big fan of it. My wife and I talked a bit after the show and it would make sense if she’s not as big of a fan of abstraction. Now I don’t like abstract art in the modern sense, there’s a lot of that that I think is lazy and then they say, “Anything can be art.” What I mean for abstraction with ballet is that they’re telling a story, the Nutcracker has love, conflict, foreshadowing, and coming of age elements. Ballet has no words though, therefore all of those elements of story must be forged in the viewers mind. Everyone saw a different show, and if someone isn’t good with creating a story off of the information they’re given, they might feel it was a bad show. They also had beautiful outfits and a good stage design, all of this before I’ve even mentioned dancing. I’m starting to see art differently the deeper I get into it and after seeing it understand how dance can be just like playing a musical instrument.
Holiday Pontification
I’m up early this morning. The wife and I know we’ll be back to normal days soon so we gotta start getting back to our normal wake up time. Normally I would have snuck out to do my drawing, but my wife is awake too, so we’re laying in bed enjoying each other’s company for a bit. The dog is also asleep in between us, acting as a heater. Last night was fun, my wife’s mother and sister came over for Christmas. We had dinner, some presents, and I showed them the VR world before we went to this beautiful old theater down town to see National Lampoons Christmas Vacation. It was a sold out show so the crowd was a lot of fun. One family even dressed up as every character in the movie. I enjoy anytime I get to go to that theater and in about four hours we’re going back there to see a performance of the Nut Cracker. I’m sure that will be a lot of fun.
What’s considered classical or fine arts speak to me on a different level than they did when I was younger. I worry that I’m just pompous and do these things like see ballet or listen to classical music to appear smart, but I think there’s a level of depth there that we’re not being exposed to with pieces being created in modern times. If you think about it, these works have been around a long time and have gained approval from the proper authorities of each generation. I’m thinking of Shakespeare specifically now, compared to say Harry Potter, people have been saying Shakespeare is great for hundreds of years, we know taken out of it’s time, something in the art speaks to the soul on an infinite scale. Harry Potter may be popular now, but there may be writing techniques that when taken out of it’s time make the the piece fall apart. Probably not with Harry Potter because I believe the author has said a lot of the motifs were taken from the Bible which obviously has stood the test of time.
Chris' Morning Pages 