Yes, same image, one more time. If I could have chosen my profession, I might have chosen to be a Medical Illustrator. The above image is not signed; and isn’t entirely original. I have ‘adopted’ and altered portions from unsigned illustrations found on Google. Much of it is my own.
Blind Spots. The importance is somewhere other than the idea in front of us. Our brain ‘hides’ the blind spots in our vision; our brain also hides the blind spots in our thinking.
My goal in life, in all the different ways that I interact with chronos-life is to help people catch a glimpse of Kairos-life; and possibly encourage people to see ‘with new eyes’. We live two lives—the one you and I are reading this in; and the world of Eternity. The Creator lives in Eternity, without the hindrance of Time. The English language is deficient, in that there is only one word for ‘time’—in Greek, there are two words for time—chronos—clock time; and Kairos—Eternal time. ‘Eternal’ does not mean, ‘a really long time.’ Eternal means existence outside of Time. In the time-controlled-to-an-incredible-degree 21st Century, the concept of ‘life outside of time’ falls into the realm of science fiction. I wrote more on this subject in my previous post. I believe we were created to live Eternally; just not all in this place.
I am a man of Faith; I also believe in science. Headlines and social media rhetoric to the contrary, these two aspects of life are not contradictory. I believe that the Laws of Physics, Time, and Space didn’t just ‘happen’. The Laws of the Universe are Laws, not because Science says they are Laws—ideas proven by repetition; they are Laws because they are products of the Creator of the entire Universe. It is merely lack of imagination that attributes these Laws to ‘Nature’ instead of attribution to a Creator. Quantum Physics was understood by the ancient Hebrew scholars, who also recognized the scientific contributions of the Greek philosophers. They used a different vocabulary, but the information is there. The Bible was never intended to be a physics text. The Bible is the story of the Hebrew people, who provided the foundation for the Creator’s entrance into Time and Space in the form of a single cell, planted into the womb of a teenager. Human history is centered on that single cell. Most of human history has been oblivious to that single cell; ‘oblivious’ does not mean, ‘mistaken’. It usually means, ‘too busy’.
I learned, a long time ago, that my brain works along pathways that many others don’t. Not ‘better’—simply different. I fail to understand the ideas most people have, and the things most people do. This notion is possibly best stated in the concept of ‘clubbing’. I don’t know why people dance, I don’t know why people get drunk. I’m not offended by either idea; I am simply incompetent in these activities, and they don’t make any sense for me. This morning in church I realized that while I can recognize harmony, I have no idea how it is created vocally. “Competence” is what drives me; “incompetence” is among my FEARs. False Evidence Appearing Real.
I don’t try to ‘convert’ people to my way of thinking; to try to ‘convert’ someone implies that I know more about someone else’s life than they do. Another example of my incompetence. HPtFtU. The Human Propensity to F*ck things Up [the asterisk is for those who may be reading these words; I don’t particularly care]. The word has a strange history. The World has a strange history. I’ve been intentionally interacting with an old guy, nearly every week for almost four years; in some ways, I probably know things about this guy that his children aren’t aware of. However, he’s in his 80s; what I know is a small sampling. While I can see patterns from his past, he can’t see them. His relationship with his family is contentious. And there are nearly 80 years of his life that I haven’t seen first-hand. All I hear is his side of the stories.
We live in a society that categorizes life to an incredible degree. If we can categorize someone, we don’t need to think about them anymore. This is probably why people don’t listen; truly listening to someone—not waiting for your turn to talk—is one of the most powerful therapeutic tools that we all have at our disposal. If we made the effort to listen, we might solve some of the issues that face us. ‘We don’t have time’ to listen. ‘We don’t have time’ to save the planet…
We also live in a time of moral crisis. Politicians have always lied. Some portion of the lying has been to protect sensitive information—we don’t need to know information regarding international negotiations at the time the negotiations are taking place.
Now we have Government Leaders who simply lie; when they get caught in a lie, they cover it up with a bigger lie. Our current President doesn’t even hide is ‘misdeeds’—he does them in public all the time. He seems to believe that he is the CEO of Trump America, rather than President of the United States of America; a country bound by the Constitution of the United States. In the days before declaring a National Emergency that does not exist on Friday, February 15th, he tried to coerce the Tennessee Valley Authority into funneling money to one of his large contributors…
https://www.timesfreepress.com/news/opinion/times/
Rachel Maddow asks a very important question:
“Yes, this is the story of just another destructive tributary of Presidential corruption that is flowing though U.S. government policy out of this White House. But it is also another element in this age of — sort of — moral bewilderment we’re now in as citizens. There’s no way to embarrass somebody [the President] if they’re happy to be seen in public selling the government for cash. And if you can’t embarrass or shame anybody about it and increasingly, you can’t shock anybody about, then what do you do with it? How do you stop specific government actions like this, if there is no shame from public officials doing it; but also, how do we once again become a country where that kind of thing would at least be a scandal?… If it doesn’t matter anymore, if we’re not surprised and nobody is embarrassed, how do we not just become that?”
Can we once again become a country whose leaders understand honor? If our leaders do not act honorably toward the citizens of the country, how can we expect the citizens themselves to act honorably toward each other?
Enough of that.
Humor: Still Life, with Sea Urchins
A correction to:
- Illustration Tip #4:
“As an editorial note regarding Windows:” this should have said “Word”.
- Illustration Tip #5:
Provenance. Copyright. Publication. Pixilation.
Digital “Provenance”—the art world is always concerned about the ‘provenance’ of artistic works—who made it, who did it get sold to, how often did it get sold before it landed here; is there any external proof—sketches, etc. to establish a link between artist and seller?
I now create digital images as opposed to painted images; I publish these images on the Internet; I ALWAYS ASSUME that my internet-published work will be ‘adopted’ by someone. Even when I sign the work. I have a Physical Therapist who seems to have been born with an incredibly high set of ethics—she says she is incapable of lying, and I believe her—I was not born with that gift. I’ve ‘always’ [not, ‘since birth’] believed Ethics are Situational.
Upon entering into Church Culture when I did, I could never understand the furor over “Situational Ethics” that was stirring in the 70s. However, I’ve never believed that the Creator has ink stains or granite dust on His Hands, from having created Tablets of Stone or original documents. The first use of graphite for drawing appears to be somewhere in the 1500’s A.D.; an entertaining description of a forerunner of the brush can be found here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pencil#Camel’s_hair_pencil
My suggestion is that if you are REALLY concerned about the ownership of your work, and the notion that you deserve to get paid for every hour you work, DO NOT publish your work in a reproducible fashion on the Internet. I know illustrators who invest a lot of energy into the subject of Copyright. I’m not one of those guys.
ALWAYS use a resolution of 72dpi [dots per inch] for images published on the Internet. 72dpi images will pixilate when printed. If you do not know how to reduce the size of your images, it would an excellent thing for you to learn. Images that are published on the Internet will get copied by someone, at some time. It’s unavoidable. I’m a prime example. I download images from the Internet all they time; I use these downloaded images instead of hiring models. Hiring models requires the paying of models, which requires more money than I’ve been able to earn in my 20 years of work as a commercial artist. I earn enough to pay bills. I download high-resolution images, digitally cut them into pieces, and create a new ‘photo’ of something that does not exist. From that ‘photo’ I create new illustrations.
For what it’s worth, Norman Rockwell used a similar technique, using an opaque projector to project an image onto a canvas; which he then traced. Rockwell, however, hired models and a photographer. It’s possible that Johannes Vermeer used a similar technique with a camera obscura; many of Vermeer’s paintings have a photographic quality to them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim%27s_Vermeer
I only aspire to be in the same category as Rockwell and Vermeer. It will never happen. There was a time, when I could still paint, that I thought some sort of miracle might happen. I’ve resigned myself to simply being a commercial artist who specializes in digital images.
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Tags: depression, faith, freelance illustration, heroes, material poverty, mental-health, Nerve Pain, Neuropathy, pain, persistence, personal excellence, Polyneuropathy, self-employment, surviving
Chronicles in Ordinary Time 