Dmitry Shostakovich (1906–1975)
Shostakovich’s contemporaries do not recall seeing him working, at least not in the traditional sense. The Russian composer was able to conceptualize a new work entirely in his head, and then write it down with extreme rapidity—if uninterrupted, he could average twenty or thirty pages of score a day, making virtually no corrections as he went.
But this feat was apparently preceded by hours or days of mental composition—during which he “appeared to be a man of great inner tensions,” the musicologist Alexei Ikonnikov observed, “with his continually moving, ‘speaking’ hands, which were never at rest.”
Shostakovich himself was afraid that perhaps he worked too fast. “I worry about the lightning speed with which I compose,” he confessed in a letter to a friend. Undoubtedly this is bad. One shouldn’t compose as quickly as I do. Composition is a serious process, and in the words of a ballerina friend of mine, “You can’t keep going at a gallop.” I compose with diabolical speed and can’t stop myself.… It is exhausting, rather unpleasant, and at the end of the day you lack any confidence in the result. But I can’t rid myself of the bad habit.
- From Daily Rituals: How Artists Work by Mason Currey
#dailyrituals #inktober #shostakovich @masoncurrey
Immanuel Kant (1724–1804)
Kant’s biography is unusually devoid of external events.
As Heinrich Heine wrote: The history of Kant’s life is difficult to describe. For he neither had a life nor a history.
In actual fact, as Manfred Kuehn argues in his 2001 biography, Kant’s life was not quite as abstract and passionless as Heine and others have supposed…. If he failed to live a more adventurous life, it was largely due to his health: the philosopher had a congenital skeletal defect that caused him to develop an abnormally small chest, which compressed his heart and lungs and contributed to a generally delicate constitution. In order to prolong his life with the condition—and in an effort to quell the mental anguish caused by his lifelong hypochondria—Kant adopted what he called “a certain uniformity in the way of living and in the matters about which I employ my mind.”
This routine was as follows: Kant rose at 5:00 A.M., after being woken by his longtime servant, a retired soldier under explicit orders not to let the master oversleep. Then he drank one or two cups of weak tea and smoked his pipe. According to Kuehn, “Kant had formulated the maxim for himself that he would smoke only one pipe, but it is reported that the bowls of his pipes increased considerably in size as the years went on.”
- From Daily Rituals: How Artists Work by Mason Currey
#dailyrituals #inktober #ImmanuelKant @masoncurrey
#22 [Hades (the game) 2024] - This would be considered fanart if I was a fan, but I have never played the game. I realize there is no Hades 3, this is just for pretend-fun. Since I don't know the story and characters of the game I decided to make up three of my own. [Sketched & inked everything using an iPad pro & magma software, drawn live, no ai.]
2023, Ballpoint pen on 5” x 8” acid free Moleskine sketchbook paper, Adobe Photoshop. First sketchbook drawing of 2024! Based on a photo of a model in a makeup company advert.
Elias Rosenshaw 10/5/2023
Filtered digital collage of archival ink pen & gel pen on paper, gears (one with acrylic paint), manipulated photography, and digital colours & patterns.
THE MARTIAN from Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day by Ben Loory.
"The three of them sit down to dinner. Halfway through the soup course, a Martian enters the room. It takes the astronaut’s napkin and lays it across his lap. Then it turns around and walks out.
I thought you said you didn’t see any Martians, says the woman.
Not on the moon, says the astronaut, no."
https://www.instagram.com/p/CgwTsoXOVln/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link
