Tag: form

Vision in motion, paint big

This is practice. An exercise. Form and color.

Do you see a character? As in, a letter of the alphabet.

Or do you see a character in human form?

The daylight quickly fades for this January afternoon. I chose a larger brush to apply pigment. At the university, the art professor instructed, “If you can’t paint well, paint big.”

It was not criticism, but rather a modernist declaration. He provided an atmosphere that allowed guidance rather than dogma.

I load the larger brush with the muddy water from the tray and a touch of pigment found between two watercolor cakes. The transparent layer is applied to the dry paint. A technique called glazing.

This is not an art lesson. It is a conjuring up of an image.

Lost in translation

From The Times:

The Prince of Wales has watercolours, it’s true, but it’s hard to imagine him getting to grips with the waka, with its 31 syllables, strictly arranged into five lines in the 5-7-5-7-7 structure. Akihito and Empress Michiko knock out four waka apiece for New Year’s Eve as well, reflecting on the year just gone by, and this year’s offerings were helpfully put out in English by the Imperial Household Agency last week. Translating poetry is notoriously difficult and the waka usually come out sounding as poetic as the instruction manual for a vacuum cleaner. Link.

Maybe if I translate my grocery list into Japanese it will sound poetic.