Art and Design Books and Reading Extemporaneous Miscellany Food and Drink Fun/Funny My Creations Sketches: camera cat clutter Google honey lemons paintings reading scissors still life
by amo
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Sketches from Life, Links, and Random Comments
Sketches
Links
I’m not the only one who’s been sketching. Take a look at Angie’s still life.
Angie also linked to this, along with a lot of other people I follow. I haven’t had a chance to look at it yet, but I LOVE the idea. Google street view for art (aka Google Art Project).
I’ve been enjoying Karin Jurick’s 100 Faces via her blog. She painted 100 faces from mug shots as an exercise. She put this video together when she finished. I’m tempted to try something like this myself, maybe after a little more life sketching.
What’s wrong with this picture? No cheezburger.
Random Comments
The written dialect in Adam Bede
Well, okay, I only had one random comment. Just felt like sharing.
Books and Reading Poetry/Hymns/Lyrics Temporal Miscellany: autumn seasons
by amo
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From my reading:
In Reply to Liu Ch’ai-Sang
In a meager home, guests rare, I often
forget I’m surrounded by turning seasons.And now falling leaves fill courtyard
emptiness, I grow sad, realizing it’sautumn already. Fresh sunflower thickets
fill north windows. Sweet grains in southfields ripen. Though I’m far from happy
today, I know next year may never come.Get the kids together, I tell my wife,
it’s the perfect day for a nice long walk.From The Selected Poems of T’ao Ch’ien
translated by David Hinton
Books and Reading Commonplace Book Poetry/Hymns/Lyrics: bird forever freedom hunter lark melody prey song verse
by amo
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From My Reading
A lark, caught in a hunter’s net
Sang sweeter than ever,
As if the falling melody
Might wing and net dissever.
At dusk the hunter took his prey,
The lark his freedom never.
All birds and men are sure to die
But songs may live forever.
From The Pillars of the Earth
Book Reviews Books and Reading My Creations Poetry/Hymns/Lyrics
by amo
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Bestiary (Poetry Book Review)
My review of Bestiary
Books and Reading Food and Drink: British food candy chocolate Narnia
by amo
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Turkish Delight
My impression: Meh. British food. I should have known better. The White Queen in Narnia must have had mad conjuring skillz.
Although, according to Wikipedia and Christianity Today, this actually appears to be an Americanized version of a British treat that was altered from the original from Turkey. This author actually had some from Turkey, but apparently it doesn’t travel well. I’m guessing what I had was about as authentic as meltable processed cheese food.
Book Reviews Books and Reading My Creations Poetry/Hymns/Lyrics
by amo
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Book Review
I’m late in posting this because I had some family issues come up, but I am pleased to announce that my review of Who’s to Say What’s Home by Kim Calder was accepted for electronic publication by Rattle. I very much like the poetry they publish, and I feel honored to have the opportunity to make a small contribution to the magazine. The review is here.
Art and Design Books and Reading Creativity and Creating Extemporaneous Miscellany
by amo
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A Gang of Cavorting Porpoises
Yesterday, Orchids was featured in the Painters in Modern Times group at RedBubble. I am grateful for the hosts’ support and encouragement!
I’m reading what is probably the best book I’ll read this year, In the Likeness of God
I’m beginning to think one of the best gifts God gave us (to learn with, anyway) is analogy. Earlier this year, I read Mind Of The Maker
I’ve never felt I was particularly talented at finding/creating analogies myself, but perhaps it is something I should pursue. I seem to learn best from them. Jesus’ parables are analogies. I wonder how one goes about learning how to work with analogies?
(Actually, I have a short story I tried to write once that was an analogy, but I never finished it. I have more ideas than I have self discipline, and the light bulb that goes on over my head is sometimes a strobe light.)
In any event, I find myself wanting to quote extensively from this book, but I try not to quote too much from any one book here. Right now, I’m only on page 175 (of 552, though it’s not difficult reading), and I’ve got 3 fantastic passages I’d love to share! Since I really should just pick one, I guess I’ll go with the fun simile (i.e., analogy, if you don’t split hairs):
I can understand the complex process of keratin producing rigid fingernails and horses’ hooves. But no amount of training will lessen my astonishment as I watch a single stalk of keratin push its way out of a follicle, grow erect and proud and shockingly unfurl as a peacock feather. What was chemistry becomes beauty. It is as if a brilliant Appalachian quilt springs from a rock, as if a desert suddenly births a gang of cavorting porpoises.
Art and Design Books and Reading Commonplace Book Creativity and Creating
by amo
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From My Reading
These two quotations are really one, but I stopped and thought about the first part for a while before I read on to see what followed, so I’m going to break up what is really one paragraph in a book:
“When I get to heaven I mean to spend a considerable portion of my first million years in painting, and so get to the bottom of the subject.”
Flowers in a Green Vase
Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
“But then I shall require a still gayer palette than I get here below. I expect orange and vermilion will be the darkest, dullest colors upon it, and beyond them there will be a whole range of wonderful new colours which will delight the celestial eye.”
– from Painting as a Pastime
(While I was looking for an appropriate photo of one of his paintings, I came across this story, which I found rather interesting.)
Books and Reading Commonplace Book Creativity and Creating Poetry/Hymns/Lyrics
by amo
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Stanley Kunitz on Poetry
So it is that poetry always seems about to burst into song, to break into dance, but the secret of the poet’s mastery is that he refrains from crossing over–the words stay words, they remain language.
Above all, poetry is intended for the ear. It must be felt to be understood, and before it can be felt it must be heard. Poets listen for their poems, and we, as readers, must listen in turn. If we listen hard enough, who knows?–we too may break into dance, perhaps for grief, perhaps for joy.
Stanley Kunitz (1905-2006)
From Poetspeak
Writers Cramped
Donald T. Williams on Three Things Evangelical Authors Can Learn from Flannery O’Connor. (Touchstone Magazine, September, 2007, via Pen and Palette.)
My fellow Evangelicals publish reams upon reams of prose. What we have not tended to write is anything recognized as having literary value by the literary world. What makes this failure remarkable is that our Protestant forebears include a number of people who did: Philip Sidney, Edmund Spenser, George Herbert, John Milton, and John Bunyan, to mention a few.
Equally remarkable is the host of near contemporary conservative Christians—sometimes quite evangelical and even evangelistic, though not “Evangelicals”—who were also important writers. G. K. Chesterton, C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, T. S. Eliot, Graham Greene, Aleksander Solzhenitsyn, Walker Percy, and Flannery O’Connor are all recognized as important literary figures even by people who do not share their Christian commitment.
Where is the contemporary American Evangelical who can make such a claim?
Read the rest here.
