Day 17 - Back to ART!

Crickets yesterday.
Or was it a thunderous silence?
 I got ONE comment and ZERO likes.
Ouch.

After the painting, an explanation of yesterday's post. But first...

                                                            Time for ART!

            To make it clear at the beginning, this is about making art, not worshipping idols.

Years ago, I began dreaming of elephants and ever since then, random pictures of elephants showed up in my life. A patient's mother, who is an artist, painted small images of Ganesh for her temple, and I became fascinated with the elephant headed god. (It's a noun here, so I left the O in) I went on a 3 month contract to a town in California and the agency housed me right next to one of the Hindu temples, which I was afraid to go into for most of my stay.

Me? Afraid? OH yes. I'm always afraid of doing or saying or writing the wrong thing and offending people when that's the LAST thing I want to do.

Finally, an East Indian coworker told me to just go in there. Leave my shoes at the door, and walk in. "The priest will probably just say 'Hello', what are you afraid of? So I did, and the priest said more than that. He took me around and introduced me to the gods and goddesses he served and I was in awe. The statue of Ganesh was gorgeous, for one thing, and the eyes looked right into mine. As did the others. I think I'll publish my writings about that visit tomorrow, but here I just want to show you the process of a painting.

I found many images online of Ganesh, and decided one night to try to draw one with colored pencils.

I was quite happy with the whole thing, and surprised that I could draw a lotus flower at all, so I did my usual "environment", as Shiloh calls it. I chose a very few colors and made intuitive strokes of paint on a 16x20 canvas until I was happy with it.

                                                 I do so love purple and green and blue!

With great fear and trembling (about my skills or lack thereof) I did an outline of the main areas with a light yellow, using a wet paper towel to erase things that looked wonky until I was satisfied.

                                               
                                                   Then I began to fill in a few things

                   I didn't take enough pictures along the way, so the next picture is where I stopped.

I loved loved loved his skin color, and the folds in his trousers and his hands that held his symbols, and OH his eyes! I won't touch them. I won't solidify his ears either because I love that shell-like quality of the pink and white. I even like that effect on one of his right hands where I had intended to paint a symbol, a spiral or something. But I love the streakiness of it and I'm leaving it alone. I'm leaving the background alone too because I like the mood it puts me in.

But that lotus.....aargh. I dont' know how it went from "wow! I drew a lotus flower!" to "Is he sitting on a pile of frayed carpet remnants?" I want to attack that again, but I'm not sure how to fix it. He sat down deeper in the flower in my sketch, but I can't change his legs now.

                                       ANY suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

I don't understand how things change so much when they go from sketch to paint. He looks more dignified in my sketch, and more plump and friendly in my painting. Maybe that's just what I needed when I painted him last year.

Plump and friendly.

Like me at the moment.

About yesterday's post - I guess I should be grateful I didn't get a huge religious discussion, eh? My point was not that people who believe in the standard form of G-d are eedjits. (by the way, spelling the word with the o missing is the Jewish way of not using G-d's name in vain. A way of honoring the word, not erasing it)

My point was a meandering post about the workings of my mind that took me from being furious over things that don't affect me....to NOTICING the anger....to deciding to let it go this year. Anger and judgement both. Yom Kippur, and the approach of that long, foodless day full of soul inspiring music, always makes something come to the front of my mind that I need to work on to become a marginally better person. 

I do prefer to hear the phrase "my higher power" than to hear an obviously Christian phrase in a supposedly secular program, but I'm working on "principles, not personalities". Even the supernatural personalities. 

And as for "submission", too many of the people in programs I've attended, including me,  have been in real danger from submitting to their situation. I firmly believe G-d, in whatever form, wants us to get out of danger, not submit to it.

Ganesh, by the way, is the god who people turn to to get rid of obstacles. Obstacles to whatever it is you're trying to have, and maybe obstacles like abusers. He sweeps his mighty trunk and you can be on your way to a better life! 

Notice how much more dignified Ganesh can be. After taking this picture, I decided that my version of Ganesh needed to be far far away from the sculpted version.

                        I hung an image of Sarasvati that was given to me by a Tibetan instead.

MUCH better! And dang it all to heck, LOOK at that lotus she's sitting on. I need to sketch a few lotus flowers and see if someday I can give my Ganesh a better flower to sit on.

           What kind of hippie flower child am I that I can't draw a lotus flower???