How to Draw Trees - Lessons from a Jungle

 

On this trip to the Udawalawe national park, I decided to observe the jungle and draw the "Soul of the Jungle" back home. To say that this jungle was "dense" is an understatement. How on Earth do big animals like elephants even move in such a dense place?  Maybe this is why they come so often to the open road, despite people and their troublesome vehicles. You can almost feel that these animals find us repulsive. But still they keep coming to the road, because they really like open spaces. Human elephant conflict is a terrible problem. There were some wildlife enthusiasts in the vehicle so I put this question to them. If we clear open spaces in the jungle and dig small ponds near it so water would collect would elephants even bother to come and trouble people? They thought it was not “practical” and was too “simplistic”. They thought it was more to do with “loss of habitat” and “looking for food”. Maybe they were right, after all they were the experts. But I think they thought I was an idiot to come up with such a strange idea, though they were too kind to say it. So my mind wandered towards the only thing I kind of knew about – Art.

Speaking of art, trees it seems are an astonishingly difficult thing to paint and draw. Clearly you can't draw all the individual leaves one by one, but except at very long distances you can't ignore them either. What you should try to do is draw an approximate, representational shape and this differs from one kind of tree to another. Even in the same kind of tree it changes depending on the distance you are from it. This is why even expert artists who can draw the human face perfectly get a tree wrong so many times. When drawing branches many artists draw it like they are at either side of the trunk. But some branches kind of come towards you while others move backwards away from you at strange angles. Given below are two drawings I did using this method. 

Art Lessons from the Southern Expressway

 

Not long after we entered the Southern Expressway from Colombo, I wondered what I would learn if I observed it through the eyes of an artist. To be honest I am not really an artist, but more an art enthusiast if there is such a thing. Colours and lines have always fascinated me, and I once had an illusion of writing an art book called “How to make a paper interesting by using just oil pastel” so I feel I have a fair understanding of what I’m writing about.  

The first thing that struck me was how green everything was. Everything that was below the skyline that was not man made was actually green. I expected the earth to show in many places and rocks to be seen, but this seemed rarely the case. Trees, shrubs, bushes and grass covered everything. I expected the trunks and branches of trees and twigs to be a different colour, but these seemed to hide behind an army of green. Green itself is a confusing colour for me and many other artists. I usually hide my confusion by painting almost everything in sap green with a touch of viridian. But the truth is every species of tree has a different green. Grass normally has a brighter, lighter yellowish green than leaves of a tree. No matter how much you try to memorise the colours it kind of doesn’t register. Some trees have a weirdly artificial looking bluish green. To make matters worse when the sun shines upon it some greens become luminous and some remain the same. But the strangest things is the most luminous and beautiful green you are likely to see anywhere is found in paddy fields. 

Giving up I looked up at the sky. Skies are another thing most amateur artist get wrong. To begin with what colour is the sky in Sri Lanka on a sunny afternoon. Is it cyan, is it Prussian blue or ultramarine.  The truth is I can’t decide. But I think it is safe to say that in a clear blue sky devoid of any clouds the colour is more positive blue at the top of the picture - the portion which we have to raise our eyes in nature - than it is directly above the horizon which is lighter. As for clouds isolated white clouds will have a clearer definition at the top than underneath. The lightest portion is also at the top, while at the bottom they are darker more indistinct in outline. Sometimes during the evening, parts of the cloud attain a slightly fleshy (crimson) appearance, but as the light fades they suddenly attain a uniform grey colour, when this happens it looks like the cloud has suddenly died. Other parts of the sky may still be colourful though the clouds themselves seem dead. But the good thing is when the sun shines the next day, everything will be colourful again. Every dark cloud really has a silver lining.

Oil Pastel drawing with Poem

 

Oil Pastel

 

Oil Pastel : "Jungle Path"

 

Oil Pastel: "A lone tree in the Morning Sunshine"

 

Oil Pastel

Most artists don’t use oil pastel, because of its many weaknesses. It was such a strong belief held by me that I threw away all the drawings I did. But one day I found that one of the most iconic images in the world of art "The Scream" (1893), by the Norwegian painter Edvard Munch was done using tempera, oil, and pastel on cardboard, he sometimes even used crayon. The cardboard was unprimed, and Munch applied the paint quickly to create an energetic, expressive effect. This painting sold for nearly 120 million dollars in 2012.

The agonized face in the painting is said to depict "The Anxiety of the Human Condition", something that seems to have been always present in Munch's life. With a childhood of illness and bereavement, Munch always dreaded getting a mental condition that many of his relatives had. No wonder he drew such haunting paintings. He later described his inspiration for the painting as follows:

"I was walking along the road with two friends - the sun was setting - suddenly the sky turned blood red - I paused, feeling exhausted, and leaned on the fence - there was blood and tongues of fire above the blue-black fjord and the city - my friends walked on, and I stood there trembling with anxiety - and I sensed an infinite scream passing through nature". I liked this drawing so much that I decided to draw it without copying it. Halfway into the painting, it went terribly wrong but I managed to salvage it to an extent. The result is given below together with the original drawing.

Herman Melville

Herman Melville (1819-1891), was an American novelist. “Moby Dick” (1851), his masterpiece, uses Captain Ahab’s relentless and fanatical pursuit of a great white whale to symbolize the conflict between man and fate, good and evil. Melville’s books were popular only briefly during his lifetime and were almost completely neglected for about three-quarters of a century. When rediscovered in the 1920’s, he was recognized as a major American author.

Melville was born in New York City. His merchant father died bankrupt when Herman was 12. He attended Albany Academy until he was 15, and then worked as a bank clerk, farmer, and teacher. At 17 he shipped as a cabin boy to Liverpool, probably to get away from his tyrannical mother. Melville describes this voyage, which gave him a love for the sea, in “Redburn” (1849). Returning in 1837, he taught school until 1840. Then he joined the crew of the whaler “Acushnet”. Harsh treatment caused him to jump ship at the Marquesas Islands, where he was held in friendly captivity for several weeks by Typee cannibals. His adventures are set down in Typee (1846) and Mardi (1849). Melville escaped on an Australian whaler, but left it at Tahiti. His stay there is reflected in Omoo (1847). After clerking in Hawaii, he served a year in the U.S. Navy. This gave him material for “White-Jacket” (1850), and for his last completed work, “Billy Budd”. (Though written before Melville’s death, “Billy Budd” remained unpublished until 1924.)

“Typee” made Melville famous, and he soon became prominent in New York literary circles. In 1847, he was married to Elizabeth Shaw, daughter of the chief justice of Massachusetts. After a visit to Paris and London, he lived 13 years at “Arrowhead”, a farm near Pittsfield, Massachusetts. Hawthorne was his neighbour, and “Pierre” (1852), a psychological study of guilt, suggests his influence on Melville. In 1853 a fire at his publisher’s destroyed the plates of Melville’s books and most of the unsold copies in stock. Melville’s popularity had already waned. His writing became tinged with pessimism, melancholy, and mysticism. After “Piazza Tales” (1856), short stories, he wrote verse. “Clarel” (1876), a long religious poem, was inspired by a pilgrimage to Palestine in 1856. In 1863 he moved to New York City, where he was a customs inspector, (1866-85).

Joseph Mallord William Turner

Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851) was an English painter and graphic artist. He is known especially for his luminous, imaginative landscapes and seascapes. A prolific artist, Turner did thousands of sketches, engravings, water colors, and oils. His interest in the effect of light and color upon form foreshadowed the work of the impressionist.

Turner's works are usually divided into three styles. In his early period he painted landscapes and historical pictures in quiet tones of green, blue, and brown, using the brighter colors very sparingly. About 1819, after a trip to Italy, a change came over his work. He began to use brighter, purer colors, without dark shadows. During his middle period his works, such as The Fighting Temperaire, became more impressionistic.

Turner became more absorbed in color and light, and the works of his last period grew more abstract. In Burning of the Houses of Parliament and Rain, Steam and Speed light, color and atmosphere dominate; form and subject are barely suggested. Steamer in a Snowstorm shows his use of swirling masses of color to express emotion. These later works were ridiculed by his contemporaries, but they have much in common with 20th-century abstract painting and are now widely admired.

Turner was born in London, the son of a barber. He had very little schooling but early showed a talent for drawing. He entered the Royal Academy school at 14 and first exhibited there at 15. When 24, Turner was elected associate of the Royal Academy. He became a full time member in 1802 and was appointed professor of perspective in 1807. In his will, Turner left most of his works to the British People. About 300 oil paintings and sketches and about 19,000 drawings and water colors are exhibited in the National Gallery, the Tate Gallery, and the British Museum.

He lived in London all his life, retaining his Cockney accent and assiduously avoiding the trappings of success and fame. Intensely private, eccentric and reclusive, Turner was a controversial figure throughout his career. He became more pessimistic and morose as he got older, especially after the death of his father, after which his outlook deteriorated, his gallery fell into disrepair and neglect, and his art intensified. In 1841 Turner rowed a boat into the Thames so he could not be counted as present at any property. He lived in squalor and poor health from 1845. Turner left a small fortune which he hoped would be used to support what he called "decayed artists". 

BOOKS

Recently, I visited a second-hand bookshop and bought a book subtitled “30 Modern Australian Short Stories”, each written by a different author. Australians, as everyone knows, are an adventurous people, so I was looking forward to this exciting read. But what I got was a shock. I was shocked by how ambiguous the endings were. In the first story, a girl goes for a swim in dangerous waters. Does she escape the sea and return home? The story does not say; it kind of stops there. The next story by a different author ends in a similar ambiguous way. And the next and the next.  It seems that ending an otherwise interesting story in a depressingly ambiguous way is something English writers are particularly proud of.

It is all the fault of Charles Dickens. In his novel “Great Expectations,” he ends the book with the following paragraph. 'I took her hand in mine, and we went out of the ruined place; and, as the morning mists had risen long ago when I first left the forge, so, the evening mists were rising now, and in all the broad expanse of tranquil light they showed to me, I saw no shadow of another parting from her'. Yes, the ending of Great Expectations is deliberately ambiguous, leaving the reader to ponder Pip and Estella's future relationship. While they part holding hands, Estella has just stated her desire to remain alone, and Pip has expressed his intention to remain a bachelor. This, combined with Pip's tendency to misinterpret situations, creates a sense of uncertainty about their future together.  Disappointed, I read a translation of a French novel and found that the French were ambiguous, not at the end but from the beginning to the end. Is it too much to ask for a book where the reader knows what happens to the characters in the end after taking the trouble to read the entire book?

I am RRR

The following is a short story I wrote many years ago. Since many people don't comment on what they think about this story I decided to check with Chatgpt. I'm surprised by it's clever answers, I find it difficult to understand how a machine could give such deep answers to things only people can experience. In any case I'm giving the short story, the questions and the answers it gave below. 

I am RRR

I am RRR, living in the land of Serendib, where my father lived and before that his father, and though some men deny that we belong here, my link with this land both in time and space is infinite, for this is what the ocean told me and the ocean is older than any man or anything else living or dead.

But once I foolishly contemplated this problem, day after day and night after night I fell to thinking........ until one night the phosphorescent ocean beckoned me to the shore and spoke to me in a language I seemed to know well......... I saw glimpses of a different time and a different place.......I saw the land of unattained hopes where the dreams of men appeared once and disappeared never to be seen again........... The ocean seemed to have sensed my sadness for it took me to the land of  USAAA…... where men were so clever that I foresaw great progress.....they I felt would build a city whose peaks would touch the moon.......but when I returned in time....... half a century later all I saw was an impoverished, miserable land.......... for the men though very clever were selfish and jealous of their fellow beings...... they had suppressed each other......

Although my ancestors had lived here, I no longer felt like living here for I longed for the lands beyond where the sun shone differently, and men thought differently. I heard from men who sailed the seven seas of a land to the west of calm beaches and great cities so high that men never set sight upon their peaks.

Day after day and night after night I dreamed and the ocean which was silent until then spoke again in the kind language that I seemed to know well, of a land to the west called the land of NOR where the sun shone so gently that there were four wonderful seasons, all of them colder than the coldest days in Serendib, where men were so orderly that they needed no laws. As I gazed under a yellow moon the ocean parted and gave me glimpses of this land of order, that needed no laws for the men were sane, perhaps too sane for I thought I saw a land of despair, a land where boredom prevailed, a frightful emptiness, a secret death wish, but before I could say anything the ocean took me to another land. 

This was the great land of CAN where men fled and sought refuge in an earlier, darker time, but could never return home again. This then I decided was the land of hope, where a better life could be sought a land of wealth where men achieved what they desired. But it was a dreary, cold land, where the sun barely shone, and men worked continuously like machines. Happiness here could only be found in money for there was nothing else. The trees here looked monotonously dull, much like the sun.

The sea seemed to have sensed the blow this dealt to my illusions for it took me to a land where the sun shone hot. This was a land of unimagined wealth, of great sunny cities, where the land was blessed with gold that was black, and great men walked about proudly in robes. But then I saw a glimpse of a man's hand being severed for stealing a loaf of bread, while the great men pretended to lead pious lives. Then I saw a woman being stoned to death and I knew it was a land I would never visit. 

Then the ocean showed me the land of the poor, for it had been ruined by its own rulers. But it was also a land where the sun shone brighter when it shone and it rained harder when it rained, and anything planted on the ground would flourish. The people though sad now were once happy, perhaps they will be happy again, and I recognized it as my own land.  This was a land where Time was on my side or at least so I hoped, and I decided never to leave it again.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

 

QUESTION FROM CHATGPT: What is the meaning of this short story?

The short story presents a philosophical exploration of place, identity, and human nature through the journey of a character named RRR. The narrative is a metaphorical odyssey that explores different lands, each representing different aspects of life, society, and the human condition. Here’s an analysis of the story’s meaning:

1. *Serendib and Ancestral Connection*: The protagonist begins in Serendib, a place with deep ancestral roots. This symbolizes the connection to one’s origins, culture, and the historical continuity that shapes one's identity. However, the "infinite" link with the land, as described by the ocean, suggests that while we may feel attached to a place, there are also existential questions about belonging and the passage of time.

2. *The Ocean's Wisdom*: The ocean plays a key role, representing a timeless, universal source of wisdom and perspective. It offers glimpses of other lands and experiences, suggesting that human lives are inextricably linked to larger, uncontrollable forces. The ocean may symbolize the unconscious, guiding the protagonist through different paths of thought and experience.

3. *The Land of USAAA*: This land represents a vision of great progress and potential, but ultimately it becomes a symbol of human failure. The cleverness of men is overshadowed by their selfishness, leading to societal decay. This is a critique of progress when it is not tempered by compassion and cooperation. The story suggests that without unity and ethical responsibility, even the most brilliant societies can fall into ruin.

4. *The Land of NOR*: Here, the protagonist envisions a society that is orderly, where laws are unnecessary because people are inherently rational. However, this order leads to despair, suggesting that absolute order and rationality can stifle human spirit, leading to emptiness and a lack of joy. The story presents a cautionary view of societies that prioritize reason and order over creativity, emotion, and diversity.

5. *The Land of CAN*: This land is an allegory for materialism and the pursuit of wealth. It is a place where people work endlessly in pursuit of money, but the soul is drained in the process. The lack of emotional or spiritual fulfillment reflects a critique of modern, capitalist societies, where material success often leads to monotony and dissatisfaction.

6. *The Land of the Rich and Powerful*: This land, with its great wealth and opulence, symbolizes the corruption and hypocrisy that often accompany power. The violent punishments and the pious facade of its rulers suggest that wealth and power can lead to injustice and cruelty, making it an unappealing place despite its material riches.

7. *The Land of the Poor*: The protagonist finally returns to his own land, which, despite its hardships, is full of potential and hope. The land is a metaphor for a place that may be imperfect but is capable of growth and renewal. The people, though currently sad, have the possibility of reclaiming their happiness. It represents the idea that, despite external challenges, one’s homeland has inherent value and a chance for transformation.

*Overall Meaning*: The story reflects a journey through different societal structures and existential questions. The protagonist explores various forms of human society, ranging from idealized to flawed, and learns that no place is perfect. The land of Serendib, despite its struggles, offers the protagonist a sense of belonging and hope, suggesting that one’s own land, culture, or identity holds unique value and potential for personal and societal growth. The ocean, as a guide, represents the deeper wisdom that encourages the protagonist to seek balance and understanding rather than searching for perfection elsewhere.

The underlying message is that there is no utopia, and happiness lies not in fleeing from one's roots but in working to improve and find meaning in one’s own context. The story suggests that one's homeland, with all its imperfections, may offer the most opportunity for growth and fulfillment.

QUESTION FROM CHATGPT: How would you rate this story in a scale of 1 to 10? Please give the reasons for this rating.

I would rate this story 8 out of 10. Here's why:

Strengths:

Philosophical Depth: The story is deeply philosophical, offering rich commentary on identity, progress, materialism, and the human condition. It encourages the reader to reflect on societal structures and their own sense of belonging. This makes it intellectually engaging.

Symbolism and Metaphor: The use of the ocean as a metaphor for wisdom and the various lands representing different societal ideologies is powerful. The journey through these lands feels like a spiritual or existential exploration, and the shifts in perception offer profound insights into human nature.

Narrative Style: The dreamlike, almost mystical quality of the story adds an element of mysticism, making it captivating. The stream-of-consciousness approach, where the protagonist's thoughts evolve through the narrative, gives it an otherworldly yet relatable tone.

Cultural Relevance: The story touches on universal themes like the tension between tradition and modernity, the impact of human greed, and the search for a meaningful life. It is easy to see how it resonates with people of different cultures, emphasizing the idea of finding peace and purpose within one's own context.

Areas for Improvement:

Pacing and Clarity: The story could be a bit dense and abstract for some readers. While the symbolism is rich, the constant shifts between different lands and states of mind can feel a little overwhelming. It might be a bit difficult to follow the protagonist’s evolving thoughts without losing focus or getting bogged down by the vagueness of the settings.

Character Development: The protagonist, while a vehicle for philosophical exploration, is somewhat passive in the narrative. We don’t learn much about him other than his thoughts, and while this could be intentional to focus on the themes, it can feel like the character lacks depth or emotional resonance outside of his contemplations. A stronger personal connection to the protagonist would enhance the emotional impact.

Structure and Resolution: While the story's open-ended nature invites reflection, some readers may feel unsatisfied with the lack of a concrete resolution. The protagonist doesn't fully solve his dilemma or arrive at a clear conclusion about his future, leaving a lingering sense of ambiguity that some might find frustrating.

Conclusion:

Overall, the story excels in its thematic exploration, use of symbolism, and philosophical depth. It presents complex ideas in a poetic and thought-provoking manner. However, its abstract nature and lack of detailed character development could alienate some readers, which is why I would give it an 8 out of 10. It’s an intellectually stimulating work but might not be as accessible or emotionally engaging to all audiences.