Tag: dandelion

Saturday Forecast: 55° F / Breezy

Live & Learn17 Comments

The New Yorker Cover: “Blown Away,” by Tomer Hanuka.

“The cover for this year’s Spring Style Issue is the fourth by Tomer Hanuka, an Israeli artist known for his striking use of color.

Q: We like the gestural quality of the woman’s pose. How does body language factor into making an image like this?

“I start with a gesture, just a line, and build a story around it. There are so many rules about drawing anatomy, and sometimes you need to break all of them to make a pose work. An image like this begins with a realistic sketch of a body, but in the end I want the physicality to disappear. I want the reader to be left only with an idea or a feeling.”

Like the white puff

Live & Learn26 Comments

dandelion

I contacted a well-known artist to discuss the possibility of drawing lessons. As a child, I used to draw all the time. It absorbed me completely. At some point, writing replaced drawing and what had once been second nature (drawing) became foreign. But the urge to draw had remained. I missed its simple and primordial pleasures…

When she asked me why I wanted her to teach me drawing, I replied, “Sometimes you just want to sit back and be led.”…The artist peered at me thoughtfully for a moment. Her blue eyes were clear and perfectly lined with kohl. Finally she spoke, with the hint of bemusement. She said the students who came to her were always full of hunger. They were seventeen-year old aspiring artists and eighty-five-year-old retired businessmen. People of mourned, mislaid, or unmined creativity. Their yearning was like the white puff of a dandelion. All she had to was blow gently and watch their creative spores lift, scatter, and take seed.

~ Kyo Maclear, Birds Art Life: A Year of Observation 

Notes:

Monday Morning Wake-Up Call: Rise!

Live & Learn8 Comments

gif-bloom-jpg

Source: Slow Motion Dandelion bloom by octomoosyey (via Newthom)

Riding MetroNorth. With a moment.

Live & Learn26 Comments

woman-painting
The moment, this moment has been orbiting. Gently closing in, then dimming, and working itself softly back into consciousness.

Millions of thoughts slide in and out – – moments of significance, yet these seeds on the blooming dandelion blow away. This ordinary moment hangs on. Why?

She met me in the hallway in front of the elevators. We were both finishing our day. She looked fresher, wearing a blue skirt and jacket, standing with a colleague – offering up a “Hey, Dad.”

It’s early evening in Midtown. The humidity, stifling. Crowds are milling around the theatre ticket booths. Father and Daughter are out of the building looking to catch the 6:49.

We reach a “Don’t Walk” and I point down to 47th. She tugs at my suit jacket.

“Dad, I’ve timed it. It’s not faster to zig-zag. Just wait. Take it straight down. It’s faster.”

She’s timed it. It’s faster. Continue reading “Riding MetroNorth. With a moment.” →

The dramatics are often unbelievably soft

Live & Learn31 Comments

dandelion

In truth, the dramatics of a life-determining experience are often unbelievably soft. It has so little akin to the bang, the flash, or the volcanic eruption that, at the moment it is made, the experience is often not even noticed. When it deploys its revolutionary effect and plunges a life into a brand-new light giving it a brand-new melody, it does that silently and in this wonderful silence resides its special nobility.

~ Pascal Mercier, Night Train to Lisbon: A Novel

 

Image Credit: Pino Stranieri.  Quote Source: Pascal Mercier, Night Train to Lisbon on Amazon.