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Kama.

God is making love to us.

He/She/It (Venus/Apollo/Eros/
Jesus/Krishna/Prakriti) is touching, caressing and teasing us at every moment of our life, and we can respond in the same spirit of Eros.

The famous Indian Kama Sutra deals with the study of sensual joy, an unexpected subject for a highly spiritual culture. But like the Song of Solomon and the Taoist concept of Yin and Yang, it deals with joy. Kama means Joy.

Move your hand. Feel the cool touch of the air on the back of your hand. Breathe in slowly and attentively. Feel the freshness and coolness of the air in your nostrils down to your throat. Breathe out and feel the comfortable warmth of clean breath released into nature.

Every morning we are woken with the gentlest lover's kiss: the warmth of the sun, the singing of birds, the play of traffic, the pressure of the cat walking on the duvet, lovingly roused until the panic of the day sets in.

We can do the same, partly in response, partly as agent of this love. When we touch another person, whisper sweet nothings to them, nibble their neck, make a cup of tea, we are acting in the spirit of Kama. Making love is only one form of sensual joy. The Sutra delights in details such as the butterfly kiss and eye contact (I believe!), joyful, playful stuff. But just stroking a cat or talking to a bird, likewise, is making love, to nature.

Just being still and receptive is being a good lover, but we often ignore the advances of nature. Being bowled over by the waves, having your skirts lifted by the South Easter, running in the rain, is nature at play. All we need to do is to take joy and play along. Laugh.

We are able actively to make love to nature, in the form of art. Every touch of our brush on canvas is sensual in nature, delicate or forceful, light or deep, crumbling or caressing, rough or loving; when we are painting in the groove, as expressive as a violinist. We are never alone, always loved.

What is art?

A few years ago I had this challenge thrown at me: "So then, what is art?"

My first reaction was to type, "You don't catch me with this old question...", but I paused. It is a question to which the lack of a clear definition is the cause of the bulk of the rubbish which is passed off as art.

It was late at night. I went outside to put away my car, and as I reached up to pull down the garage door, arms out, a shooting star streaked across the sky. I made no wish. Instead I heard with physical clarity, the chorus to Beethoven's Ode to Joy, "Sing, sing a song of joy!.."

I remained for a while, then closed the door, and went inside. This is what I typed.

All art is celebration.
Good art is the celebration of a good mind,
and great art is the celebration of a great mind.

Proportion.

Proportion 1. Overview.

The test of a good artist is accuracy.

When you are battling with a picture, when you have that vague sense of dissatisfaction, you can stop worrying about the thickness of your paint, and the shape of your brush, even the depth of your tonalities.

The problem is always proportion. Always.

We usually cannot see it, but the subconscious know it.

When we make somebody's leg too short, the subconscious sees a handicapped person, not a bad painting. When we get the eyes wrong, the subconscious sees a criminal personality, not a lazy artist. And it hurts.

It takes time and serious effort to find the error. We have to compare everything, the eyes to the mouth, the ears to the shoulders, the legs to the torso, the hand to the ankle. There are 3 ways of exploring proportion:

1. Academic. Learn the ideal set of proportions of the human body. This is essential if you are working from imagination or memory, or even from sketches.

2. Modeling in clay. In three steps using a free and lithe style of drawing, sketch the silhouette of the figure, then sculpt that outline, and finally refine it. This is the most natural and most artistic way of getting accurate proportion, but it depends hugely on having a good eye.

3. Triangulation. Identify key points in your subject. Carefully observe the relationship between the various points in terms of the angle of direction between them. Draw these lines of direction and where two such lines intersect, the position of the third point is marked with great precision. This is the most accurate method of establishing and correcting proportions, but it requires very hard work, which is why most artists rather settle for incorrect proportions. Do not be one of them!

Visit me.

My website is at http://artistvision.org
a neverending work in progress.

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Paint lightly.

Be a gentle artist. Obsession in any form is a bad thing. It is easy for art to become ego-driven. We need to love art, not the idea of being an artist.

You need to be in control of our brush, your hand, your emotions. This is the test: Can you let it be?