Lessons from Art Class

12 March, 2014

As part of a 30 Day Challenge, I have been drawing something everyday. Well, almost everyday. Visual art is not my bailiwick, but I am literally surrounded by others that are inordinately talented, which makes me want to be good at it too. Both Susan and Katherine have incredible abilities, and my mother and sister are also plunging ever deeper into watercolor and metalworking, respectively. A few things about this challenge have grabbed my attention.

Perspective is hard to master

One of my favorite doodles as a kid was drawing a cube. That and stars would fill the margins of whatever textbook I was supposed to be reading, while the teacher droned incessantly. The problem was that I never got it right. The angles wouldn't match up, so I always had a whop-sided cube. It was and is maddening. Lately I have been drawing the buildings and streets just outside my window. Like that episode where I tried to eat a spoonful of cinnamon, it seemed like a good idea at the time. Upon further review, I think choking on cinnamon dust is preferable to drawing in three dimensions.

It is difficult to gain a proper perspective on things, in art and in real life. Angles that look square aren't. Lines that appear to converge don't. Plans that seem so crystal clear get muddied by the reality of what you couldn't see from your distant, uninformed point of view. My daddy, who has a unique perspective on just about everything, said, "Boy, better the devil you know, than the devil you don't know." That leaves a lot of paths to explore. Is the safe, known, life the right option, or do other paths afford greater glory, peace or prosperity? How do you define those things, anyway? That's where perspective jumps up and bites you in the butt.

Perspective, once we understand how to use it, allows us to see farther down the road without allowing the view to become distorted by time or distance or what seems like a huge obstacle, simply because it is close to us. We can't always know what lies ahead, but we also can't let fear of the unknown stop us from pushing forward. Even looking back gets distorted over time, so all we can really do is live in the present. "Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on (today) toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus." (Philippians 3:13-14, italics mine)

Nothing is as easy as it seems

When we were visiting Czech Republic last summer, we encountered a caricature artist on some famous bridge. We lingered behind the artist, and in a moment of crystalline wisdom, I told Katherine to watch how he made the faces. They all had a similar style. He was both a technician and an artist. Then I tried to draw something. Epic fail on a worldwide scale.

Katherine has been my art mentor over these last couple of weeks. She made me watch step by step videos by Shoo Raynor, one of her favorite artists. Then one day, she taught me how to draw an eye. I was mystified as it emerged from the paper, line by line, shade by shade, stroke by stroke. She literally showed me how to build an eye. As is the case with most naturally talented people, Katherine does not realize how complicated and difficult her artwork is to create. She just does it. Easy, right?

Katherine made this for her art class in about 15 minutes.

Katherine coached me on how to make an eye.

This is a Shoo Raynor mushroom

Most things are not easy at first. Crawling precedes walking, which precedes running, but running is definitely worth the effort, even with the inevitable, occasional fall. Vale la pena, it is worth the pain.

Life is mostly drudgery

Artists live a blissful, hedonistic, happy life. All they have to do is slap some paint on a canvas and sell it for a few million bucks to some nouveau riche tech billionaire. Not. None of my artwork is going to make it to an exhibition. Of that I am certain. What I have realized is that the process of drawing something, even the simple little doodles that I make is more perspiration than inspiration. When we visited the Louvre and Musee d'Orsay in Paris a few months ago, I was able to get close enough to the paintings to see the actual brush strokes. That's when I realized how much work went into a painting, especially Monet's Water Lilies, which encompass more than 1000 square feet of wall space in its own museum. True art is seeing beauty in the everyday and somehow communicating that in a way that a simple redneck from South Carolina can understand it, while at the same time captivating an art critic or fellow artist.

It really just comes down to hard work, which is boring and well, hard. Learning how to work, though, forges in us an ability and a belief that we can accomplish anything, and completing a difficult task is exciting, fulfilling and worth it.

My thirty day challenge has turned out to be a life challenge. I have drawn more conclusions than cubes, but isn't that point of art?

To make us think?

To challenge our assumptions?

To change us?

Excuse me, but I have another class about to start.

Duality

31 December, 13

I have mentioned before that most people see me in one of two ways:

1. Very serious-minded.
2. Very jolly.

The truth is I am both, which makes for some interesting conversations in my head. Serious and funny often comes out as biting sarcasm. Seriously funny emerges as self-deprecating humor. I love to deprecate all over myself, particularly when masticating.

Moving to an entirely new culture has unleashed parts of me that were more or less safely held in check back in the States.

In America, I was the upstanding citizen: community volunteer, church elder. I was also mischievous and a little deviant, but that was usually under cover of darkness, with a select group of friends. The trick was to keep circles of relationships separate and distinct, to prevent one group from talking to the other. Every once in a while, those groups would intersect, which created some great Lucy Ricardo moments.

In Spain, I have no identity. I could import one of the old Dan’s or choose to forge a new one. In some ways I have reverted to my college days. I think this is due, in large part, to the fact that I have no major responsibilities. Basically, I just have to show up for “class”, which means trips to the market to buy groceries.

After a few months, I think I am ready to be Upstanding Citizen Dan or Entrepreneur Dan.  Opportunities abound for both, but the Entrepreneur costume seems to fit a little better right now.

So far, I have identified several needs in Spain. The BIG ONE is English translation for businesses. You can fall over and hit a poorly written web page. They look like Google Translate, with a mix of jibberish thrown in for good measure. My idea is to charge a flat fee per page. This is a job that I can do from anywhere. The next iteration would be to translate English pages to Spanish, but I will need to hone my Spanish quite a bit, before I can pull that one off.

Teaching English as a second language is another avenue. Right now, Susan and I volunteer teach a class of about 12 people. We are also about to enroll in formal Spanish classes, so we should be getting a good idea of how to do it. I think Business English would be fun, focusing on how to market goods and services to English speakers.

If I can get a Worker’s Visa, we will qualify for the Spanish health care system, which is excellent and free. 

So many directions lie before me. I am like a mosquito in a nudist colony. I know what to do; I just don't know where to begin.

Pepi the Butcher

24 September, 13

Part of my daily or every other daily routine is a trip to the carniceria, the butcher shop. It is one of my favorite places to go. If you ever shot a deer, you had to clean it. I will save you all the macabre details, but suffice it to say that I was fascinated with the whole process. I still am. I think I was meant to be either a serial killer, surgeon or undertaker. Probably the latter to avoid incarceration and lawsuits, as I tend to lose focus too quickly to be successful at the other two, and I am also a pretty good salesman, which helps with undertaking.

So my fascination with meat is being fed quite well by Pepi and her butcher brethren. You can walk in and see all sorts of animals hanging around, waiting to be chopped, dropped and plopped on a platter. Pepi literally lights up the room with her smile and good nature. She loves what she does, which is so hard to find anywhere. Her staff shares her enthusiasm. It is obvious with every stroke of the cleaver, every slice of the knife. I have seen that look of satisfaction on a few faces in my life. Pearl Fryar in Bishopville, SC is one of them. He creates topiary landscapes just because he loves it. My mama in a classroom full of students . Grandaddy driving a 16 penny nail into a 2x4.

I told Pepi the other day how much I loved coming into her shop, instead of a place like Wal-Mart, and I began to riff on how much I love everything here, even the local beer, Estrella de Levante, which you can only find in Murcia. She walked into the cooler and opened a beer for me on the spot. Juan, her husband who runs the cash register, would not let me pay for it.

Pepi's attitude about work begs the question, why are so many of us doing things that we hate? Are we living to work or working to live? Is all that stuff that we have accumulated worth all that painful, thankless toil in a job that does not bring us joy?

Paychecks or Passion?

The Value of Work

24 September, 13

Growing up in South Carolina, I naturally went deer hunting. Usually my daddy would say something like, "Hey, boy! You wanna go huntin' tomorrow?" To which I would eagerly reply, "Does a squirrel have nuts?" The double entendre still makes me laugh.

Hunting is more than just shooting Bambi, although I have absolutely no problem with that. I am a Redneck after all. Hunters are the original "Slow Food Movement" crowd. Hunting is a series of events that all weave together to make a beautiful camo-patterned tapestry. Early in the morning, about 4:30 AM, my daddy would wake me up. I would launch out of bed and throw on my camouflage everything and jump in the truck. First Breakfast was Sweet Sixteen donuts and black coffee right out of the thermos, man style. That means it was hot and strong enough to melt the enamel right off your teeth. I didn't necessarily like coffee, but my daddy did, so I did too. I am so thankful he didn't like hot tea or lattes. We would climb up into a deer stand at Kirk Dunlap's farm and wait for daylight and that elusive buck. Sometimes we got him. Sometimes he got us. Then we would have Second Breakfast, the big one with grits and eggs and bacon and toast and red-eye gravy. All the hunters would talk about what they saw or didn't see. Inevitably somebody would tell a story about the "Big One" from last year. It was always a great morning.

Until the work started.

You see, my daddy was a cunning little devil. Still is, actually. He knew he could get me out the door by dangling the hunting carrot in front of my nose. Once I was in the truck, I inevitably smelled the gasoline can that went with the big box of chainsaws, axes and other tools of manly destruction. Hunting season meant woodpile season. They say you can get warm three ways by using a fireplace. Cutting the wood. Stacking the wood. Burning the wood. It was hot, dirty, hard work.

I actually tried to get out of it one time by sleeping in my closet, hoping my daddy wouldn't find me. He did. That day I was sleepy AND tired. At the end of the day, though, I always loved seeing a truck bed full of wood. I knew we had accomplished something. To this day, I am very goal-oriented. I will quit before I start, unless I have some higher goal in mind. I already shared how much quit I have in me.

My oldest daughter, Elizabeth, is a little bit of a diva, bless her heart. Alright, she's ALL DEE-VAH. Work is not in her vocabulary. We are praying for a very rich man to fall madly in love with her. Right now she is having to work twice as hard as all the other students at her school, because her classes are in Spanish. She has to translate the pages, then study them. It will be work. Hard work. I hope Elizabeth will stick it out long enough to see the truck bed full of wood. With a little luck, we can stoke a fire in her to fall in love with learning. That will keep her warm long after we are gone. Maybe I should take her hunting...