DAY 2  ( Of Two)                                            

   Welcome back ! 

   And hope it was worthwhile reading thru   DAY  1  

   Lets just start where we left it...

   Looking long enough. I am assuming that you liked the short story too! well.. looking long enough at things to notice details that you might have otherwise missed out with a casual glance is really the starting point. And the next step is indeed the closing chapter as far as the introduction goes (that is before we get to the real action! of getting to really create some cool illustrations.. all your own original artwork!!

   I will also hope that you will find my habit of always reverting to a little bit of storytelling in between to be of use along the way. Its just so much more simpler than taking jargon and technical terms etc., that we dont want to know anyway! 

   So okay here goes..On a Friday in June'09, I was visiting my friend Zain at his home. We sat and chatted in his living room. Zain has a Siamese cat (Tom), that always curls up next to him on his sofa during the afternoons and would stay stretched out on that spot till evening, and then this cat would disappear by evening time for his night adventures.   In the middle of the sitting room on the center-table there was a tray with a bunch of bamboo shoots tied up and set on a shallow tray of water. Zain had been a student in my Weekend classes for a workshop I did in early summer of 2005 called "Quick Draw". He was sketching the bamboo stump and I was looking thru his latest sketches. 

   "Hey Zain you've noticed Tom lying there next to you." 

    I asked him.

   "If I asked you to take one look at him and then shut your eyes. And then recall what you saw. How much detail could you recall? Could you draw it down on a paper without taking another look at Tom?"    At that moment Tom looked up at me, as if he seemed to sense that we were talking about him. (cats are funny animals). After a brief questioning look Tom turned the other side and stretched into a differerent pose and started slowly licking himself.    Zain was keen to see if he could recall the initial pose that Tom had before he changed to a new pose with his legs stretched and licking himself. As Zain closed his eyes to recall, he held an expression like he was running over a garden full of thorns. Then the expression changed to something like how a person looks when he has locked himself out of his own house and left the keys inside.   Slowly he opened his eyes and looked at me and then at Tom. Tom turned again and got up on his legs and stretched himself. With one final look at me he lit out of the room and the only proof that he had been in that room just a while back was the slight dent and crease he left on the cushions.

   "So Zain, can you recall what you had seen in the first glance?" 

   I asked.  

   He replied " I guess I can."

   He put a new page on the pad and proceeded to sketch it quickly. ( Zain had been doing some sketching on a regular basis and was ready for a challenge at any time).But the pencil didnt move beyond the few initial lines.   Often when we try to remember something (besides numbers) its only the emotion that you can recall. In this case, it was the 'emotion' of comfort and relaxed laziness which is the epitome of all cats. And that was all Zain was actually able to recall. His mind, on the other hand, kept him reassured that he had the picture in there. Usually the mind's eye sees and stores visuals as emotions or feelings and not as visual 'snapshots' like a camera does. 

   Do you know that a trained eye can gradually become like a camera ! 

(But again that isn't the idea here)

     So, a demand made on the mind to take precise visual details often changes things.. ( Details like, in this case..was the cat's head resting on the paws or on the sofa?" or ''How was the tail placed " etc,. Such pieces of information are the building blocks.. 

  How do I know this? Well its a fact that the mind simply wont do more than what we command it to do. For instance, if theres a puzzle that needs to be sorted, the mind will work on it, because it is natturally inclined to solve problems that are fed to it. Often the process happens when we sleep. A puzzle is subconciously recognised as something that needs a solution.

   Often when we look at something.. we carry away a feeling about it.

   Its this feeling that stays with us longer and stronger than a ''visual snap shot'' . A camera takes on to its memory buffer a visual snapshot every time it clicks a picture. That action is an end in itself.   The mind isnt like that. We are creatures who like to use our senses to feel and thus understand thru feeling. 

   Illustration needs to be a similar exercise, an exercise in high sensitivity and creating a feeling. 

   The drawing must EVENTUALLY EXUDE A FEELING ! 

   In our daily lives the eye sees and the mind makes a sketch (on itself) of whatever we see !  The mind uses a pallete of emotions and that leads to the feeling! How about if the eye were used to get that information assembled ... and then used ... to get a drawing on a piece of paper and voila! 

There you have a strong piece of feeling on paper!

   So its about how much Visual Information you carry away from the scene, irrespective of how long you looked at it. Going back to our previous chat it is all about looking long enough to retain essential visual information in the minds buffer. How long you look would depend on how long you need to. One thing is for sure, you will gradually grab more visual information in less time. That should be the aim!

   Thats the complete package as far as the theory goes, Soon we shall meet with some very interesting PRACTICALS !!!_____________________________________________________________________________

So, what do you carry with you from this small talk! 

 Every word of it for sure ! 

BUT,

Two words that i will use a lot in all our future meeting are ..

   1.     Feeling       

&  

2.     Emotion  

We need to get these two words always to lead us in all our work... 

always keep them close to your heart!  

Cheers, until we meet again!

Sincerely

Jacob John 

 (Illustrator)

www.jacob-john.com

www.candrawanything.blogspot.com