Thread by @HowardSteen4

1/n Tips for surviving the 'pandemic' madness #2
...Continuing my occasional series...
Discover your innate creativity via Art

The weeks turn quickly & it's art class day again. Two weeks ago I posted 'my work in progress' on the topic 'elephants'. Finished image & prior one:

2/n Art as a therapy for the mid? Art as the bringer of truth?
In the 'advanced, modern and sophisticated' societies we live in, art - at an educational level- gets relegated to something on a rather more trivial level than say the study of the sciences e.g. molecular biology...

3/n Evidence for this is the fact that a moderately accomplished artist who has mastered his craft will struggle to have a professional career of any value while even the most mediocre of virologists can be elevated to 'rock star' status by creating rubbish.

4/n How can art therefore be of any help in the present moral crisis which society finds itself in? I want to suggest two things here:
1. that artistic expression, which many people avoid -because they think they have no talent for it- is more accessible than they think
and..

5/n 2. The application of the learned principles and skills of the artist required to create an image which speaks to other people is a way communicating truths about the world we live in whether they be societal or scientific truths.

but take care to learn your skills well...

6/n ...because as Goethe pointed out, there are artists who learn their craft well & having done this (actually it is never done because artistic perfection is a lifelong quest) their work communicates truths and reality where some others are literally disgusting 'piss artists'..

7/n ... a category into which much 'modern art' and also 'modern science' now sadly falls, dragging other dubious actors along with it to the detriment of civil society the world over...
How can art offer a way out of this? Does it have any role to play? ...

8/n Yes, I think it can and does have an important role to play in our society and culture as a moderator and truth finder & we need to get this back because free artistic expression has all but disappeared in the last 12 months ... another casualty of the "pandemic measures"?

9/n "But...", and I hear many people say this, "I am no good at art I've never been any good at it." I don't quite believe this and I don't buy it. I believe most, perhaps all, of us are born with artistic creativity ... just like we have natural immunity to diseases. We ...

10/n .. just need to some help to find it's expression. That is the value of having a good teacher. So back to my art class...Our teacher teaches us the 'first principles' of creating a piece of representation art i.e. an image which speaks to and communicates reality = truth

11/n In the case of elephants, understand the details of anatomy and the rules of proportion (Leonardo did this as did all the great masters). Practice, practice, practice ... then you might be ready to attempt your project.

12/n I did two images containing elephants. The one (which depicts a herd of elephants escaping from a bush fire) is reasonably 'finished' i.e. I could improve it more but basically I am fairly happy with it. The other (showing an elephant basking in the light) still requires...

13/n ... quite some work. Often while working on an image I think about the subject. Dr Seuss wrote of elephants:

Would that our politicians were more like elephants!

14/n Seuss also wrote this:
I am not sure if he was thinking about elephants but elephants seem able to steer themselves away from natural dangers by instinct and find the light - as illustrated in my images - while humans have great problems with this!

15/15 The only real problem elephants suffer from is humans! But that is not very surprising really after all we've seen since March 2020.

I have moved on to dinosaurs now and may find something to say about them in a future thread if this has not been too boring for you.

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