A Quick Review of What I've Done Lately

'And so this is Christmas, and what have you done?' John Lennon in 'War is Over'

This poignant line was written decades ago.  And so here ends another year and I am still living in the USA.  With the second half of 2018, I spent a lot of time creating art and put music on the back burner.

While that may have not been the smartest thing to do, at least I kept busy and created a lot.  My artist website, www.lioravnidesignwriter.com is doing well in terms of views and viewers.  My plan for 2019 is to do a lot more music, and a lot more exercise, especially in exercises I enjoy, such as kickboxing, tai chi, and even matwork.  I am not to old for these types of exercises, I'm just slowing down and a bit out of shape.

I want to share with you, gentle blog reader, a video I created earlier today and posted on YouTube and Reverbnation.  It features my own song, my own artworks, and refers you to my artist website. 

If you click and watch the video, which is less than 2 minutes, you'll see my art has improved lately and I am maturing.  But I definitely plan on doing more music in 2019.  

I've also been improving as a blogger.  Instead of posting here, I post mostly on my artist website, which also features a blog.  But I have enough ideas to write in both places.

So here comes 2019, and I am ready.

Keep Trying New Things

I am adding here a charcoal drawing I did recently after seeing an image of a Japanese temple I found in a book about Japanese art.

It is simpler than most, but the unique thing is I don't often use charcoal pencils so this was kind of like an experiment for me.  That is why the name of the post is called 'keep trying new things'.  If you don't keep experimenting, you'll never make any progress.

'Temple in Japan'

This image is simpler than the photo it was inspired by, and it's far from perfect, but at least I could enter another area of illustration and still feel satisfied with how it looks.  I'm not even going to post it on my artist site for sale, I just want people to see it and see how one learns to create.

Everything's Alright

My new artist site is up and I've linked this blog to it.  In addition to uploading artwork to be sold, I can share my ideas here with no interruption. 

As an artist, I am constantly looking to improve my knowledge and skills.  One way is through continuing education courses.  Another is through projects.  And another is by looking back at old black and white illustrations and coloring them in.  I did that with 'young wrestler' recently.  I like the way it came out.

Now that I have an artist site, less important things fade away.  I can concentrate all my work into one place and be more time efficient.

To all the people who read this blog, I'd like to bring you along my journey.

New Beginnings

I've found a way to preserve this blog.  Pretty soon, I will be using my artist website exclusively, but I have the option to link an existing blog as well as my social media accounts to the new site. 

So nothing is really lost.  I will use this blog as a platform to spread my ideas, and the new site will be for the artworks and making sales.

I feel like my ability as an artist keeps growing day by day.  I feel more confident.  Maybe more complex works lay ahead.  Anyway, I hope you people who follow my blog stay tuned.  Peace.

War is Over...and so is this blog.

Well, maybe not completely.  You see, I want to start earning money through my artwork, and not just working for free.  This site gets hundreds of view per month and thousands since I first got serious about being an artist. 

Since creating my own artist website, which will soon be active at Www.lioravnidesignwriter.com. I have decided to focus all my attention on that site.  I will keep writing on this blog to share my views on aesthetics and truth, but i cant afford to give away visual art with no renumeration for me. 

This is a harsh world and art is my biggest skill.  I need money.  All in all, I've written some clever and useful knowledge here. 

I've even created new works that can only be seen on my artist website.  If you have a computer, an internet connection,  and some special skill or knowledge, you can form an online business.  The internet changed everything, and i wish you well just as i wish myself well.

Peace.

The One Worth Saving

"Chakras"

This is a rough drawing and upload I created while making a slide show video about Taoist Nutrition.  I don't care that much about Taoist Nutrition or making it the theme of my career, but out of 8 panels, this one was the most well done and intriguing.  So I'm posting it here.

It depicts a man seated in lotus pose, with the Seven Chakras highlighted.  Yogis have known for thousands of years that the chakras exist and are loosely tied to the glands that are located along and near the front line and dorsal line.  These captions explain the location of each chakra without the sanksrit name, since no one I knows speaks sanskrit.  

To understand human development, one must be aware that the root chakra, located between the genitals and the anus, is the most primitive, and deals with food, sex, and aggression.  The crown chakra, at the top of the head, deals with enlightenment and purpose.  So everything we experience is somewhere in between.

I called this post 'the one worth saving' because it was the one picture out of eight that I felt was unique.  And people don't really need a nutrition lesson.  In the Hebrew Bible, there is a story of a wicked city called 'Sodom and Gommorah' where sexual iniquity and vice was brazenly done.  Lot was the one man worth saving in this city, and he and his family where the only ones saved from God's wrath and the destruction of Sodom and Gommorah.  He was allowed to flee the city with his wife and two daughters, but his wife looked back and became a pillar of salt.  That is in the bible.  Later, Lot fathered the eastern race by being duped into sleeping with both daughters (on different nights) and created the ancestors Moab and Ammor.  These ones where the ones to claim to be 'the ones of pure blood.'

Can't Win Them All

This is a work I created yesterday, frustrated with how it looks, but I did the best I could to salvage it today.  I'm not experienced with landscapes, and yet I tried to recreate a photo I saw on the internet when I googled 'Mountains'.  For illustrative purposes, I will show both the image and site it was inspired by, and my work.

https://animals.sandiegozoo.org/habitats/mountains  click here to see the photo of the mountains that inspired this attempt.  It is part of the site for the San Diego Zoo.

'San Diego Mountains'

You can see my interpretation of the landscape implies a sense of depth, as in the trees in the bottom left are closest, the middleground of mountains behind them, and the atmospheric effect of the mountains in the distance being black lines and vague.

You can see my work is primitive, and yet if you look at both pictures, you can see how my interpretation of the image created a completely different image altogether.  That is part of what art and artistry is, the interpretation of one creative individual looking at the world in a different way.