- 03.Feb
- Illustrations versus Prose
Write to be understood, speak to be heard, read to grow.
- 18.Dec
- Sitting and Watching
More interesting is what you see when you sit and watch yourself. You learn to step outside yourself, and act as an observer. You see your thoughts, and learn more about yourself than you ever could if you were rushing to take action.
“Write to be understood, speak to be heard, read to grow.”
- Lawrence Clark Powell
As an alternative to methods of writing prose as a form of stress-therapy, I have been recording events and memories of 2012 via the art of illustrations in the Pony Brown diary-planner. Allowing the ink-filled tip of a “kitty princess” pen, to shape and re-lined drawings, is akin to the visualizations in my mind’s eye and a peaceful sensation.
While the art of writing, and writing, is often difficult to accomplish under periods of stress, the alternative methods of the art of illustration continue to thrive under the most stressful circumstance in-between academics. In contrast to creating this post, where I have spent more than an hour revising the grammar, sentence structures, and spelling errors, the action of of drawing the illustrations, adding colours, and snapping-uploading these photos to Flickr was approximately under 15 minutes.
Why does this method provide more of a relief from stress, versus writing?
For myself, it is the lack of verbal conversations. When I find myself in oral communication with others, the subject, and etiquette, often revolves around the environment and the strengths of the force of their personality. It is not so much that we speak, but that we adhere and confirm (or was that, compromise?) in our communications.
However, in contrast, the art of drawing is to satisfy myself, and myself alone. I draw and doodle but once, choosing the colors for these characters and figures is but a single thought, a once-choice that is not prone to constant revisions and the pitfalls of perfectionism (as this written blog post has done so).
Therefore, the art of drawing is much more of an effective stress reliever than the art of writing. I satisfy myself and my desires, seeking an inward approval (versus external acclaim).
Practice by drawing things large, as if equal in representation and reality. In small drawings every large weakness is easily hidden; in the large, the smallest weakness is easily seen.
- Leon Battista Alberti
On Friday last week, I had the opportunity of assisting a friend with a panorama photoshoot of the downtown core of Surrey.. from the rooftop vantage of Central City Office Towers, a building that stands at 112 m (367 ft) and is the tallest building in Surrey. We managed to capture a few photos before sunset, despite the clouds rolling in from the horizon that left the mountains enclosed. I was really, really cold due to the winds that day, and the glass wall encircling the walls of the rooftop were troublesome for his DSLR.
These are a few of the iPhone photos! from the rooftop that day.
Over the past weekend, I watched the film adaption of the novel The Invention of Hugo Cabret : a narrative that focuses on the lifestyle of several people employed in a train station during 1920s, a boy talented with clockwork mechanical skill, and somehow shifts to the revived history of Georges Méliès, a man credited as one of the early pioneers of many technical and narrative developments in the earliest days of cinema.
Méliès, a prolific innovator in the use of special effects, accidentally discovered the substitution stop trick in 1896, and was one of the first filmmakers to use multiple exposures, time-lapse photography, dissolves, and hand-painted colour in his work. Because of his ability to seemingly manipulate and transform reality through cinematography, Méliès is sometimes referred to as the first “Cinemagician”.
Two of his most well-known films are A Trip to the Moon (1902) and The Impossible Voyage (1904). Both stories involve strange, surreal voyages, somewhat in the style of Jules Verne, and are considered among the most important early science fiction films, though their approach is closer to fantasy. (x)
Watching these “moving pictures” productions of the art of the first movie cameras, the fantasy film A Trip to the Moon, and the first moving pictures of an approaching train by the Lumiere Brothers, are a familiar memory to an literature course that was taught during my earliest days at the university, learning again through the medium of literature of Theatre in Film, and etcetera.
Our textbook for the course was Theatre and Film:A Comparative Anthology, and was a very insightful reading if you’re interested in examining the complex historical, cultural, and aesthetic relationship between theater and film, and the effect that each has had on the other’s development. This book covers everything from writing to directing to acting, from the people who started Hollywood to the people making it happen today.
For when a lady’s in the case,
You know all other things give place.
- Jane Austen (Emma)
As a safeguard against future actions of loss and clumsiness, as recorded in the prior post, I have decided to manage all of my primary bank cards, transportation and identification within a cunning leather-based iPhone and card holder from the Korean-based media accessories company, Happy Mori.
I’ve been using the brown leather version with a eye-catchy green stripe, perfectly matching my brightly colored wardrobe or adding a dash of green to my grey and black days.
The case was very helpful in minimizing the weight of the hefty card wallet, which had been crammed with old business cards, expired commuter passes, spare change and stamp cards for various bubbletea and coffeeshops throughout the past two years.
While I still love my Poketo wallet immensely, its about the right time for a change in my lifestyle. I have also developed a habit of reading classic literature, philosophical texts, and jotting down notes in the Evernote app… essentially, glued to the screen of my iPhone!
And as you can see from the photographs below, the flip-case structure of the Happy Mori card/iPhone case is easy to switch with when showing my commuter’s monthly pass and student ID. I really really love it! <3
I am currently under the suspicion that my organic “shell” is harboring.. an uninvited cold.
This may lead to complications, as you may have also suffered these following symptoms below:
This *entire week* has consisted of narrowly avoiding head-banging contact with:
1. umbrellas, wielded by shorter people
2. freezer doors mysteriously opening on their own behind me
3. walking into skytrain cars “poles” and closed doors
4. triggering the collapse of a very large pile of plastic chairs
and also:
5. tripping while departing from buses and skytrains
Fortunately, there is CAFFEINE.
Spending many, many hours of classes on the wintery Burnaby campus of Simon Fraser University has never been one of my favored recollections as a student.
Not only does the temperature fluctuate between several of the buildings, as you travel to and fro during your scheduled classes, the noisy uproar of twenty-something youths, ekked at the borders with the occasionally thirty-plus grad students and professors, is enough to send one back OUTSIDE into the elements and suffer chilling winds and slippery wet grass of rainy days, or the soft icy snowdrifts of storms, while huddling beside a large cement wall’s outpost.
Just realized that my previous action of replacing the feedburner feed, which was a redirection from Yahoo Pipes to the wordpress feed, has resulted in re-publishing the entirety of my blog in several rss readers. Sorry about that!!
