I have a certain energy that runs through me, almost like a current. Balancing this energy can be quite a challenge, but I have found that meditation helps me to find my center. I like to quiet the noise around me and focus on my inner truth. Sometimes, I begin my meditation with my eyes closed, allowing my emotions to guide me in sketching out my experiences. This helps me to open up my channels of creativity, which I am currently using to work on my upcoming novel. I can't reveal too much about it yet, but I hope you will enjoy the sneak peeks I'll be sharing as I work toward completion.
"Nowhere Fast" is a compelling still life that blends mundane domesticity with surreal, slightly ominous undertones. The scene is anchored by a wooden table where a spilled glass, a pack of matches, and an ashtray with a smoldering cigarette suggest a moment of interrupted pause or quiet, long-term stagnation. Dominating the foreground is an oversized, weathered cigarette carton boldly labeled "WARNING", its subtle but unsettling presence hinting at a consumption that leads nowhere.
In the background, a vintage RCA television set displays a stylized amanita mushroom, a recurring symbolic motif that adds a layer of psychedelia and altered perception to the otherwise drab setting. The earthy, muted color palette and soft lighting create a feeling of weary introspection, capturing a sense of being perpetually stuck in a cycle. The piece masterfully uses everyday objects to explore themes of vice, time, and the quiet, slow march toward an uncertain destination.
William Styron (1925–2006)
“Let’s face it, writing is hell,” Styron told The Paris Review in 1954.
- From Daily Rituals: How Artists Work by Mason Currey
“We’re all in this game together.”
― William Styron
#dailyrituals #inktober #WilliamStyron @masoncurrey
W. B. Yeats (1865–1939)
A lyric poem of eighty or more lines took him about three months of hard labor.
Fortunately, Yeats was not so careful about his other writing, like the literary criticism he did to earn extra money. “One has to give something of one’s self to the devil that one may live,” he said. “I give my criticism.”- From Daily Rituals: How Artists Work by Mason Currey
“Life is a long preparation for something that never happens.”
― W.B. Yeats
#dailyrituals #inktober #WBYeats @masoncurrey
Anthony Trollope (1815–1882)
"All those I think who have lived as literary men,—working daily as literary labourers,—will agree with me that three hours a day will produce as much as a man ought to write.
...
"I always began my task by reading the work of the day before, an operation which would take me half an hour, and which consisted chiefly in weighing with my ear the sound of the words and phrases.…
This division of time allowed me to produce over ten pages of an ordinary novel volume a day, and if kept up through ten months, would have given as its results three novels of three volumes each in the year..."
From Daily rituals by Mason Currey
#dailyrituals #inktober #anthonyTrollope @masoncurrey
Sigmund Freud (1856–1939)
“I cannot imagine life without work as really comfortable,” Freud wrote to a friend in 1910. With his wife, Martha, to efficiently manage the household—she laid out Freud’s clothes, chose his handkerchiefs, and even put toothpaste on his toothbrush—the founder of psychoanalysis was able to maintain a single-minded devotion to his work throughout his long career.
Freud’s long workdays were mitigated by two luxuries. First, there were his beloved cigars, which he smoked continually, going through as many as twenty a day from his mid-twenties until near the end of his life, despite several warnings from doctors and the increasingly dire health problems that dogged him throughout his later years. (When his seventeen-year-old nephew once refused a cigarette, Freud told him,
From Daily rituals by Mason Currey
#dailyrituals #inktober #sigmundFreud @masoncurrey
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
In a 1782 letter to his sister, he gave a detailed account of these hectic days in Vienna:
"My hair is always done by six o’clock in the morning and by seven I am fully dressed. I then compose until nine. From nine to one I give lessons. Then I lunch..."
From "Daily Rituals: How Artists Work", edited and with text by Mason Currey.
This is a picture of Cartha Haginoux with her stump pistol from my current project, The Blackened Blade. You can find out more on my website davidjameswillet.com
Day 2: Scurry
OMG!! WHY IS SOMETHING SO CUTE SOO HARD TO DRAW!!
I have gone through most likely 10 sheets of practice paper to get these guys and i still think i could’ve done better. I chose rabbits cause it was more then obvious with the word. Scurry, means to run quickly and who can do that better than rabbits.
(0.5 pen on 160mm x 125mm paper) This was a piece I recently did to mark my entrance into the mad world of NFTs after I created an account on OpenSea and uploaded work on there. I'll be auctioning some of them off to see if I can gain Ethereum for them. So, if you use Ethereum as a crypto-currency, do give my work a look: https://opensea.io/SkavArt
I'm currently doing exercises from DrawABox. Although the header here is: "The Aspiration is just to fill a page. It's not a product. No one has to see it." I will probably end up posting more of these. This is not the same as the graphic journal, which is more about me, my daily activities, etc.
One of my original characters from a series of novels I am currently working on. This is Selnam Nameless, a refugee from the planet Jehikar. He is full of secrets.
Everyone's got several faces to show to the world, most of which are hidden because one knows about their real nature. to think people are good seems way too easy to me. You are the reaction and interpretation of your experiences and current circumstances. Assuming the world is shit, people got to be shit at least part time. So go on with your masquerade in order to trick mainly yourself.
Started as a doodle of a friend then I decided to have fun with it and this is its current state. Drawing on these large papers is kinda intimidating to a beginner artist like me lol. any opinions, questions, or advice would be amazing thanks..
Our local antiques store had a huge treasure trove of vintage Native American themed toys and gifts this weekend. I realized that 1) I'd owned a lot of them and 2) none of my friends had. It never occurred to me that my collection was particularly large or unique. Doesn't every kid have a fixation on this country's indigenous population? Apparently not. I love the visual language of the Navajo and Hopi especially. My Kachina doll collection was the bomb.
Narwhal flavours, washi tape as always and a cheeky Cymera sticker to start my current sketchbook… this one entitled “All Fishes Are Weird”.
One way to kill time during delays getting back home on the train back from London yesterday!
Overheard the title on the radio this weekend describing Radiohead songs of the In Rainbows era (you probably know the one)… And that ends my current sketchbook!
