Studies from Akira Kurosawa Black and white Movies

Studies Fro Kurosawa's "Rashomon"

Sketching the Female forms

Sketching the nude figure is as close to understanding the human form as you can get without turning the act into a pornographic venture. These past few months i have been sketching up a storm using every available subject from the internet, black and white photos, drawings, real life models, paintngs and even the forbidden web sites such s Domai and so on. it is an inexhaustable endeavor but i love it.

Malaysia being a Muslim country it is not Kosher to be staring and rendereing the female naked forms even if it is an art for art's sake thing, but one has got to do what has got to do come rain or shine. It is the only way to learn even if one has turned golden in age and could be expecting to become a grandfather anytime.

To be able to capture the sensual lines that brings out the faminity of the female figure takes alot of practice and good eyes.

There are many great artists in the Internet who have doen great jobs at rendering the female forms and I feel that it is not a sin to copy their works as a practice in order to improve one's own technique.

Whe i do these sketches i keep thinking of Hokusai, the Japanese master who did so much sketching of human forms in his collection of comics or 'Mangas' and I feel humbled by his accomplishment comapred to what i hafe tried to do all my life.

Students of art should spend a good amount of their time studying the human figure and understand every lines the ehlp to make these figures come to life inthe most simple and pleasing manner.

The greatest form God created was the female form and it also was the greatest error that has plagued man throughout his life for it is too perfect.

Female Forms

My Sketches of the Day

All of these charcoal studies subjects were taken from the Internet mostly from the Black and white photos archives. The greatness of the Internet in sharing images not to mention knowledge.

Ballerinas are one of the most graceful study for sketching of figures and in this one art is the culmination of many art forms. The Art of dancing, the art of photography, the art of sketching and perhaps it will go on with soemone somewhere adapting it into a painting.

I consider myself still an amatuer when it comes to sketching faces but i will keep on studying how to render them in the most efficient manner without spending too much time on getting it done. I am a very impatient student, perhaps if i slow down a little is all it takes.

I listen to the music on Youtube while sketching most of the time and every so often a lyric from a song catches my fancy and it becomes part of the sketch for posterity.

Black and white is alot easier to work with but it takes a good eye to perceive the beauty of its simplicity. Working with Charcoal pencils and charcoal sticks is for me the medium of choice as it gives me the sense of primordial creative tool to work with not unlike the primitive man who first sketched on the wall of his cave.

The subject matter does not really matter when I chhose what to sketch while facing the computer. I choose a subject for its well thought out and impressive sense of balance and strong understanding of lighting. My tribute to all those who took the trouble to share their works in the internet in one form or another for they have enriched the minds of many throughout the world.

Faces of our Fathers

It is much easier to become a father than to be one. ~Kent Nerburn

It is easy for a father to have children than for children to have a real father. ~Pope John XXIII

When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years. ~Mark Twain

Dad taught me everything I know. Unfortunately, he didn't teach me everything he knows. ~Al Unser, Jr.

My father gave me the greatest gift anyone could give another person: he believed in me. ~Jim Valvano

My father didn't tell me how to live; he lived, and let me watch him do it. ~Clarence Budington Kelland

You don't have to deserve your mother's love. You have to deserve your father's. He's more particular. ~Robert Frost

JK -Reflections on Creativity with Charcoal Sketches

"Understanding is now, not tomorrow. To-morrow is for the lazy mind, the sluggish mind, the mind that is not interested. When you are interested in something, you do it instantaneously, there is immediate understanding, immediate transformation. If you do not change now, you will never change, because the change that takes place tomorrow is merely a modification, it is not transformation. Transformation can only take place immediately; the revolution is now, not tomorrow." "Therefore, before we seek something permanent, is it not obviously necessary to understand the seeker? Is the seeker different from the thing he seeks? When you say, ‘’I am seeking happiness”, is the seeker different from the object of his search? Is the thinker different from the thought? Are they not a joint phenomenon, rather than separate processes? Therefore it is essential, is it not?, to understand the seeker, before you try to find out what it is he is seeking."

"And since our whole mental, psychological make-up is based on authority, there must be freedom from authority, to be creative. Have you not noticed that in moments of creativeness, those rather happy moments of vital interest, there is no sense of repetition, no sense of copying? Such moments are always new, fresh, creative, happy. So we see that one of the fundamental causes of the disintegration of society is copying, which is the worship of authority."
"To be creative does not mean that we must paint pictures or write poems and become famous. That is not creativeness - it is merely the capacity to express an idea, which the public applauds or disregards. Capacity and creativeness should not be confused. Capacity is not creativeness. Creativeness is quite a different state of being, is it not? It is a state in which the self is absent, in which the mind is no longer a focus of our experiences, our ambitions, our pursuits and our


desires. Creativeness is not a continuous state, it is new from moment to moment, it is a movement in which there is not the ‘me’, the ‘mine’, in which the thought is not focused on any particular experience, ambition, achievement, purpose and motive. It is only when the self is not that there is creativeness - that state of being in which alone there can be reality, the creator of all things. But that state cannot be conceived or imagined, it cannot be formulated or copied, it cannot be attained through any system, through any philosophy, through any discipline; on the contrary, it comes into being only through understanding the total process of oneself. "