DRAWINGS
A quick concept sketch made on the iPad while waiting for a train. I gave myself about 30 minutes to experiment with the first image that came to my mind. Sometimes I find it useful to make simple digital paintings like this as a «warm-up» before a session of work on a more detailed drawing or a series of concept sketches.
Here are a few more sketches of some house ideas, as well as an idea for a megastructure.
I have always primarily been an environment artist, but I also enjoy drawing other things (especially people). I am going to start working on a some new ideas for more substantial visual stories/graphic novels again when I do not have a lot of work to do on a house. I first began to draw some comics last year, when I became especially inspired by the manga «The Walking Man» by Jiro Taniguchi (first published 1992). My first attempts were not bad, but they were pretty bland (laughs). Now that I have experimented and failed a bit with the genre, I feel ready to make something that is more impactful and evolved.
There are two ideas that I have in mind at the moment. The first is a story based in the modern world that explores themes of atomization and existentialism in urban societies. The second will be a fantasy story that is placed in a hypothetical world, where the role that one’s dwelling plays in one’s life is somehow emphasized. That is all that I will reveal for now, and this week I had some time to start to design some of the characters! Here is concept art for one of the female leads, who I have so far named «Katrine»: an intelligent woman who struggles with her own thoughts about herself and finding a place in an increasingly shallow mainstream culture.
Next week I plan to start sketching out some initial ideas for the environments in which these stories will play out.
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LEARNING JAPANESE
Learning languages is one of my favourite hobbies (nerd alert, I know). When I think about it, I have been studying languages consistently since about 2010. Currently I can speak 3 languages fluently: English, Norwegian and Russian. Previously I have been fluent in Swedish and Icelandic in addition to studying some Ukrainian. Right now, I try to study Japanese for at least 15-30 minutes per day. I probably get more joy out of this process than I should (laughs). Here we have my current board of kanji characters, which I am trying to memorize. Not the easiest thing to achieve.
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REFLECTIONS
I think that one of the worst habits that one can have is to take things personally.
When faced with an undesired consequence, I tend myself to be one of those people who immediately believes that it is one’s own fault. If only you had done this or this differently, I think to myself, if only you were different in such and such a way, you would have gotten a different result. No matter what, it is all about you!
This tendency is not entirely negative; such a way of being tends to lead one to develop an unusually strong sense of responsibility which often becomes an advantageous source of motivation. Taken as a type of objective judgment about one’s own achievements and position in the world, it is though not accurate. I struggle heavily with accepting the reality that sometimes things just do not work out and are not meant to be, regardless of one’s own objective qualities, choices or input. As a great trailer park philosopher once put it, «That’s the way she goes». A slightly more refined articulation of this state of being can be found in the philosophy of zen and especially Taoism. A significant part of our outcomes can always be attributed to pure randomness, and remains completely outside of our control. We are all victims of circumstance in some way, and everyone’s current position in life carries with it both a conscious and unconscious inertia.
Life is inherently frustrating. One can imagine much more than one’s circumstances can ever provide. One of my favourite discussions of this idea can be found in Søren Kierkegaard’s book «Either/Or» (1843). He writes:
«If I were to wish for anything, I should not wish for wealth and power, but for the passionate sense of the potential, for the eye which, ever young and ardent, sees the possible. Pleasure disappoints, possibility never.»
Kierkegaard held an unusual sense of the subtleties of the imagination and the challenges that it can present to a reflective being. Unfortunately, potential necessarily changes and dissolves with time. While it is always possible to choose to take a new course at any stage in one’s life in some form, one also has to accept that there are certain opportunities that only come once. Many ships either sail for good or never arrive at all. Sometimes there are doors that close well before we even have the chance to become conscious of their presence. There are other doors that we are never even set before, while others are. Even in an alternative world where we choose to set ourselves up with the most perfect possible conditions at any given time, the limitations of material reality entail that any given person will only personally be able to experience a minuscule slice of the possibilities. We all exist with completely unique combinations of circumstances and inherent qualities, and many of these are not actively chosen by us and could never have been intentionally planned. We have no say in the matter, no matter how hard we might fight against it.
(As a side note, this is one of the reasons why I enjoy reading. I read somewhere once that people that read «live a thousand lives», while people that do not read live only one.)
I think that it is especially relevant to recognise and accept the role of chance and arbitrariness in our rapidly changing modern times, where there are a lot of pretty gnarly tendencies at play which increasingly make it structurally impossible to attain many of the elements which traditionally gave life its meaning. To let go of internal judgement and the expectations that one formed in childhood can be difficult, and it involves genuine grief to accept that there are many imagined possibilities that one might never receive in reality due to nothing more than being the right person in the wrong place at the wrong time by no choice of one’s own. With the right disposition, it is though possible to find hope in the continual exploration of one’s own potential. Ultimately everyone’s life is determined at least partially by personal agency in addition to fortune. I think that by focusing on the former, and by trying to make the most of each day and one’s existence as a whole, one can create a uniquely meaningful path in the world completely within the state of the societal frameworks that remain outside of one’s control on a larger scale of experience.
Incidentally, Kierkegaard also wrote one of my favourite passages about the importance of approaching life in a playful way and recognizing the arbitrary nature of societal patterns:
«When I was young, I forgot how to laugh in the cave of Trophonius; when I was older, I opened my eyes and beheld reality, at which I began to laugh, and since then, I have not stopped laughing. I saw that the meaning of life was to secure a livelihood, and that its goal was to attain a high position; that love’s rich dream was marriage with an heiress; that friendship’s blessing was help in financial difficulties; that wisdom was what the majority assumed it to be; that enthusiasm consisted in making a speech; that it was courage to risk the loss of ten dollars; that kindness consisted in saying, “You are welcome,” at the dinner table; that piety consisted in going to communion once a year. This I saw, and I laughed.»
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MUSIC
One of my current favourite songs to get myself in a good mood: «Jambi» by TOOL. Perhaps you will be the lucky person that gets to listen to this song for the first time today.
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