okay more illustration

 Illustrations

-I get nervous about getting the face right. Ok to start with the face. But what I get tickled with is the posture, the details. These

-It might take more than 1 sitting (!) Maybe more than 2 (!!)

-I am used to, when drawing, doing the "hard part" then fading out into nothingness. But illustration doesn't "give up" around the edges. 

-I like scenes where a lot is going on. Where there are different people engaged in different things, all within the same scene.

-What are MY stylish things? Color?

-I get nervous about making mistakes--with watercolor, with drawing, around faces. How to overcome this fear? Realizing if it's multimedia I can cover something up. I can redo a face. I can do it very gently at first and gradually add detail.

Illustration noticings

 I have been trying to NOTICE Illustrations as a first step before COMPLETING illustrations.

Here's some thoughts...now as for incorporating them into ACTION!

1) playfulness

2) A to C! I learned this technique in improv. When you are given a prompt, think of what it reminds you of, then think of what that reminds you of.

3) There's some emotional component--maybe more so than other visual representations, illustrations should evoke a certain MOOD

4) Make things big/ weird / feel free to highlight details you want

5) People get tickled seeing the details of things. We get tickled!!

6) Maybe think about delighting the author by having listened closely, including some detail?

7) Change up the perspective - from above/below/beside

Specificity

 Specificity in art makes the art--worth doing, worth receiving. the reaction not in general but in real time played out in your soul. the painting not in general but of the fingernails, the steam, the food you know. what I am not giving you now is specificity. but you know the exact lift of the eyebrow, the tone of voice, the way a baby knows a parent's. The exactness of it, the ruffage, the what's left-behind, the imprecision. it's what makes art worth giving. would I give art to an abstract person? I could. How much more fun to give a piece to someone that they specifically know, can see, know the size and the shape and the shadows that are it, know the lilt of tongue, the specific ache of the knee, the pitter, pattering precision of it. that is shaped, as near I can shape it, toward them, which is still a mottled hunk of clay with lumps and fingernail grooves running into it, but isn't that the best we can give someone else, anyway?

Seamus Heaney interview, the world you were given is out of kilter with the world that you're in

 Back to Famous Seamus. (not an exact transcription, but close-ish)

"...especially if that space had been packed and packed and packed with Catholic doctrine and your whole being was, was actually just inseparable from the faith, a faith, then you secularize yourself, you know, because that's what you have to do, you're living in the world. You necessarily live the life of your generation. You live the life of the world you're in. The world that you were given is out of kilter with the world that you're in, so you secularize yourself. Well then you say, "Well damn it all, there's something else."

22 min -interview "An afternoon with Seamus Heaney"

HoCoPoLitSo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GpdzarVGOfs&t=1024s

Kindness Towards Readers

 1. As Billy Collins said (??), keep the mystery mystery and the real real. This is something like what he said, anyhow. Basically, do not describe in great metaphor or imagery tying a shoelace. 

2. Begin in Kansas, end in Oz. Is also something Billy Collins says. That is, start in the mundane/ordinary and you can lead them to the magical/zany/wondrous.

3. Imagine someone is not committed to reading yet. You are their initial entry. Make it welcoming.

4. Imagine you are waking someone up by what you are writing. Don't turn the lights on all at once. Be gentle. Use simple sentences. Use words that make sense.

5. Tell them the truth. We all deserve it.

6. Don't waste their time. Don't tell them things they already know. Tell them things that are interesting.

and more.

5 Lessons in Writing??

 2025!

I first had an essay published in Notre Dame Magazine in 2020. So, maybe it's an opportunity to reflect, 5 years later on things I think I'd like to learn / am learning / have learned since being given the opportunity to write. What an opportunity! Why don't I try?

1) Sitting with things & having multiple projects at once. 

    I hear writers talk about the discipline of writing, showing up when you don't want to, putting your bottom in the seat, making a commitment to a time and place. Weekend mornings have been that for me. Place - usually bed, and I have a few hours on a weekend morning. What a gift. I Do like following the wisps & whims of inspiration so have found having multiple essays to work on, flit between, has been helpful.

2) One topic for one page. 

    I think I've come to this recently. It's a gift & blessing to be granted One Page! Like a poem! I like poems that exist on One Page. That's a poem. So, too, I think for an essay on 1 Page, 1 topic is likely sufficient. Enough. Not that it can't go somewhere. But probably circling back to the Big Idea. Or staying with the Big Idea and that's enough. People are just waking up. Don't make them too dizzy. Just like when they are just standing. Let them get their bearings.

3) Exact details are funny.

    People like funniness. But oftentimes I think funniness is the truth, when we're willing to look at it. Anne La Mott likes index cards (?) to record things. Brian Doyle likes writing things down immediately. There is a call for immediacy sometimes because otherwise the details slip out, and the details are life! The details! like in a photograph, we can zoom in and see the little things. And writing about it because there are also details of our emotional experience that become smoothed and blurred out later.

4) I have tended to write about things that happen to me 500x rather than 1x.

    Tupperware. Walking in my neighborhood. Thoughts about babies in church. I tend to write about things I can gather data about, and continue gathering data about. A once-in-a-lifetime experience is something worth writing about! And they all are, but experiences that repeat allow me to gather data (details) and develop an emotional response to them. They allow the collecting experience to be ongoing. Also, watching Brian Doyle as a writer, a "normal guy in a normal life,"--to be so prolific, how can you do it? Except to try to capture the everyday.

5) Writing as practice of co-creation.

    I have just written a prayer (start-of). I have considered my art practice a way to show glory to God. Writing? Sometimes I dive in. What about intentionally asking God to help guide it? God is the Creator of the Universe. God is the Word of Life. God creates the things we notice, the receptacles through which we notice. "Martyr" means witness. I consider my art-making as witness-bearing.

In the next 5 years, I pray God may guide, call attention to, help me to bear witness to truth & beauty.

Amen.

Illustration & Children's Artwork

 I love illustrations of certain books. I just discovered a new one this week: Robert Ingpen, an Australian who illustrates a Classics series. The one I'm reading is Wizard of Oz. Why am I drawn to his illustrations? There's a softness to them. They appear a bit fuzzy around the edges. I like the brushstrokes. I like the emotion of the characters. I see some munchkins and the Good witch with a hunched back. His characters have spindly legs.

I also like the illustrations of Blair Thornley. Hers are simple, ink drawings of people. Also soft I might say in the sense that their backs are sloped. I guess the illustrations I'm drawn to show people in poor posture--maybe that's a subtle element of reality some people aren't capturing. She likes shoes. Her characters are doing something.

I'm thinking about, kind of daunted by, illustration, because I never feel I've been able to capture the human form adequately or do it justice. I'm more of an aiming-for realism drawer. But with this, I'll be challenged to capture an emotion, be simplified. Maybe I could think about the underlying tone/emotion of the whole piece and think about how that tone manifests in a human body. Hm.

Some things I'd like to think about if I dabble more this way: Consider details. Consider texture. I can still do it by hand, I think. Consider a human form/model I like. Remember details to make it interesting/fun--they are a little treat.