Influential Person #1 - Daniel Quinn

For awhile now, I've been thinking about doing a whole sketchbook full of portraits of people that have had an influence on my life and the way I think and act in the world. If you believe that by sketching or drawing or painting someone that you can come to understand them better (as I do), then this kind of an exercise seems like a good idea. So I started a list of all the people I could think of that have had a significant influence on me and started collecting some images from internet searches. Here is my first victim - Daniel Quinn.

Daniel Quinn wrote a book called Ishmael. At the time I read it, some 20 or so years ago now, it had a profound impact on how I thought of myself and my place in the world. From Wikipedia - "Ishmael is a 1992 philosophical novel by Daniel Quinn. It examines mythology, its effect on ethics, and how that relates to sustainability. The novel uses a style of Socratic dialogue to deconstruct the notion that humans are the end product, the pinnacle of biological evolution. It posits that human supremacy is a cultural myth, and asserts that modern civilization is enacting that myth." . The book forced me to challenge some assumptions I had grown up with and, in doing so, it changed the way I saw the world.

I'll be posting these portraits periodically and numbering them in the titles but they are in no particular order of importance in their influence.
 

Gazebo Sketch

I woke early on this Friday morning and wandered over to the gardens, which I hadn't really seen since we drove in on Wednesday. There are over 125 gazebos on the property - most are wooden and built in the Adirondack style. This stone gazebo was sort of unique and fit onto a page I was doing with vignettes of these gazebos. I wanted to do a sketch without the black pen. It's a little different from my normal way of sketching but I actually kind of like it so look for more pencil and watercolor sketches. This little sketch is about 4 1/2" x 5 1/2".

Mohonk

In my 5x8 PORTRAIT sketchbook Moleskine. It will have to do and although it's not great for watercolors, it's good enough...