first day back home, the house has been renovated and is a completely different space (yet it feels exactly like home!) our home is full of Things. my family loves collecting small, cute, fashionable things (mostly my mum) and is full of strange inspirations for art, now that I come back with new eyes. but I decided to draw my cat since I was feeling inspired by the (slight) wave of confidence in 'life drawing' and it not needing to look like anything, after participating in the breakfast bodies online life drawing event for course reps (fun and encouraging, I drew on my ipad - others drew on paper with colours too and we were showing our drawings at the end. I realised the potential of giving birth to a drawing from the starting point of something in real life. being inspired by what is observed but not necessarily by every little detail and proportion. I played around with different procreate brushes too. different brushes make your hand do different things. and the thickness of the outline at the same time obstructs and creates new forms of the subject) anyway, [drawing] is so fun once you let go of the fear of other's judgement + a 'bad' drawing is a great drawing too. you are simply making marks) I thought perhaps I could do this with the subject in question too i.e. the camera which I attempted to do on paper, but something about the digital drawing is so fun and infinite, and doesn't BEG you to come back to finish it like the physical drawing does for me. I enjoyed the few pencil/charcoal drawings I did, especially with the eraser pencils, but there is always a limit to the paper and how much charcoal it can take and erase. perhaps I should get better paper. perhaps I should use a different medium. all this trial and error requires me to get out and spend more money on stuff right now, which is not exactly attractive, so I'm using the ipad which has everything in one place. though, it is strange how abstract paper size is because no matter how small or big it actually is it is that set size on the device. its almost cheating, or an obstacle (to get the feel of the drawing as you draw it. but perhaps it doesn't matter as it inherently is a digital file). anyway, it was really freeing to embrace drawing a little bit more like this.
from the first day back i was inspired by the jewelry my mum designed with real jewels but more specifically how it is laid out in grids or set boundaries like this. of course I am thinking of the diagram, the organisation of information. this is inspiring for setting up something in real life and in drawing.
the other thing, the jewels themselves (will touch on this in a future post), curated in various designs (this reminds me if the illustrated book The Blue Stone by the Taiwanese illustrator jimmy, its one that has always been in my house and I remember experiencing it younger, it is a lonely sad and sort of cruel story of how a beautiful blue rock gradually gets broken down and repurposed, most are beautiful monuments, precious gifts, and in one instance a rock in a prison wall.. until it is tiny grains.. he personified the rock in such a way that I felt like I was getting eroded and breaking away too. its an emotional story that makes you see objects or natural, beautiful things in a new perspective.. it also makes me think of the thing about the whole and being part of a whole and ideas of unity and if you are still part of the bigger if it is not together anymore etc. and also the number of changes, transitions over time, how much do you resemble the first or even two or three before, I'm thinking of the family tree, especially if its practically unknown to you like how it is for me.
I was also inspired by my sisters chess workbook from her chess lessons.. of course, after everyone watched the queen's gambit on netflix (my family, and I included) I gained a different appreciation for it, how it is a game of your ability to see many many steps into the future, and to know the nature of your opponent, how everything has a logic to it, and I love the diagrams here, how it is always on the same chessboard, how it always starts the same, and can have infinite possibilities, how the chess pieces are representations of things that existed in real life, and what that means when you are handling them and moving them in such ways, sometimes violent, always in an attempt to win. I guess you could sort of say that with any game. what is this intent to win? I am thinking of chance, how some games are more dependent on your skills than luck and how some carnival games are straight up scams (I watched a video on yt about this) and how similar things like this can carry a horrifying and ominous quality to it like in the original jumanji, my mum has always said it is a scary film and I can certainly see why, especially with the music/sound/ signature drums whenever its basically calling you in. also, I am thinking of that box thing the kids find in the film mimzy with the rabbit plushie from the future and it had a lot of intricate mathematical references in it as well, maybe I should rewatch it, though it was a traumatically terrifying film for me when I watched as a kid, its voice so eerie and teaching the kid how to fly etc and knowing gradually that its actually been sent back into this past to save the future - again thinking of time-space which is an abruptly erupting interest right now. there is something really interesting about the act of taking turns in a shared game, and is that dynamic slightly different when there are more than two players? I am thinking of traditional or childhood board games, ones you play on a table. and what of the time stretches when the other is pondering their move? I bet that would look nice on a diagram, some sort of documentation. I wish I could have one of those cards that they write on in the queens gambit where they mark their move on the paper every time the do their turn. and the switching clocks! an epicentre of stress, swapping times, time traveling in different measures between the each of you, when one person stops their clock, yours begin to run. it is like you are trying to kill each other with time. anyway, to predict the future, don't you need to know the past? the present doesn't exist. (more on that in -the future-) but here, you are starting on the same chessboard. however your person/context/personal history/experience/current condition is completely different and subject to change, fluid. so what of it? perhaps one could create a fictional pie chart for what it takes to win. this whole thread is giving me too many ideas to experiment with.
