Filed under: drawing, photography | Tags: black & white, charcoal, charcoal drawing, dead tree drawing, dead trees, drawing
Dead Tree
A brief visit back to some dead tree drawings …
Filed under: drawing, photography | Tags: art, black & white, dead trees, drawing, landscape, moon, night, owl, photography, soft moon, winter
- soft moon glow
perhaps i will find some time to write about this later, but i wanted to get my lastest drawing up here for you …
cheers.
Filed under: drawing, poetry | Tags: art, autumn, december, drawing, foliage, haiku, leaves, maryland, poetry, seattle, trees, winter, woods
december is upon us, but i cannot say that this writer feels much of a difference from the last days of a month and the first days.
when i left for seattle on nov. 11, the trees here in md were brilliantly colored. the leaves decided to make their last days, their best. i had plans to return from the west coast and photograph various locations catalogued in my mind. i wanted to pull out and dust off my canon slr, which i’ve almost exclusively used to shoot in black and white, and shoot autumn’s dying display in color. two things stopped me from doing so: firstly, the battery in the camera needed to be replaced, and second-of-ly, the leaves could not hold on long enough for me to captured them on film … for when i returned just a week later on the 18th, most of the trees were mere skeletons, stripped of their brightly colored leafy robes. it was quite a let down to say the least, but there is beauty in the dead of winter.
/in the winter wood/
/there is no life to be found/
/felled leaves, fallen snow/
just as the trees in maryland were preparing for the change of seasons, out in seattle, i too, was preparing for a possible change. i have been in the process of applying to the art institute of seattle to go back to school to both broaden my horizons and narrow my focus. half way home in the application process, having last week submitted my financial aid information … waiting on the numbers.
thanksgiving proved to be too much at times. family, and then more family as we celebrated an aunt’s 60th birthday on friday. extensions of extended family … our small house proved too small to afford one solitude of any kind, even for five minutes. i survived.
Filed under: drawing | Tags: autumn, beauty, brokenness, complete, dead trees, drawing, fall, gloaming and dawn, God, hope, jon foreman, redemption, spring, summer, wholeness, winter
i had some more thoughts to add to my previous post … so i’ve called this the addendum.
i’m going to post another drawing to help illustrate some more thoughts more aptly. this was the first drawing i did in the dead tree series. it may look familiar …
jon foreman, anyone?
again, this image was achieved by doing the actual drawing and then taking a photo of that drawing using lighting to add to the overall aesthetic. once the photo is on the computer, i touch it up using some simple software. this method suits me well because my drawing skills leave much to be desired and it allows me to be creative in other areas of media.
the above drawing was something i did from scratch … that is, you will not find this tree anywhere, as far as i know. but apparently the design of the tree and its shadow are not completely original, as they look uncannily similar to the cover of jon foreman‘s fall ep. this was an honest “mistake” but i think it points to something that resonates in me …
long before i knew of jon foreman’s “ep-for-every-season” project, i had envisioned a photo project based on the four seasons. i had (as i believe i discussed in the previous post) thought about finding a place of particular beauty, and taking a picture during every season, showing the beauty of each setting. scrambler and i recently discussed these things. he articulated it more perfectly than i ever could … and i won’t even try to regurgitate what he said word for word, for fear of butchering it, but … it revolved around the idea that through the seasons the tree’s appearance will change … it will look different, but it is still the same tree … beautiful in its own way in all four seasons.
the fours seasons illustrated through trees …
i love the change of seasons. i think i would grow tired of a place that didn’t have them. i crave the wholeness of the year. times of sunshine and warmth. times of gray and cold. times of dry and of wet. there are times the weather suits my mood. there are also times when the weather dictates my mood. i suppose it is the same as movies and literature, and other forms of stimuli. this really is a poor attempt to articulate these thoughts of mine, but i shall continue nonetheless.
complete.
we like the idea of complete. each season complements its predecessor and successor. gloaming and dawn complete the day. we say things “complete us” … referencing the fact that we are, in fact, incomplete in our current state. we hear a piece of music that ends on something other than the root chord of the key … this deceptive cadence, as it is referred to in music, leaves the listener on the edge of his or her seat, waiting for the chord and piece to be resolved or redeemed by the root … this makes us uncomfortable … this “incompleteness” of the song.
we like stories that resolve, and we marvel at our stories of “incompleteness” and brokenness being resolved and redeemed by our Maker. we’ve been shown all around us glimpses of His work, which is a great mystery, but one that offers hope of change, wholeness, and even beauty in every season.
cheers.
Filed under: drawing | Tags: bruised reed, dead tree, hope, pain, smoldering wick, vulnerability
all this talk of green trees drying up and dry trees flourishing … and now bruised reeds not being broken. i’ll make no attempt to hide how i feel in this blog … and lately, i’ve felt fragile.
at times, i’ve felt as though i’ve been close to breaking. until the last couple of days, confusion has reigned in my heart and mind. i’ve been unsure of where it is i want to go, what it is i want to do. admitting these kinds of feelings is not always easy … i think many of us put on a facade of strength; of toughness … of being bigger than we actually are, forgetting the reality of how fragile we can be …
we are dry trees, thirsting for water. we are the low tree, susceptible to dangers the high tree knows not. we are bruised reeds, showing every sign of breaking in the gale … we are smoldering wicks, on the verge of being extinguished … we don’t see ourselves this way … we see ourselves as the high tree, stately and distinguished, standing straight in the strongest gusts … we see ourselves as white hot fire, showing no signs of being snuffed out. i guess until we reach points along the way where our counterfeit strength is peeled back by adversity, we don’t see ourselves as we ought. the pain comes in the peeling back of the counterfeit layers of strength, and freedom is achieved when the last layer is peeled away revealing a vulnerable being. but as freeing as this vulnerability may be, it is scary.
that said, i am scared shitless, but energized. energized and hopeful.
i feel like this post petered out here at the end, but i would implore you to take another look at the drawing above …
cheers.
Filed under: drawing | Tags: art, dead trees, drawing, God, life, media, photography
ezekiel 17:21-24:
“All the (Y)choice men in all his troops will fall by the sword, and the survivors will be scattered to every wind; and you will know that I, the LORD, have spoken.
Thus says the Lord GOD, “I will also take a sprig from the lofty top of the cedar and set it out; I will pluck from the topmost of its young twigs a tender one and I will plant it on a (Z)high and lofty mountain.
“On the high mountain of Israel I will plant it, that it may bring forth boughs and bear fruit and become a stately (AA)cedar. And birds of every kind will nest under it; they will nest in the shade of its branches.
“All the (AB)trees of the field will know that I am the LORD; I bring down the high tree, exalt the low tree, dry up the green tree and make the dry tree (AC)flourish. I am the LORD; I have spoken, and I will perform it.”
… i’ve probably only read this particular text once in my entire life, and it was probably an instance where i randomly flipped gilded the pages of a very dusty bible and my eyes happened to fall on these words. i remembered just one part from this passage, and it became the title of this blog. with so much changing recently, whether it be my evolving theology and subsequent evolving worldview, or my new found desire to challenge myself with goals, i’ve found myself feeling very scattered in every sense of the word. my heart is in many different places. my mind wanders and wonders endlessly at the mysteries and rapturous pain and beauty of life. “scattered toward every wind” has such rich poetic imagery to it. though it is used in a markedly negative way in the above passage, in all my aforementioned wondering, i’ve most times viewed my scattering as a positive development.
i think of the dandelions of spring and summer … as kids, and perhaps even now, we would take these weeds, and blow the white, fluffy seeds off and send them off wherever the wind would take them. these seeds land, and new dandelions pop up everywhere. there is something both nostalgic and beautiful about this natural process … i feel as though i am being blown off my stem, scattering toward every wind, discovering new things about myself, about God, and about this world along the way. i’m becoming pliable … feeling that wherever these winds take me, i, like the dandelion weed, can settle and even flourish.
feeling as though i am already a fairly creative person, this season i’m in seems to have lit a fire underneath me, and provided some inspiration. i hope that this blog will be an appropriate canvas for some art and some thoughts …
in the spirit of the above passage, here is part one in a series of trees that i have started drawing … i started drawing dead trees … since it is pretty much my first foray into drawing, i’ve decided to combine drawing with photography. i tried to photograph each tree in a creative and interesting way to add to their … potential goodness, for lack of a better phrase. anyway, here is part one … which is actually the most recent one. for more info on this particular work, i believe there is a comment section below …
cheers.
