Speedy's Cafe - General Chat about anything you like!

[sittything]

I have 3 bags of donate so far and I'm still going... and that's just clothes...    I also have a solid bag of trash going of stuff I'm sure even Goodwill doesn't want.

[Arcadia]

To the trash with it! And no regrets! Celebrate with a cookie.

[T.o.b.y]

It's kind of depressing how much junk one can accumulate, isn't it? And clothes! Heavens, why do I have so many clothes? It's disgusting when I come to think of it. Only a little more than half a century ago, my grandmother and her sister had to wear the same wedding dress because they couldn't afford one each, and now here's me with four coats, nine pairs of pants and more t-shirts than I can say off the top of my head, lugging trash bags full of unwanted surplus to charity bins. And whenever I go downtown, there are ads and shop windows screaming more, more, more at me from every direction.

 

I should go back to what I did as a very little girl, take out my colored pencils and draw stuff I'd like instead of going out and buying it. I wonder whether I still can draw. Probably not.

[Arcadia]

Sure you can! EVERYONE can draw as long as you can find some way to hold (and move) a drawing tool. The hard part is remembering that the drawing doesn't have to look realistic to be good. For example, this is a really good drawing.....

 

Personnage by Pablo Picasso

[Carol the Dabbler]

You buy a new one! (so the experts say. I don't recall it ever being an issue, frankly.)

 

Oh, well -- if you're made of money .... 

[Bendydoodle Cantaloupe]

Sure you can! EVERYONE can draw as long as you can find some way to hold (and move) a drawing tool. The hard part is remembering that the drawing doesn't have to look realistic to be good. For example, this is a really good drawing.....

 

Personnage by Pablo Picasso

 

 

If that's a good drawing, then this

 

 

 

is a MASTERPIECE!

[T.o.b.y]

Oh dear, I had thirteen years of art classes at school (German school goes from grade 1 to 13 if you want to be able to attend university later, or at least it used to. Now most states have shortened it to 12 years), but I still have no idea what makes a painting, or any work of art really, "good". I know what I like, but not even I am arrogant enough to assume that's the same thing.

 

I love and adore people who can explain art to me. Like my cousin (bless her), who works at a museum. They had a Picasso exhibit once, and she took me through it so patiently and was so clever and funny and interesting about it, that now I at least don't go "ew" any more when I see a Picasso piece, and I (think I) understand why he is considered a great artist.

 

If anybody wanted to seduce me, they should take me to an art show featuring modern stuff of the "beauty is bad" kind, and then be really, really brilliant about it all and really, really make me think. Add a deep voice and a British accent and you've got my dream date...

 

Of my own accord, I'll only look at things like this:

 

 

I love her. She's just a maid pouring milk, it's all incredibly mundane, yet the artist used lapis lazuli for the blue in her skirt and made the whole thing look like some holy rite with the lighting and all. I wish I could create beautiful things... But I'm left staring at them.

[Arcadia]

That's kinda my point ... I think a lot of people put too much pressure on themselves to produce something like the above, and when they fall short, think that means they can't draw. Of course they can draw! The problem is our expectations, not our abilities.

 

Now, if you're saying you can't draw human figures as realistically as Vermeer (or whoever that is above) -- that may be true, not many people can! (I know I sure can't....)

 

Bendy, that's actually not bad, nice use of repetitive forms and the colors are well balanced! That dangling line in the upper left corner is driving me crazy though .... can't decide if it's a mark of apathy or a mark of brilliance....

[SherlockedCAMPer]

I think the dangling line is brilliance as it draws out a discussion on why it's there.

[Bendydoodle Cantaloupe]

That's kinda my point ... I think a lot of people put too much pressure on themselves to produce something like the above, and when they fall short, think that means they can't draw. Of course they can draw! The problem is our expectations, not our abilities.

 

Now, if you're saying you can't draw human figures as realistically as Vermeer (or whoever that is above) -- that may be true, not many people can! (I know I sure can't....)

There's like a formula for body proportions -- although I'm too lazy to dig around for it right now. I just eyeball it, which works out sometimes and other times looks really wonky.

 

Bendy, that's actually not bad, nice use of repetitive forms and the colors are well balanced! That dangling line in the upper left corner is driving me crazy though .... can't decide if it's a mark of apathy or a mark of brilliance....

[english lit teacher voice] Yes.

[T.o.b.y]

That's kinda my point ... I think a lot of people put too much pressure on themselves to produce something like the above, and when they fall short, think that means they can't draw. Of course they can draw! The problem is our expectations, not our abilities.

 

You know, I'd be very happy to settle for just producing something I actually like to look at. And the problem there, as my former art teacher would say, is not talent but work. It takes hard work and a lot of practice for me to produce something worth keeping, and my regular job just takes too much out of me to do that.

 

Sure I can draw. I can drag a pencil across a piece of paper and make a pattern. I can even make that pattern resemble a human figure or an animal or an object. I cannot, however, then kid myself into thinking that this puts me on a level with Picasso. He was well able to render a realistic portrait, he just chose not to for artistic reasons. I have no such choice. And I'd hang neither a Picasso piece nor my own doodles on my wall.

 

I envy people for whom artwork or writing or crafts or anything creative is fun. There are some who have this urge to create, and the process satisfies them, and they get cranky when they can't do it. For me, it's a chore, and the result never justifies the effort.

 

*Sigh*... well, someone has to be the audience. And I do pride myself on my abilities in that area. I'm great at appreciating stuff. Of criticizing it. Or both.

 

[SherlockedCAMPer]

I'm definitely in the category were creating is fun. It is still work, but I live & breathe the arts. It's what gets me thinking, appreciating life, and wanting to do something.

[Arcadia]

There's like a formula for body proportions -- although I'm too lazy to dig around for it right now. I just eyeball it, which works out sometimes and other times looks really wonky.

Generally, for adults, between 7 and 8 heads high, depending on how twiggy you want your figure to be. Roughly 3 heads wide. Waist is 3 heads down, elbows land at the waist, hands hit mid thigh. Ummm.... that's all I can remember right now.  That's not a real person's proportions, btw, most of us have shorter legs than that, but we look better if drawn with longer ones....

 

[Bendydoodle Cantaloupe]

But that's for a realistic style. For a more cartoony approach, I'd say you just eyeball it, since cartoons don't have to be accurate.

[Arcadia]

Very true. Although some cartoon characters are realistically proportioned, and no, I can't think of one at the moment!

 

Oh, I know..... the characters from Zits! Sort of. Mostly. Whatever.

[SherlockedCAMPer]

Sally Forth is fairly realistic for proportions & Mark Trail.

[Carol the Dabbler]

Right, and all the old "soap opera" and action-adventure strips, like Mary Worth and Steve Canyon.

 

Then there are the obviously unrealistic characters, like Popeye with his huge forearms.

[Bendydoodle Cantaloupe]

And Calvin and Hobbes, too.

[Arcadia]

I miss Calvin and Hobbes.

[Carol the Dabbler]

Right, and all the old "soap opera" and action-adventure strips, like Mary Worth and Steve Canyon.

 

Then there are the obviously unrealistic characters, like Popeye with his huge forearms.

 

And Calvin and Hobbes, too.

 

I'm sitting here trying to picture Calvin, and assuming that you're including him in the "unrealistic" category.  That cartoon made such good use of showing how things looked and felt to him, that the word "realistic" took on a different meaning.  I loved how they'd show Hobbes every now and then as just this limp little stuffed toy tiger -- but most of the time the way Calvin saw him in their mental adventures.

 

[T.o.b.y]

I miss Calvin and Hobbes.

 

I don't, because I have access to a Complete Collection and there are online websites that show daily funnies like a newspaper, including strips that have been discontinued, so I still get my daily dose as well.

 

I adore Calvin and Hobbes. Best comic strip ever, if you ask me. And I for my part am glad that Watterson stopped drawing them before he ran out of good ideas, and he made an absolutely perfect last strip, too. I hate to see something I love go bad, so this was about the best gift anybody could have made me.

 

[Arcadia]

Let me clarify: I miss seeing new installments of Calvin & Hobbes! I've about read my compilations ragged, but yeah, I admire Watterson's decision to quit while he was still ahead.

I still have it as an ambition of mine to build one of Calvin's demented snowmen someday.....

[T.o.b.y]

I just read the most interesting article about lying. According to the forensic psychologist the author interviewed, body language and facial expressions are no help whatsoever in detecting when someone is not telling the truth. On the contrary, he mentions an experiment where a woman tells a true story with a few lies strewn in, and one group of people was shown a video of that, the other only got played the audio recording. The second group had much better success with figuring out what was true and what wasn't, presumably because they focused on the inherent logic of the narrative instead of unreliable signs of nervousness etc.

[SherlockedCAMPer]

Watching the King's Speech on Sundance.  One of my favorite set of lines:  Lionel: They're idiots. King George VI: They've all been knighted. Lionel: Makes it official, then.

[Arcadia]

Hmmmm, I need to watch that movie again, I loved it. Let's see, what can I bump out of my Netflix queue.....