“Tell me thy company, and I’ll tell thee what thou art.” ~ Don Quixote
The artistic tradition of Don Quixote is very rich. The above is an engraving of Don Quixote done by Gustave Dore. With disorderly, but grand notions of chivalry picked from books, you might go mad too. Probably not in a bad way.
You might know about Johnny Depp in Terry Gillian’s ill-fated production,
The Man Who Killed Don Quixote…..
In Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha, Siddartha comes to realize there is no such thing as time. Upon the realization it is said, “Nothing was, nothing will be, everything has reality and presence.”
Today, we have a little something different in the form of an experiment not only in pencil, but in time as well. With the help of my friend Richard Gluck and his awesome Canon 5-D, I was able to document the process of today’s sketch. I asked Richard if he could time-lapse my sketching. I knew he could, but he suggested that we animate the sketch instead, taking shots of the drawing little by little. The effect was to remove my hand and pencil so it wouldn’t cover up the drawing. It could use a little more contrast, but this is my first attempt and it would have been a little longer too if my drawing hand had not knocked the camera out of place. It’s a Buddha Journey.
There is truth and wisdom to Siddartha’s concept of time, but today it does occur to me that if there is no time, there is no sketch-lapse. Reality though… Maybe?… Presence, surely. I hope it gives you something to wrap your mind around.
“The mysteries of creation are there.”
“Up in the sky?” “Up in the sky…..”
“Above the crowds, above the clouds where the sounds are original
Infinite skills create miracles
Warrior spiritual — above the clouds
reigning/raining down, holdin it down”
~ Guru (Above The Clouds: Moment of Truth)
Happy Passover everybody or Happy Pesach and I hope everybody has a Good Friday and good Easter this weekend.
Well….This little sketch is actually a smaller part of a larger sketch that I have been working on. Hopefully the rest turns out ok. I thought this part looked cool so I scanned it in to show you. I picture this guy much like the character Dr. Parnassus in Dr. Parnassus’s Imaginarium (Go see it!). This guru, floating on this little mysterious piece of earth sits quietly contemplating the meaning of the universe. Hope you like it.
Anyways I’ve been hoping to start a discussion in my last post. So if missed it or you want to check it out and join in……..Click Here
Also if you haven’t heard a little bit of news, Guru the legendary rapper of Gang Starr suffered a heart attack and fell into a comma a few weeks ago. Apparently, he is now in a stable condition. He is being pretty quiet about what happened. He is quoted as saying, “That’s something I don’t want to talk about. I don’t want to talk about the past. The past is the past,” Guru said, according to the press release. “It is what it is. It was great, but that was then and this is now.” A statement and a piece of advice….Very guru of him.
“Unity can only be manifested by the Binary. Unity itself and the idea of Unity are already two.” ~ Buddha
This painting was based on experiences in my own personal meditations. In my meditations, I began to get the feeling that my third eye was awakening. As I meditated deeper, I began to get the sensation that my whole head was opening up. I would feel intense energy flowing around me that seemed to be coming through or perhaps out of my head.
Buddha is obviously very spiritual and is iconic of a meditative figure. The dragon-like character is representative of a universal force of nature.
There are many representations of the Buddha figure, but I have always been partial to the fat one. When I was kid, I used to go to the Big Island of Hawaii about once year. I have this distinct memory of a big fat Buddha carved in sandstone at the top of a stone staircase. It was tradition to leave offerings to the revered statue and as kid doing so was one of the highlights of my trip. Looking back, it was even one of the highlights of my childhood as a whole.
Sometimes images get seared into your mind. As an artist, these images are bound to crawl out sometime and I guess my meditation opened my mind to this revelation.
To be honest, this is not one of my favorite paintings, but I love the idea. I had to get it out of my head and on to canvas. I’ll probably return to this idea at some later date and of course you guys will be one of the first to know when I do.
I am illustrator in the entertainment arts focused on visual development, character design, layouts, concept art, and anything in the realm of visual storytelling. Around these parts though, I'm letting it loose Simian Style and devolving into a higher state of consciousness on the boundary of an infinite-dimensional manifold in quasi-time. There's plenty of room down this rabbit hole! Learn more About Me and check out the Portfolio.
