I can say it took me all the way to the last half of the month to get into the motion. I feel as though I let myself down, but now it's time to look back at the month and see what I DID accomplish.
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| Portrait of Nicolaes van Outback (The Koala) |
As you can see below, the image on the left is where I left off last (July 10th 2014) and on the right is where I finished it (March 1st 2015) I'm a little embarrassed by how long it took for me to get back to this. I think it's an improvement.
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| Cotton Hill on Right |
Writing : I expected 5 pages of story writing a week out of myself. In my little red book, which I'm calling my story bible, I wrote 22 pages worth, which exceeds my expectations for myself by 2 whole pages! Woot! Of course, the further I get into it, I wonder if I can keep up that pace. It's definitely been a big help to me already.
Movie a Week : Now here I stumbled a little. Instead of 4 movies this month, I only saw 2. I'm not going to count that I also sat through 300: Rise of an Empire, because that was just atrocious. I also didn't do any thumbnail studies or blog entries for the two movies I did see. I think I can change that this next month, though. I can at least give a short summary of my thoughts and what I learned from each movie.
Blade Runner (1982) - Definitely felt uncomfortably confused in this otherworldly place. For it's time, it was pretty crazy what they were able to accomplish visually. The constant motifs of smoke and sickly choices in lighting were very interesting to me, if not a touch disturbing. The story didn't make sense to me on the first pass through, but some reading online sort of helped me go back and explore what I had just seen. It's definitely a film that needs to be watched more than once to get the total picture. I guess the biggest thing I learned from this film was that any good story has a surface story, and a core story. On the surface, Blade Runner was about a bounty hunter who needed to kill very human-like robots who were developing emotions and acting upon them.
Upon reflecting on the film, Constant hints throughout the movie tell us that there is something not right with everyone. The whole film leads you feeling a little detached from all of the characters, even Decker. So you feel as though you're moving through the world as one of these robots. Confused, hazed, and struggling to connect to anyone, but longing to the whole time. Decker is hinted at being one of the very robots he had been trained to hunt down, but he never really questions his humanity. Not the way that Rebecca does. At it's heart, the story makes us question what it is that makes us truly human. Is it replicable? Can it be bought and sold? If memories don't make us who we are, what does?
The Shawshank Redemption (2004) - What an amazing film. The masterful writings of Stephen King and the direction of Frank Darabont made this story sing on so many different levels. It's both thought provoking and touching on an emotional level as we follow the character of Andy Dufresne. Andy is accused of killing his wife and her lover, and through a string of poor decisions on the murder night, he places himself at the scene of the crime. Andy is sentences to serve out 2 life sentences, and has a very difficult experience there. There are some positive events, mostly revolving around developing friendships with fellow inmates, but his spirit is almost broken on multiple occasions. To me, the biggest thing I learned from this film was how important the build up to the finale is. Throughout the film, Andy is cool and calm. (In my opinion, this may be based on some mental condition where he internalizes his feelings instead of letting them out.) Andy uses his connections with his friend Red and his smarts to eventually find a way out. I think anyone could tell that this film is heading to his escape in the end, but the destination isn't the important part. Instead, the manner in which he gets there, and the trials he endures make us forget about where the film is heading. This film successfully buries the main plot within the sub-plots. By the time that Andy escapes, you forget that he had been tunneling all this time. You're also suddenly made aware of all the times Andy might had lost everything if he didn't play his cards right. You start looking back and seeing that everything he did, down to financially setting up a ghost account for himself, was all to serve the bigger purpose.
His ultimate freedom.
Studying forms and the basics:
You know what they say, studying your fundamentals will always be important as an artist. Namely, figure drawing. I let myself down in this respect, as I did very little figure drawing this month. I need to crack down a little bit and just do some studies of people, even if it's not the most interesting thing in the world sometimes. For my own sake, I need to make it fun!
To put a positive spin on that though, I'd like to point out that I have been drawing more than I used to over-all. Time spent at coffee shops and on the BART this month have helped me loosen up and learn to draw like I used to. I've even found myself carrying my tiny sketch pad to bed with me, or holding on to it during a movie. It reminds me of how I used to take my sketch pad everywhere with me, and that's a very good thing!
Here's to hoping my posts increase in March!
