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
Many years back, I watched that documentary ‘The Boy Whose Skin Fell Off’ about a fellow called Jonny Kennedy who lived with the skin condition EB. There’s a bit in that film where he talks about what he hopes his afterlife would be like and, for whatever reason, a couple of coffees as I was re-reading the Wikipedia article about it triggered an idea I had to scribble down...
This piece is inspired by Mental Health Awareness Week that’s just left us.
Belated and as cryptic as things might be (as usual) here in Bleu’s world, better late to the party than never right?
P. G. Wodehouse (1881–1975)
Once, when he was beginning a Wooster-Jeeves novel, he experimented with using a Dictaphone. After he had dictated the equivalent of a page, he played it back to check it over. What he heard sounded so terribly unfunny that he immediately turned off the machine and went back to his pad and pencil.
After this, according to the biographer Robert McCrum, “he might snooze a bit in his armchair, have a bath, and do some more work, before the evening cocktail (sherry for her, a lethal martini for him) at six, which they took in the sun parlour, overlooking the garden.
- From Daily Rituals: How Artists Work by Mason Currey
“He had just about enough intelligence to open his mouth when he wanted to eat, but certainly no more.”
― P.G. Wodehouse
#dailyrituals #inktober #PGWodehouse @masoncurrey
A colour sketch of woodland near my home. I'm still not sure whether to turn this into a larger piece or not - or maybe I could switch medium and try it in watercolour?
Fineliner sketch depicting the unruly world that is the press, i struggle with many news outlets and the odds they use to sell and manipulate people. It can cause real suffering, real negativity, real bigotry. Blood is on all there hands.
Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–1980)
By the 1950s, too much work on too little sleep—with too much wine and cigarettes—had left Sartre exhausted and on the verge of collapse. Rather than slow down, however, he turned to Corydrane, a mix of amphetamine and aspirin then fashionable among Parisian students, intellectuals, and artists (and legal in France until 1971, when it was declared toxic and taken off the market). The prescribed dose was one or two tablets in the morning and at noon. Sartre took twenty a day, beginning with his morning coffee and slowly chewing one pill after another as he worked. For each tablet, he could produce a page or two of his second major philosophical work, The Critique of Dialectical Reason.
The biographer Annie Cohen-Solal reports, “His diet over a period of twenty-four hours included two packs of cigarettes and several pipes stuffed with black tobacco, more than a quart of alcohol—wine, beer, vodka, whisky, and so on—two hundred milligrams of amphetamines, fifteen grams of aspirin, several grams of barbiturates, plus coffee, tea, rich meals.”
- From Daily Rituals: How Artists Work by Mason Currey
#dailyrituals #inktober #jeanPaulSartre @masoncurrey
Every now and then, I do an homage to "Spy vs Spy" with a little something called "Dog vs Dog". It's a small short comic strip like series, that involves 2 dogs. One red, the other blue going at each others throats using various,violent' slapstick gags.
A tiny 'Thumbodies' gal! She enjoys crafting with objects found in nature and likes making delicious herbal tea blends. Online comic & doodles @ doodletowncomic.com
As we approach the end of winter, who knows where we’ll end up next? Still cautiously optimistic here...
As long as there’s stuff to inspire us all, it can’t be all that bad?
I've been practicing drawing portraits for a few days now. This is from a session I did over lunch where I was just messing around trying a few different things.
A pencil and watercolour study, inspired by Scott Christian Sava's "60 days of studying the masters" on Youtube. This was intimidating from start to finish, by far the most complex drawing I've ever done! It took me almost a week to get the drawing right, but the painting was done in a day. In between were many days of feeling overwhelmed, lost, and then afraid of messing it up. But I got there in the end and I think I pushed myself to a new skill and confidence level. Good thing too, I've got 58 more studies to do!
Commissioned portrait painting, really enjoyed doing this piece!!
Total work time: 12h
Original res: 3508 x 4544px
Strokes made: 29.558 more works at: www.Artstation.com/mauroliraart
I started messing about with line and wash. I really enjoyed the speed and looseness of working on this piece. In hindsight, I'm wondering if it would be worth working on a larger, more considered version as there is quite a lot of nice texture that is missing here. Pen & watercolour on watercolour paper (4x6").
