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
Found this quote a few days back, and it really resonated with me. The message is clear that we really shouldn't wait for the "perfect moment" or spend too much time looking for the "easy way" as neither of these options truly exist, they are in effect excuses for not getting on and doing what needs to be done. in order to achieve our goals. If we are honest with ourselves "now" is always the best time, and doing rather than thinking about doing is the way forward. This is a mixed media artwork as the drawing of the girl has been reworked in Photoshop along with the wording and torn paper effect all being digital. Many thanks for looking !
It totally bypassed my mind that last night I would be off to see Gary Numan with my uncle. The perks of having both an over-active work life and a social one too...
These are birthday creatures created in a lab to help celebrate. They come with a confetti aura and built in party horns. They are optimized for maximum fun, but frighten very easily.
Nikola Tesla (1856–1943)
After he had started his own company, Tesla arrived at the office at noon. Immediately, his secretary would draw the blinds; Tesla worked best in the dark and would raise the blinds again only in the event of a lightning storm, which he liked to watch flashing above the cityscape from his black mohair sofa.
Tesla ate alone, and phoned in his instructions for the meal in advance. Upon arriving, he was shown to his regular table, where eighteen clean linen napkins would be stacked at his place. As he waited for his meal, he would polish the already gleaming silver and crystal with these squares of linen, gradually amassing a heap of discarded napkins on the table. And when his dishes arrived—served to him not by a waiter but by the maître d’hôtel himself—Tesla would mentally calculate their cubic contents before eating, a strange compulsion he had developed in his childhood and without which he could never enjoy his food.
- From Daily Rituals: How Artists Work by Mason Currey
“Of all things, I liked books best.”
― Nikola Tesla
“One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite insane.”
― Nikola Tesla
#dailyrituals #inktober #NikolaTesla @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
Sketchbook #7. This time I decided to try 100 heads challenge. It was quite fun, but it took me 2 months instead of 10 days though... I haven't used all the provided references and mixed them with my own. Entries 1-10, mechanical pencil.
Keep Your Eyes on the Lamp Bearer.
Don’t walk around aimlessly.
Don’t leave your armor on your bed chamber’s floor.
Keep your eyes and ears focused on Jesus.
He is the lamp bearer, who illuminates the path you should travel.
Don’t walk around aimlessly!
Don’t leave your armor on your bedchamber’s floor.
Specters are crouched in the shadows of the thicket that line your path.
They plot to ambush you as soon as you wander aimlessly into the thicket.
Keep your eyes and ears focused on Jesus.
He is the lamp bearer, who illuminates the path you should travel.
If you have walked into a fog and lost your focus,
If you have walked aimlessly into the shadows the thicket If you find yourself in the
clutches of the specters of the dark
Don’t be anxious.
Don’t lose hope.
Humble yourself and call out to your commander.
He will send in his angelic army to retrieve you
To restore you back to the ranks of His army
Don’t walk around aimlessly.
Don’t leave your armor on your bedchamber’s floor!
Keep your eyes and ears focused on Jesus.
He is the lamp bearer, who illuminates the path you should travel.
(December 3, 2016)