{"id":1749,"date":"2006-02-14T13:21:26","date_gmt":"2006-02-14T13:21:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.john-howe.com\/blog\/?p=1749"},"modified":"2020-09-25T08:39:50","modified_gmt":"2020-09-25T07:39:50","slug":"drawing-the-line-somewhere-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.john-howe.com\/blog\/drawing-the-line-somewhere-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Drawing the Line Somewhere"},"content":{"rendered":"

Or (Ill-)Applied Commuter Skills<\/h4>\n

I used to be a great commuter. Admittedly, given that I work at home, commuting in the classical sense is always limited to going from one room to another, but I also had the same attitude to my work. Dedication to efficiency, single-mindedness of purpose, focus on mapping out, setting down, masking off, all those precise gestures geared \u2013 or so I thought \u2013 to getting the job done. To getting from point A (the commission) to point B (calling FedEx for a pick-up).
\nFirst of all, a sketch taken no farther than necessary for the client to gain an idea of how essential elements would sit, transformed into a tight drawing which would allow me to work basically stage by stage from back to front, masking of foreground elements, creating a seamless backdrop, peeling off the frisket, masking the background, doing the elements in the fore. Everything designed so no time was lost, no effort wasted. Rather like choosing the best bus to catch the correspondance, taking the route with the most obliging traffic lights. More or less linear, no detours, no surprises.<\/p>\n

Somewhere along the way, all this efficiency began to feel just too\u2026 well, efficient.<\/p>\n

So now I\u2019m the opposite. An impenitent dilly-dallyer, explorer of overgrown and little-trod paths, eager chooser of the high road, unless the low road looks longer or more winding. Now I do intricate and thoughtful sketches (or none at all), not necessarily of the subject at hand, start painting more or less directly without really bothering to transfer too much to the paper,\u00a0 work in a totally haphazard fashion \u2013 a bit here, a bit there \u2013 as strikes my fancy, change my mind in the middle and do something entirely different (editors LOVE this kind of unpredictable artsy-fartsyness), or if I do miraculously keep focused, send in a version of the painting when it fits the commission sheet, and then go on to finish – and occasionally ruin – the piece completely differently. (Editors LOVE this too \u00ab Can you send us the original artwork ? \u00bb \u00ab Well, I\u2019d LIKE to, but I stupidly carried on with my characteristically beatific optimism, subsequently ruined it and tore it up into minute but cathartic little pieces. What\u2019s your FedEx account number again? It\u2019ll all fit in a small envelope. \u00bb).<\/p>\n

Now, before you shake your head sadly and think a few wires have come loose, or a few bricks toppled off the load on a tight curve, let me explain.<\/p>\n

In the fine art of getting from point A to point B, arrival is only part of the deal.
\nIt\u2019s how you get there that counts.<\/p>\n

Of course it helps if you can actually pay the rent from an activity that consumes you heart and soul, but the WHOLE idea is that, independantly of invoicing properly, this job is supposed to take you somewhere and show you something on the way. It\u2019s all the difference between a straight line with a ruler and a freehand curve. I agree that singlemindedness of purpose is a valuable trait,\u00a0 but not when it is used as an excuse to tread a far-too-familiar and well-worn path. Hopefully, I have come around to an obstinate commitment to mindless wandering. (It\u2019s so easy to confuse rectilinearity and rectitude.) Mind you, I don\u2019t rule out the occasional straightedge, but I\u2019m not talking about what ends up on the paper.
\nIt\u2019s something like life. You don\u2019t really live it JUST to get to point B.<\/p>\n

I was never good at straight lines anyway.<\/p>\n

After all, to quote Chesterton:
\n\u201cArt, like morality, consists of drawing the line somewhere.\u201d
\nAT HELL, TURN LEFT
\nOR THE FINE ART OF APPLYING ONE\u2019S OWN ADVICE<\/p>\n

As I was going to Saint Ursanne in the Jura, about an hour and a bit from Neuch\u00e2tel, for an important meeting, (humming all the while \u201cAs I was going to St. Ives\u201d despite the extra syllable) I met a place called Les Enfers\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Naturally, I suppose there\u2019s a perfectly logical explanation for calling a little town \u201cHell\u201d (plural), but it seemed the ideal spot to take some of my own advice and turn off the main road. Take a left when you reach Hell, how marvelously mythological thought I, hitting the left blinker. (I stopped to take the picture of the sign on the way OUT of Hell, which seemed far more prudent.What Greek legend never says is that Orpheus actually turned to take a quick snapshot for his web log.) Then I took the first left that I found off the main road, and finally a gravel road off that.
\nThe landscape was beautiful. Normally, I would have sped to my appointment, arrived far too early and cooled my heels turned my thumbs checked my watch for half an hour. (I wonder if it\u2019s not something to do with all the watchmaking in this part of the world. You can\u2019t accuse the Neuch\u00e2telois of being ahead of their times, but they certainly are punctual.) Bad habits die hard, but dilly-dallying in prescribed doses can do wonders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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GUEST APPEARANCE<\/p>\n

Recently received a very pleasant letter asking if a text of mine could be reproduced on another site.
\nCheck out the Artletter<\/a> by Martha Hart.
\nSimple. clear, legible and readily readable.
\nThe joys of the ubiquitous if unpredictable net: finding pen pals at the speed of light.
\nBOOKS<\/p>\n

Currently reading \u201cWhat Am I Doing Here?\u201d by Bruce Chatwin.
\nNot only is this a question I constantly ask myself (though in my case, it\u2019s rarely metaphysical, and more likely limited to getting on the wrong tube train or making a wrong turn – at which point I raise my eyes to the sky and lament \u201cOh God, what am I doing here?\u201d In response, a great deep voice from the heavens says \u201cThat\u2019ll teach you to pay closer attention to the exit signs.\u201d Rhetoric and road maps are not necessarily percieved in the same manner\u2026) but it\u2019s a worthy purchase just for one of the chapters on the nature of nomadism entitled \u201cNomad Invasions\u201d.
\nAs a species, we seem to have passed from nomad\u2019s lands to no-man\u2019s lands (I just made that up, no, I\u2019m not kidding, I did). Wherever it is we are headed, one can only hope it\u2019s not in a straight line\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Or (Ill-)Applied Commuter Skills I used to be a great commuter. Admittedly, given that I work at home, commuting in the classical sense is always limited to going from one room to another, but I also had the same attitude to my work. Dedication to efficiency, single-mindedness of purpose, focus on mapping out, setting down, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[457,459,435,458,437],"class_list":["post-1749","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chronicles","tag-les-enfers","tag-martha-hart","tag-saint-ursanne","tag-snow","tag-tree"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1PY8Y-sd","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.john-howe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1749","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.john-howe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.john-howe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.john-howe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.john-howe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1749"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.john-howe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1749\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.john-howe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1749"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.john-howe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1749"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.john-howe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1749"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}