Category: art

Your story, your art, your life

~ David W. Jones ~ Leave a comment

A quote from Dianna Wynne Jones, author of many, many well-loved books, such as the Howl’s Moving Castle trilogy:

…somewhere, somewhen, someone is going to read your book at a time when such things stick for life. And you have to make it the kind of book that is worth remembering that vividly for that long. You have to make it an experience in its own right.

Reflections On the Magic of Writing by Dianna Wynne Jones

Do it. You know you want to, because you know somewhere, somewhen in your life, someone wrote a story – or told you a story – that stuck with you. That changed you, changed what you wanted to do, changed who and how you wanted to be in your life.

Do it.

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Objects in mirror are closer than they appear

~ David W. Jones ~ Leave a comment

We were making a last-minute run to the grocery store New Years Eve, and this was what the rear-view mirror of our neighbor’s vintage truck was showing me. I guess it gets the message across?

Shot with my Nokia phone, then cropped, converted to 16-bit TIFF, then run through Luminance HDR and saved as a final JPG.

Happy new year to all that celebrate it, regardless of just when you consider the new year as beginning.

Some candles and smoke

~ David W. Jones ~ Leave a comment

From Halau Wa’a Episcopal Church’s Christmas Eve service, 24 December 2022. Processed in high-dynamic range (HDR) using Luminance HDR. It brings out the candle smoke. The “candles” are actually those anti-mosquito citronella pots. The church chose them because we’ve had windy weather and the citronella flames stand up to the wind better.

Flames flaring on five candles, with a wreath around their bases and candle smoke glowing above them.

Are you biased against color in art?

~ David W. Jones ~ Leave a comment

Chromophobia: The greatest conspiracy in ancient art
https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20220810-chromophobia-the-greatest-conspiracy-in-ancient-art

There’s also, I think, the heavy bias in art photography: That only black and white photos are “fine art”.

My favorite visual art in high school has pencil drawing. Sharp lines, smooth, detailed shading, no color.

I also did watercolor. It was color, but with shading and blending.

I tried oilpainting. I think a key skill there is mixing colors – and I was terrible at it.

What sculpture I did was made from items that already had their own colors.

So what about you and color in art?

The ‘illusion of knowledge’ that makes people overconfident – BBC Worklife

~ David W. Jones ~ Leave a comment

https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20220812-the-illusion-of-knowledge-that-makes-people-overconfident

Something to think about – at work if you’re still in the office world, in your creative work if you’re an author or artist.

If you’re a writer, how does this apply to your characters when they find themselves in situations where they think they know what to do?

Advice to storytellers from me

~ David W. Jones ~ 2 Comments

Tell the story that needs to be told, in the way it needs to be told, to the length it needs to be told.

Don’t poison a story by insisting it must be an apple when it’s really an orange.

Don’t stunt a story by forcing it beyond its natural growth nor by forcing it to grow in a box too small.

“Genres” and “standard story lenghs” are publisher’s artefacts, not part of storytelling.

Breakthroughs don’t come through abiding by conventions and working in boxes.

For those creatives sentenced to the hell called “town”

~ David W. Jones ~ Leave a comment

Newly chartered CreativeMornings HNL to hold lecture series Hawaii – Pacific Business News

https://www.bizjournals.com/pacific/news/2019/04/17/newly-chartered-creativemornings-hnl-tohold.html?ana=RSS&s=article_search&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+bizj_pacific+%28Pacific+Business+News+of+Honolulu%29

At least the first one sounds interesting. If starting way too early in the day!