An answer to a question by Roused

The other day @roused asked me a question in a comment:

Is is like that with you and drawing, are you able to draw your thoughts, or is it just a close approximation? What artists like you and @shortcut do is like magic for me :-)

(I included the last part because, even if it wasn't necessary, it was very flattering and mentioned my friend @shortcut who deserves all the mentions I can give him!)

The simple answer to the question is: yes. The more technical control you get on a media, the more you are able to render your thoughts in for example a drawing. I do believe that there will always be some kind of translation between the thought and the media - this is especially true for painting where you are not able to control each little hair of the brush, but also music and text will go trough a similar process of translation.

But there is another thing that has to do with thoughts: thoughts are evolving from outside input. Imagine if you couldn't see, feel, hear... how would you develop a language? When I have been through very intense periods of working I sometimes feel that my thoughts are going in loops. The first time I experienced it I was in my early twenties on the Royal Academy in Copenhagen, and I was chocked by what I then saw as a sudden lack of inspiration, will power and discipline. So I went home to see if a solution would appear to this unexpected situation. For the next fourteen days I went for long daily strolls in Copenhagen, I read Thomas Mann's novel, Doctor Faustus and I went out drinking at bars in the evening. And then suddenly one day the whole machinery was back up and running.

What I learned is that you need input, and that to be able to work seamlessly you need to balance your life with other things than just writing, drawing or playing. Especially if you are one of the lonely artists, painters and writers, it is a good idea to go have a beer with your colleagues, taking long strolls or watch television. Musicians, filmmakers, dancers and others who are in connection with people while making their art is of course better off.

But look at this old clip from the fantastic movie Round Midnight with Dexter Gordon :) Maybe Dex needs a little break (I have to add that he is playing a role based on the life of Bud Powell )

But let's go further into this. Yesterday I made a photo manipulation based on a ivy sculpture by @ocrdu. He wrote in a comment that I might use the piece in one of my artworks and as soon as I saw it I could, in the intertwined weed, see a motive that I have been very interested in: Odin hanging from the Ask Yggdrasil. The photo manipulation piece I made was really just a clarification of what I had already seen, and for that reason I think it is a bit superfluous. Go see @ocrdu's work here: The Second Ivy Sculpture is Here!

Suddenly you see it. In this case an erotic scene.

Seeing images in random phenomenon like clouds, walls or ivy sculptures is an old game in which I am very trained. One thing is to draw from ideas you already have, force the drawing into the shape you imagined, but another just as important thing is to suddenly see possibilities in the lines of your sketch that is different from what you were doing yourself. I am very open for such things, and often make drawings where I am not deciding anything until very late.

Leonardo da Vinci wrote about this method in his advice for painters.

“I cannot forbear to mention among these precepts a new device for study which, although it may seem but trivial and almost ludicrous, is nevertheless extremely useful in arousing the mind to various inventions. And this is, when you look at a wall spotted with stains, or with a mixture of stones, if you have to devise some scene, you may discover a resemblance to various landscapes, beautified with mountains, rivers, rocks, trees, plains, wide valleys and hills in varied arrangement; or again you may see battles and figures in action; or strange faces and costumes, and an endless variety of objects, which you could reduce to complete and well drawn forms. And these appear on such walls confusedly, like the sound of bells in whose jangle you may find any name or word you choose to imagine.”

The brain creates images all the time. Try to think of nothing - if you are successful your head will start flashing strange image associations (If you are not able to do it yourself a sensory deprivation chambers will do the trick)! When confronted with sensory data of all sorts this phenomenon is paired with your pattern recognition skills and can be used artistically.

Hakuin Ekaku (1686-1769), Two Blind Men Crossing a Log Bridge

Probably the most famous example of this is the eighteen century Japanese zen-painters, artist that I have been very interested in. They prided themselves at being able to let the world reveal itself on the paper instead of forcing their own imagination onto it. Art as truth revealed directly to the artists :)

The Meditating Frog by the Rinzai Zen monk Sengai (1750-c1837)

So being able to render your thoughts is only part of what makes an artist good. I always thought that this is how to understand the famous quote by Picasso: "I do not seek. I find."

Alright this suddenly became a very long post. Many thanks to @roused and @ocrdu for getting me started. Yesterday I made four posts and got myself a new steemitboard badge. Today I think I will only make one post.

All images except where stated otherwise are made by myself.

Thanks for reading if you got this far.