Category: Art

When I was young, there used to be comic book racks in book stores and even in convenience stores. You’d spin them and they’d whir as they rotated–tempting you to stand there and read them for as long as you wanted.

Comics were fun to read because, in a way, it was kind of like reading a storyboard for a movie. The frames were like the camera angles, and the text were either the dialogue or the narration–depending on how it was used.

Before today’s slick CGI and special effects, comics created that world of CGI and special effects–in our mind, of course. It brought to life a universe where visuals told us much (or more) of the story as the words did.

Comics explored worlds and characters in a way that literature couldn’t. In literature, you had to pour through several pages of words to invest yourself in the story. In comics, the illustration told the action and the story just as soon as you saw it. To hold a comic in your hand, it’s like holding a book of visual art.

Hearing a song can conjure emotions in a way that neither a book nor a painting can. The melodies, the lyrics, when they work harmoniously, can conjure memories and thoughts like a scene from a movie, or a dreamlike experience.

It can also help us to imagine, to intensify our vision of a story we want to tell. It can elevate our visual experience to something that is profound (i.e. soundtracks, film scores). It can heighten a moment’s grandiosity, making it almost larger than life (i.e. a graduation ceremony or a wedding). And it can unite people to common state of mind, a common feeling (i.e. music concerts). Music can be the centerpiece of an event, or it can be a supplement to it.

When we listen to it with headphones and with our eyes closed, we immerse ourselves in a sonic space–a universe of notes, sounds, lyrics, riffs, etc. Music has a power that is immediate, direct, like the touch of water. It has no limit to how it can affect us, yet, it speaks to each of us differently.

When we sculpt something with our hands, it’s as if we’re bringing something to life. When we carve it, mold it with our fingers, or click the pieces together (as with Legos), we give reality to our imagination–making it physical, tangible.

Sculpting can be as simple as binding sticks together, or as complex as building a robot. The fun part about it is that we see it come to life before our eyes, interacting with it during the creative process.

When we mess up, we can take the sculpture apart, or just a piece of it. With clay, we roll it up into a ball, stretch it, pull it apart, then press it together again until it’s the shape we want it to be. With wood, it’s cut and sanded and glued together with other pieces of wood. Regardless of the material, whether it be metal, glass, or plastic, raw material is turned into something creative, coexisting with us and the environment as an entity drawn from our imagination.

A drawing can take a variety of forms. It can be a sketch on paper, canvas, napkin, or in the digital canvas of a computer screen. A drawing can be realistic, abstract, cartoonish, or geometric.

It’s different from writing in that it illustrates our ideas rather than symbolize them with words. A single word has the power to evoke a number of images in our mind, whereas a drawing concretizes thoughts into images. It gives our ideas a particular shape, form, and texture.

Like writing, drawing is a craft that requires hours and hours of practice. The more we practice, the easier it is to illustrate what we want, and to give it the right size, shape, and texture. Likewise, our muscle memory and motor skills become adept to creating an accurate representation of the object we’re drawing. Like anything someone is an expert in, it becomes more polished with time.

But even if we’re not professional illustrators, drawing gives us the ability to put our imagination down onto paper. And whether it’s there in the form of ink, graphite or pixels, we can see, to varying degrees, what the mind sees.

When we see something, we register it as visual information–something that is tangible and real. But when we imagine it, it’s no longer visual information, but a thought that’s perceived either visually or auditory.

When we write, we’re using the mind’s eye to see into worlds that have no tangibility or realness. It’s as if seeing is turned off and imagining is turned on. It’s how we’re able to conceive of the impossible–the extraordinary.

The same holds true for any medium, whether it be painting, sculpture, animation, etc. We use the mind’s eye to observe something that isn’t there, but which we can bring to life through the art that we create.

It’s curious to look at the works of artists in the past, such as painters and sculptors. We can see how much their work has evolved since their youth. Once they’ve reached their peak, we can see how polished their work is, and we understand that their success wasn’t something that happened overnight, but a long struggle of successes and failures.

At some point in their life, the volume of their work declines, and it seems as if something interrupted their productivity. It could be illness, or maybe it was the circumstances of the time. Perhaps the art world ignored them, and turned their attention to the next big thing at the time.

When we look at writers, some have written an extensive body of work, such as Isaac Asimov, while others only released a handful of books, such as Harper Lee. Sometimes it just takes one book for an author to become a huge success, while for others, it takes several books before they finally get published or reach wide acclaim.

Regardless of the size of our portfolio, what’s important is that the work itself is of great importance to us. If we feel that there is more to say in our body of work, then we should continue in our work. If not, we should find something else that is fulfilling to us.

One of the most exciting things about going to an art museum is seeing face to face a work of art that you had only previously seen in a book or on an electronic screen. The scale and texture of the work itself doesn’t even compare to the photograph, especially with how much more vivid it is before your eyes.

Art museums display an array of works from sculpture to painting to photography across different eras. It’s neat to see the transition (and contrast) from classical to modern works, especially in terms of style and subject matter.

The works of the classical era focused on religion and Greek and Roman mythology, whereas works of the 19th century focused on nature or on every day scenes.

As you move from room to room in the museum, it’s overwhelming how much visual stimuli there is to take in. It’s as if you would need multiple visits to really appreciate the scale, scope, and depth of all the works.

Each painting is like a book–a world unto its own. Unlike a book, however, you don’t need to spend hours gazing upon it to see the whole picture, but a gaze doesn’t ever feel long enough to sufficiently internalize and comprehend the nuances of the work.

Because of the rapidity of information we’re bombarded with on the news and social media day after day, we’re not in the habit of really looking at and analyzing a creative work–especially the kind that was produced hundreds of years ago.

Even when you read the caption beside the painting, it only gives you a glimpse as to the history and subject matter of the work. But the work itself seems transitory because of how much there is to absorb and take in during a visit to the museum.

Perhaps that’s part of the beauty of a work of art: that we can’t really grasp it upon a cursory glance or a momentary gaze. After a visit to an art museum, I’m inspired to go home and draw and create. Even though I may not remember every piece I saw, the experience itself inspired a creative spark in me.

One of the joys of going through a photographer’s work is seeing how unique their vision was. It’s not just about a “great photo,” but the way they cropped the image, the way they used contrast and lighting, and the way they blurred the image or made it crisp and sharp.

A photographer like Ansel Adams, for example, captured crystal clear scenes of nature at places such as Yosemite Park. The photographs he took drew your eye across all corners of the image. Even though the photographs are a snapshot in time, they appear timeless.

There are all types of photography including color, black and white, and the subjects can range from nature, landscape, portrait, to every day scenes in the city. I like black and white photography the most, since it gives a more abstract quality to the image.

Because nature is full of color, black and white photography captures its essence: the forms and patterns, as well as the negative and positive space. It’s like seeing a hidden world–a hidden landscape. It reduces the image down to its essentials–to shape and form.

Taking photographs is fun when you’re sightseeing or hiking through the woods. It’s an exhilarating feeling when you’re searching for interesting visuals in things such as insects, plants, or the way a lake or river reflects the sunlight.

Unlike drawing or painting, where the image has to be created with each line or brushstroke, photography is more about capturing something you uniquely see–of perceiving things not as they are, but what underlies them.

In art class, it is common to draw a still life that’s set before the class. Some teachers might have you draw them in graphite, pastels or charcoal.

The idea behind drawing the still life is to practice and get better at recreating, in detail, what you see. As well as getting the proportions right, you have get the shading and tonality and texture right as well.

Many years ago, I was drawing a still life of an apple with pastels. The professor was observing the students’ work, and he came up to me and suggested not to use only red for the apple, but to use blue, orange, green, etc. He explained that although the apple appears to be one color (red), but it’s actually made up of a multitude of colors that are imperceptible to the eye.

It’s similar to the painting by Georges Seurat entitled A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte. Georges used a style of painting called pointillism in which he applied individual dots on the canvas until he had completed the picture. Each dot was just a color, but the total sum of those dots created a scene with distinct people and objects.

Without even mentioning Georges Seurat, my art professor taught me this very concept by a simple suggestion. Afterward, I began to color the apple with different colored pastels: orange, blue, purple, etc. After I finished, I was surprised with how vivid and colorful the apple turned out.

It has been many years since that teaching moment, but it has stuck with me till this day. I learned how important it was to try new things and to experiment in whatever craft you practice–and to see the complexity in something as simple as an apple.