Two

Processed in Gimp



Original

The White Horse

Been sketching for the last couple of months. Pretty amateurish stuff, to be frank! I'm still learning... I liked to draw as a kid, but only during my exams, not other times. My dad is an artist, and he used to paint earlier when he had time. He hasn't done a sketch in years. Whenever he used to sketch, I would sit next to him watching him, learning and getting inspired. I remember joining a class for preparing for the Elementary drawing examination. It was a class organized by my school and the classes were usually in the evening on weekends. The first class, I sat next to this really talented kid, who incidentally I met first during examination time while we were waiting on the grounds outside our school waiting to be let into our classrooms. While everyone else were busy with their heads deep in their books cramming up for the exams, this guy was sketching a self portrait - solely from memory! He had a mole on his face, which he didn't care to draw in his sketch. He said he didn't like to draw that. In that first elementary class, he was the only person I know; everyone else was a total stranger to me. Mid way through that class I was struggling to draw a scenery we were asked to do, but my friend was doing it effortlessly - it was natural to him. Soon the professor came to our desk to check on our progress. Seeing what a mess I'd made with my drawing, he volunteered to help me. While repairing my broken scenery, he asked me why I'd joined this class when I didn't know how to sketch! I don't recall what I replied, but I didn't go to that class again after that day.

After that from time to time I've tried to sketch, paint or try to involve myself in other arts as and when inspiration struck. But I never had the discipline to work on these things systematically. I would sketch for a few days, then forget about it for the next few months - I would lose interest. And it's always been that way with me.

And now the inspiration has struck again. But inspiration doesn't make you draw well (I wish it would). That takes effort and constant practice, something I've never really been good at. But last few days, I've been working harder on improving my sketching. And one of the things I've been trying to draw is a horse. Yes, a horse. It isn't easy to draw one. It's unbelievable how nature creates such a beautiful world around us! My initial attempts all resulted in what could be best described as a T-Rex. There must be an equivalent of Murphy's law in the art world, which says that try as you might, you'll never be able to draw the one thing that you've been trying to sketch! I'm sure, if I tried to draw a T-Rex, I wouldn't be able to draw one. And now that I'm trying to draw something else, T-Rexes have been filling my sketch book. But anyways, I think the seed of drawing a horse came from a documentary I saw about some of the important art pieces created during the last few years. One of the paintings discussed in that movie was Guernica by Pablo Picasso - a painting that depicts the horror that the witnessed in the Spanish town after a Nazi bombarding. The painting has a horse around the focal point of that painting, it's mouth twisted in pain. Horses were a common occurrence in Picasso's paintings around that time. And I thought it should be a good place to start sketching. But soon after I started, I realized how difficult it is to draw one. A key obstacle is getting the proportions right - the proportion of the height of the horse versus the length (and width if you are doing a frontal view). I then checked the internet for tutorial on sketching one and came across some nice basic tutorials, one of them being an about.com site tutorial. I also came across a neat YouTube video that walks you through the steps in easy to understand increments (unfortunately, I don't have the link anymore, but you can find other great tutorials there). I tried to follow these tutorials. I was soon able to get my sketches look more like a horse, but not consistently enough. I'm still working hard to get it right and hopefully soon I'll be able to get it just right.

Then yesterday I was listening to a song by Genesis (from one of their earlier albums called Trespass) called White Mountain (you can listen to the song on YouTube here) - one of my favorite songs on that album. For some reason I kept thinking the song was called White Horse (probably the first reported case of misheard song titles!). But the fact is that everytime I play that song (especially the intro to the song), a picture keeps appearing in my mind of a clearing in a dense forest at night and a white horse galloping towards me. The forest and the background has a dark greenish tinge and the horse is pure white. I want to sketch that scene with those colors, but I've not yet started using colors in my sketches yet. And more importantly I can't draw a horse well yet. As for the colors, I've been cheating a bit by photographing my sketches and then using effects - both the ones that come built-in with the camera and in the photo software I've been using (iPhoto) - to add a bit of color. As for drawing horses, I've struggled with stationary horses, galloping ones are an altogether different ball game! But I thought I might give it a try anyways! From where I'm currently, I can only get better. And so my friends, the sketch you see above is the result of my efforts so far. I drew it using this photo as a guide. Like my other sketches, this one also has been post-processed, but only a little. I clicked the photograph in negative, which gives it the white on black background effect (I really wanted to draw a white horse, and I don't have black paper and a white ink pen with me at the moment. :-) and I've enhanced the colors a bit using iPhoto. This is of course in preparation of one day (hopefully soon) painting that scene of that horse in the forest. In my mind's picture though, I've a view of the other side (left side) of the horse (as opposed to the one I've sketched, where you see the right-side of the horse). Also the horse is a little further back in the background. I still need a photo or another sketch of a horse in front of me to help me draw one. With practice I'm hopeful I'll be able to sketch one from memory.

Do let me know what you think about the above sketch, including criticism! What would really help me is feedback as to whether the proportions look right.

From The Beginning

Somewhere along the edge of time
was the beginning

the time went on
but we stood frozen

and there was the sun
to behold

we stood there
aching to remember and to hold still

the thoughts and dreams
as they passed through our frosty minds

but the time took us past
where we last stood

into the future
and the end...