What had she left behind?

Old ways. Old problems. A man who wasn’t one. Pretenders can be charming and she had once again fallen for veneer instead of character.

She needed to learn this lesson for her present, for her future. But she had thought she was beyond the charlatans.

Now, in her new apartment, she takes a moment. The walls are empty. They need art; they must have art.

This time, she will meet the right artist and life will begin again.

She learned her lesson.

Why love?

Who to love?

Why do I love him?

You need a good answer.

The lady was stunning and mature.

She begged for a sculpture.

I would do her in bronze.

When I showed her how the bust would look on paper, she took a deep breath. “That’s it,” she said. “You caught me and I am yours.”

Drawing the line

To render what you see is a matter of perseverance. Drawing is measurement, calculation, and within the grasp of any dedicated person willing to learn. After all, if you draw an apple one hundred times, you will eventually draw a superb-looking apple. What then?

If you were shown ten draughtsman-like drawings, each by ten well known artists, you might have a difficult time telling one from another without the signature. Drawing seems to gain people’s admiration and respect as if it took some special talent.

To become an artist, learning to draw was a prerequisite from the old world. This antiquated curriculum, although specious, made some sense before the camera was invented.

What is special is an artist’s ability to draw upon feeling, which may or may not involve figurative drawing. Van Gogh was criticized by one of his art teachers. You don’t know how to draw, you don’t know perspective. Although Van Gogh eventually got the hang of perspective, he didn’t become a world-class icon for rendering nature as it is, or for his drawing ability.

And that is the point.

Do you know your mother?

She had a life before you arrived. The thought had occurred to you. Did it not?

If she had done her part well with honesty and good will, then she is worth knowing as an individual.

You will be startled once you learn to let go of childish grievances.

Time to get out of the box and meet mom.

Physical beauty is inherited.

A woman who embodies good character is a treasure and among the rarest of elements in the universe.

As the Indian poet Tagore said: When we feel beauty, we know it as truth.

Notice that Tagore wrote feel and not see.

“And how are you, Comrade?” I asked the stranger in the coffee house.

The word comrade evokes a deep friendship and is forever connected with socialism and the communist party. Still, to have a true comrade in life is a blessing.

“I am good, but the world, not doing too good I think,” said the stranger. “Maybe better in the future?”

“Let me get you a good coffee,” I said.

We sat down and he told me of his life in Russia and how he had survived Stalin and the gulags. He had seen the rise and fall of communism and he was proud of his personal achievement

We parted. “Good speaking with you, Comrade,” he said.

It was clear to me that our eyes had known similar experiences.

Her name was Scarlett.

She came up to my studio.

“You are an artist, too, aren’t you,” she said, looking at my work here and there.

I nodded.

She was a jazz dancer from New Hampshire.

“Paint me.” she purred. “I’ll dance just for you.”

“Only after I draw you.” I wanted this to last.

She smiled. Scarlett disrobed demurely and we were in business. Everything about her oozed a silent and delicate charm. Her evocative hands expressed her sensuality and the way she carried her self was exquisite.

If ever there was an incarnation of the southern belle of Gone with the Wind fame, she was it.

Scarlett from New Hampshire was as good a proof for reincarnation I had seen in a long time.

She sleeps. Innocent as she was wild. Young, foolish, and even wise at times, too.

Time.

She had to spend time some how. For too long she had been into bad boys.

Now, she sleeps. When she wakes, she will see things for what they are.

“Your art,” she said to me. “It has opened up my eyes. You’ll see.”

She was young, and I trusted she would be right about her new self this time around. To appreciate heaven you must first know something of hell.

Igor the composed.

In her superb book, Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, Betty Edwards clears up what drawing is all about.

To illustrate how we perceive in precise terms, she offers readers a challenge. Turn the image of Picasso’s drawing of Igor Stravinsky upside down and use it as a model to work from.

The lesson makes the point. Once the left side of the brain can’t make sense of the upside down lines that form the drawing, it gives up and lets the right side go to work.

Prove it to your self and you will begin to know that any motivated person can learn the skill of drawing.