Day 2 of April’s drawing-a-day challenge.
Today’s prompt: a honey bee spraying chemicals:
While feeding the world’s growing population is important, some of the modern farming practices are not always benign to the environment. Ironically, some of the pesticides we use to help protect crops may be contributors in honey bee deaths, an insect we rely on to fertilize many of our crops.
Memento Mori are reminders of our mortality. These can include such things including cut flowers and sand clocks, but the most iconic of the memento mori are skulls.
I don’t think I’ve ever understood why people are uncomfortable with skulls. Don’t get me wrong, I know why. Skulls represent a person who was once breathing and is now gone. You look out of your eyes which are set inside the skull’s sockets, like a cage that holds your spirit in. Someday, when you draw your last breath, after your skin rots or burns away, your bones remain; a reminder to others that you were once among the living.
I don’t see this as something that needs to be uncomfortable. Far from it! I think remembering our own mortality can help put ourselves in perspective. Last November I drew a skull a day. I’ll be posting a few of them with some thoughts. Until next time, don’t forget to dance.
Can you feel it? Something is just around the corner. Prepare your brushes and pens, for next month will be Inktober!
InkTober rules:
1) Make a drawing in ink (you can do a pencil under-drawing if you want).
2) Post it on your blog (or tumblr, instagram, twitter, facebook, flickr, Pinterest or just pin it on your wall.)
3) Hashtag it with #inktober
4) Repeat
Keep arting my friends!
So, a few weeks ago I noticed I had four 20 x 20 cm pieces of hanji laying around. I don’t remember why they were there, but they were. And so I drew a monkey on one of them:
Having a monkey on hand, I had to decide what to do with the other pieces. Two options came to mind. My first thought was to make a portrait style for each sign of the Eastern Zodiac. But then I remembered a song…
So monkey vs robot it is!
After I drew up the sapiens and automatons, I had a tough choice. I really liked the pieces in black and white. But I also wanted to add some color. So I did! I decided to have all the pieces be connected with red…
The monkeys I colored with orange and a warm green, while the robots I colored with blue and violet.
I’m thinking of keeping them together as a tetraptych, because that’s a friggin’ awesome word few of us get to use all that often.
I will be doing a few memes with these as well. Here’s one:
If you like, feel free to share! And as always, keep arting my friends!
If you fear basements, you will be extremely limited at the Seoul branch of the MMCA as most of it is built underground. However Gallery 1 is on the ground floor and right now they’re showing a special exhibition of the donated works of Suh Se Ok.
Suh Se Ok’s works with ink and hanji. I love the brush strokes, but I’m not too fond of extreme repetition. Many of this works give me a feeling of chained fences or plant cells.
Look at the titles and you’ll find they are abstractions of people. People dancing, twisting, holding hands, people doing many things. The repetition becomes a realisation that while we find ourselves the centers of our own world, there are hundreds, thousands, millions, billions more people out there with the same energy and capacity. This can be exhilarating or depressing depending on how you look at it.
Wether you find the multitude of similar others oppressive due to how unspecial you are or you in the grander scheme or you find the hope in the potential for all these special people to build something great, I’d recommend checking these out.
This exhibit of Suh Se Ok will be up through March 6th at the Seoul MMCA. Be sure to come, and if you aren’t afraid of basements, there is a lot more fascinating work below.
National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul
30 Samcheong-ro, Sogyeok-dong,
Jongno-gu, Seoul 03062
+ 02 3701 9500
