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rays that shoot out from my eyes – Mercredi Express #10



I developed a super-power during the Miasma and I think you can too. It requires a bit of maintenance, though so far, it’s worth the effort.

My Amazing Origin story: In recent months, I’ve taken remote art classes from first-rate instructors several time zones away. One class was Quick Figure Sketching with Eric Gist at the Watts Academy. We practiced very quick sketches of different poses, from a few seconds to a few minutes, then got expert instruction on how to improve. Quick sketch trains decisive and bold mark making and it gave me hands on experience with how few lines are needed to suggest form. I was QUITE out of my league, incidentally, surrounded by atelier-trained students from all over, and it was still a great experience. The instructor Eric has a patient manner that I found really encouraging. He would take each student’s drawing and, using a digital onionskin, draw over top to show better lines. I found it very helpful to SEE what a better choice did for more expressive gestures and tone. 

Quick sketch isn’t much time, barely enough to get down the tilt of the head, the shape of the torso and the general flow of the limbs. And that is plenty to accomplish, at least at first. Gradually, I became able to sense how each figure balanced its weight and somewhat slower, I was able to suggest that weight distribution. Eric would demo different approaches to various poses and as the class developed, his demos included suggestions for indicating how light wrapped around the figures, turning 2-d shapes into the illusion of 3-d forms. Shadows, in other words and not even blocks of darker tone, just the line where the figure would break into light and dark areas, maybe a suggestion of what kind of edge that transition occurred. And gradually, I also found myself able to make the best marks I could for those structure and gesture indications, and then to start suggesting shadow value. There was just so much to see and draw in such little time.

Seeing value, the relative light and dark, is the super power I acquired, and like a bite from a radioactive charcoal stick, it was unexpected.

I discovered that I had this power — at least fleetingly — one day as was looking at a reference photo. I remember thinking, “Wow this is a REALLY good photo because I can really see all the value differences. I wonder if there’s a Photoshop filter that does this?” I continued scrolling through the site, marveling at all the wonderful value range of these incredible photos… and it was only later that I realized the change — the Photoshop filter so to speak — had been applied to my eyes. I was able to see value and edge, maybe not quite as sexy as seeing through walls but pretty amazing. 

It wears off, I find without diligent practice of a few minutes every day or a good hour or so once a week.

The ancient Greeks theorized about how eyes worked, partially because they were curious about everything in the world and had working theories about all manner of things. Empedocles, I believe, came up with the idea that rays shot out of our eyes, “illuminated” an object so to speak and then traveled back to the viewer. The emission theory of sight was like a visual version of sonar. Spoiler: This is not correct if we assume that these rays are light. Light comes from a source, bounces off objects then travels TO our eyes. Our eyes do not emit beams of light. At least mine don’t.

And still, there is a way that my superpower is a way of “shooting out” a set of ideas, a prejudice of sorts, a pre-seeing. I learned to look for blocks of tone and the subtle shifts between them, the edges. I suspect that my super seeing ability required gaining new words for those edges; hard, firm, soft, lost… And at least so far, my ability requires that I DO something with the observation, that I attempt to record the visions with marks on paper. With much power comes much responsibility, I guess.

Eyes are incredible and seeing can be difficult. There are many very different ways of seeing. We observe and track the kinds of data that is important to us and seeing is one of the most immediate ways we are open to our worlds. It’s not lost on me that as I was acquiring this super-seeing ability that there was a national discussion about “seeing race.” I am still learning that super-power, the one that helps me be a more compassionate and just human. Like learning value and edge, seeing white supremicist culture requires learning new words and it requires actual actions and practice or else it fades away. I’m still working on a sketchbook for that.

WHAT ARE YOU LEARNING TO SEE? And what are you learning to DO with that super power. It’s worth repeating that “With ability comes responsibility” no matter how great or modest is the power. Our practices can also be as modest as a few minutes spent with a stick of charcoal. What kind of a super hero are you preparing to be tomorrow?

In addition to the obligatory link to my ON-LINE ART STORE — I have a request. If you know someone who might get a kick out of these newsletters, who might be a member of the Tribe, PLEASE OH PLEASE forward it to them. And if you have received such a forwarded message, consider joining us with this subscription link: https://lp.constantcontactpages.com/su/jX0Ddba It’s my once-a-week reflection on what it’s like being creative during the past week, designed to help you spot more resources and opportunities you may have overlooked. You in?
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Monkey See… Mercredi Express #2

Planet of the Apes (1968) was my Star Wars (1977), a science-fantasy epic that I watched WAY too young to understand fully but which continues to shape my worldview. I saw it all chopped up with commercials on broadcast TV and that still did not dull the effect of the wonderfully jarring, beautifully alien score by Jerry Goldsmith or that Rod Serling inspired script. At my first viewing, I’d not seen The Twilight Zone, so POTA might have been my first taste of a bizarre narrative twist, that shift in perspective that changes everything. I was hooked.

And I’ve stayed hooked, in one way or another. From my current interests in New Weird fiction and Imaginative Realist painting, back to my graduate work studying Bertolt Brecht and his alienation/estrangement technique (Verfremdunseffekt) to my home decorating aesthetic of Wonderful Oddities, I owe a profound debt to those “damned dirty apes” and the sensation of productive surprise.

Is a synopsis needed? – A human astronaut, Taylor, crashes on a desolate planet. He easily reconciles himself to his fate, never to return to Earth, stating “Somewhere in the Universe, there has to be something better than man. Has to be!” Taylor discovers humans on this planet who live wild and free without the strictures of civilisation or language. He soon finds himself captured by armed, horse-riding gorillas and subjected to scientific experiments by curious, somewhat compassionate chimpanzees. Taylor attempts to gain freedom through appeal to the administrative orangutan class, fails and uses force to escape… alas, only to find a bizarre realization about humanity and destiny in the film’s final moments.

Though POTA is best remembered for the final reveal — do I really have to warn of spoilers after half a century? — delightful turns are sprinkled throughout the movie. Even as a kid, I got the joke when the orangutan politicos adopt the pose of “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.” The scene where the gorilla hunters pose for a photograph with a pile a dead human “game” gives a more chilling punchline. In the image above, I sketched Zira, one of the curious scientific chimpanzees, as she herself experiences a shift of vision. It occurs in the movie just after Zira discovers that Taylor, a mere human animal, can talk. It’s a moment when her whole worldview is challenged, and Zira is presented with an opportunity to see things differently. Zira largely rises to the challenge and confronts the power structure of her simian world in order to gain rights for Taylor. (There HAS to be fan-fiction somewhere telling the whole story from Zira’s point of view — if you know of it, please share.) To twist the adage, “Monkey sees differently, monkey DOES differently.”

To this day, I cherish moments when a narrative turns radically and in a surprising direction; that is, I enjoy them when they appear in art. When such disruptions, such opportunities for radical change appear in life, I fear I react more like Cornelius, Zira’s partner, who as I recall, would rather keep such revelations purely on the level of scientifically detached knowledge. Cornelius, come to find out, has discovered archeological evidence of intelligent humans which he hasn’t widely published for fear of reprisal. Cornelius prefers to see… and not do. In my actual life, I suspect I’m often more like Cornelius, sometimes like Zira, and hardly ever been actually threatened existentially like Taylor.

I painted this sketch of Zira early in the Miasma of 2020. It’s 4” x 5” oil on panel. I was inspired by a challenge from Michell Avery Koncyk (https://www.michelleaveryart.com/  who’s on Instagram as velvetmush) She intended to get through lockdown by painting a picture of an eye every day, and she encouraged other artists to do the same. I painted over a dozen eyes, from Neil Gaiman, Bela Lugosi, Tor Johnson to friend’s selfies and the self portrait I use as a logo. As studies, some worked better than others, and I learned a lot, mostly about what I yet need to learn. I respond well to dares and challenges, so I’m setting myself a “Monkey March” for my personal artwork. Fair warning: there may be more simian smiles in coming newsletters.

Is Productive Surprise what you need for yourself and your work?

When was the last time your own work surprised you? Were you open to changing your perspective and work habits? If your current project turned to you right now and spoke, what might it say? What are other radically different ways to consider what you do, ways that could open it up to be more productive, more just and inclusive, more fun…? How many different ways of seeing could you list in, say, five minutes with a pad and pen? Come up with something great? Share it with the “Email Me” button below

I continue to add items to my ON-LINE ART STORE as pieces sell so check back frequently.