Spider Attaaaaack. Pewpewpewpewpew.

Need to remove them from rock, redo base, redo man and make him more realistic and add a clearer action line.

Sculpture 2

Second sculpture. Red clay. Around 10 hours put into this piece so far. Will try to add a couple more finishes tomorrow, God-willing. If not, oh well. 

John Stott in 'The Contemporary Christian' - “We stand between the Word and the world with consequent obligation to listen to both. We listen to the Word to discover even more of the riches of Christ. We listen to the world in order to discern which of Christ’s riches are needed most and how to present them in their best light.”

Sculpting Updates

Found the article below on Christcentric. Good stuff. 

“To worship is to quicken the conscience by the holiness of God, to feed the mind with the truth of God, to purge the imagination by the beauty of God, to open the heart to the love of God, to devote the will to the purpose of God.  All this is gathered up in that emotion which most cleanses us from selfishness because it is the most selfless of all emotions – adoration.” William Temple

Sculpture time again. My camera is slowly dying so everything is blurry. This piece is slowly drying but I am frustrated with the face and will have to rework it tomorrow, God-willing.

Arglfargl. Face is so off. I need to go back in.

New piece is on the way. The pose looked absurdly excruciating. I felt bad for the model but she was a trooper and wanted to get a more challenging pose for us since she was an artist herself. Props. Day one was today. More to come tomorrow.

Still not satisfied with the skill level that i have. Working towards getting better for Him. In the meantime, i shall continue to update this blog with progress pieces. It would be interesting to see whether improvement or retrogression will have happened a year from now.


"Blessed be your glorious name, and may it be exalted above all blessing and praise!" - Neh.9:5

On watchmen and wonder

i just recently wrapped up reading through the graphic novel Watchmen since friends kept telling me about how this novel changed the superhero genre in comics and how it's a very good story. It was fascinating. The book is one of those written pieces that tackle the question of the common good. 


The graphic novel was definitely a much better medium for the story compared to the movie. i didn't understand the movie but the various side stories and the slow pacing that the novel allowed to wander around the additional subplots that helped explain some of the intricacies that were deftly woven into the main plot.


Novel Highlights


Quote 1. "Dead: I hear her pleading; see their yellowed smiles, their cutlasses carving relentlessly until all her personality, all her subtleties of posture and expression are obliterated, reduced to meat..dead." - Watchmen (Alan Moore)


This struck a chord with me in particular because i never did understand killing especially massacres of the kind committed in Maguindanao on November 23, 2009. i don't understand how people can destroy human beings, who at times, are painfully beautiful, and walk away.  


There seems to be a great lack of understanding in most people's minds of how miraculous life can be. At the same time, as the graphic novel also did illustrate, this lack of understanding has seeped so deeply into the human psyche that no one is safe from it's toxic sewage, not even myself. This part of the book and the story behind it cautioned me to truly evaluate events from a perspective that is not my own, because were i to be motivated by a zealous passion to pursue my idea of justice, i could very well end up destroying those that i think i am fighting for, and in consequence, myself. 


Nietzsche said that "when you stare at the abyss, the abyss stares back at you"; but the abyss is part of us, it already is within is and we are in the abyss. The necessity is for us to be plucked out of it from someone on the outside powerful enough to do so. Much prayer is necessary in order to align my entire being with the will of Him who sees all and knows all because apart from Him, my only aim, and my only end will be destruction.

Quote 2. "Manhattan: 'Thermodynamic miracles... events with odds against so astronomical they're effectively impossible, like oxygen spontaneously becoming gold. I long to observe such a thing. And yet in each human coupling, a thousand million sperm vie for a single egg. Multiply those odds by countless generations, against the odds of your ancestors being alive; meeting; siring this precise son; that exact daughter [...] and of that union, of the thousand million children competing for fertilization, it was you, only you that emerged. To distill so specific a form from that chaos of improbability, like turning air into gold... that is the crowning unlikelihood. The thermodynamic miracle.'


Laurie: 'But... If me, my birth, if that's a thermodynamic miracle... I mean you could say that about anybody in the world!


Manhattan: 'Yes. Anybody in the world... But the world is so full of people, so crowded with these miracles that they become commonplace and we forget... I forget. We gaze continually at the world and it grows dull in our perceptions. Yet seen from another's vantage point, as if new, it may still take the breath away.


Come... dry your eyes, for you are life, rarer than a quark and unpredictable beyond the dreams of Heisenberg; the clay in which the forces that shape all things leave their fingerprints most clearly.'" - Watchmen (Alan Moore) 


Humans are made of fantastic stuff.

Figure Sculpture model 1

Around 7+ hours of sculpting Tara. Last 2 hours will be tomorrow and still so many things are still off. i am, however, happy about my growth progression so far and the fact that the teacher is not giving me any slack. The next piece needs to be bigger so that i won't have that much difficulty sorting out the eye areas. She was a really funny model in a really relaxed and fun class. i'm glad i get to be part of it. :)

This so far is the strongest view for me

Face is really off.

Figure sculpture sessions are far too short but progress is happening very slowly. Slowly but consistently. God is good! :D

The perks of getting lost

People often wonder why i enjoy getting lost in cities and towns without a map. I often wonder that myself until i bump into people like Jamey Turner and my jaw drops for a second from being struck by an unexpected glimpse of glory.


He makes music out of glass goblets! He calls his instrument a glass harp and i found him at the end of King Street in Alexandria, Virginia close to the waterfront. :)

He also justified my need for a new camera. There are just so many miracles happening in and throughout the mundane that slip through my hands. One may consider it very naive but i dream of capturing these fleeting moments of the majestic and store them in glass jars so others, too, may see, even for just a moment.

His website is: http://jameyturner.com/ and he, also, wishes to give the glory back to God. Fantastic day has been fantastic.

WAT

My brother and i were wandering around the national gallery of art and found these two pieces at the top of one of the wings of the gallery. They were part of an entire series that filled up a small room. i don't know what to make of it. All i know is that i'm glad my motivation to make stuff doesn't lie in what is the current vogue of the times. 


Um.

Time Traveling

Today, a 3D file I opened indicated that I traveled through time.

I neither remember doing it nor do I have any recollection of where I parked my time traveling apparatus which makes me conclude that the surveyors of the cosmic rifts are up to no good again and are erasing people's memories of chance ventures into inter-dimensional peregrination. 

I need to update my life insurance. One of these days they might lose their patience with my insatiable curiosity and just fry me on the spot.

Mhm.

Life Drawing Session 3

"Don't be afraid to make a mistake. We all have 10,000 bad drawings in us so the sooner you get them out the better!" - Walt Stanchfield

9,600 more to go! I hope the good drawings come out soon.

Next time I'll actually scan the images and not be lazy and just take pictures. A new sketchbook is needed. Woopwoop!