Saturday, September 17, 2011

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.
 


Monday, September 12, 2011

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".


Monday, September 5, 2011

Mohonk


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