Nathaniel Hawthorne

 

Nathaniel Hawthorne was an American author. Most of his work shows concern for moral issues. A deeply ingrained conscience seems to generate in him an obsession with the problem of sin, its nature, and its consequences. His strong sense of human guilt tinges most of his novels and short stories with a somber hue. Unlike some other puritans, Hawthorne apparently felt a keen sympathy for the erring and demon-driven people he pictures.

Hawthorne liked to call his novels “romances” because they deal with interior rather than outward phases of life. They explore the secret chambers of the heart, soul, and mind. He maintained that a writer of romances, unlike the realist who relies upon personal observation and fidelity of facts, need be faithful only to “the truth of the human heart.” Hawthorne frequently pictures people who are morbid and melancholy, but their gloom is mostly of an inner kind, unlike the physical horrors that are characteristic of Poe’s tales. His people ordinarily are more symbolical or allegorical than lifelike, manipulated by the author to make a moral point.

Rough Pen Drawing

 

Ethel M. Dell

It is difficult to talk about popular literature in the 1920s without talking about a particularly shy British novelist whom critics liked to hate with a passion but readers loved to read named Ethel M. Dell (1881-1939). So shy was she that she was never interviewed. But starting in 1911 she wrote over 30 popular romance novels and several short stories but remained quiet and almost pathologically shy. What the critics said didn’t seem to bother her for she considered herself a good storyteller – nothing more nothing less.

Dell whose father was a clerk grew up in a middle-class family and started writing at an early age. Her romantic stories which were said to be racy were set in India and other British colonial possessions. Her cousins would count the times she used the words: passion, tremble, pant and thrill. She worked on a book for several years but it was rejected by eight publishers. When it was finally published in 1911 it was entitled “The Way of an Eagle.” George Orwell in his novel “Keep the Aspidistra Flying” has his protagonist make several scathing attacks on Dell, reserving special venom for “The Way of an Eagle”. However, the book was incredibly popular and between 1911 and 1915 it had gone through 30 printings.

And the hostility wasn't merely mild disapproval. George Orwell later recalled Dell as an example of the sort of popular novelist that serious literary culture looked down upon. In his original draft of Keep the Aspidistra Flying, Orwell apparently described Dell's work as "garbage", though the wording was initially removed by his publisher. For her part, she went on writing and made a lot of money eventually producing about thirty novels and several volumes of short stories.

Oil Pastel

 

RJX

The Scream

My favorite drawing medium is Oil Pastel. For me, it's the most direct way to paint landscapes, but in my country, it has a bad name. Almost everyone seems to think it is an amateurish way of painting, they say the colors fade with time, and the most professional way of painting according to everyone seems to be Oil Painting. It is such a strong belief held by so many that I believed them for many years and threw away almost all of the drawings I did. But one day I found that one of the most iconic images in the world of art "The Scream" done by the Norwegian painter Edvard Munch was done with pastel in 1893. 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 painting 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 painting.

RJX

Kumbuk Tree - Terminalia Arjuna

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NaTree Leaves - Mesua Ferrea (Iron Wood Tree)

 

Kobolila Tree - Bauhinia purpurea

 

Bauhinia purpurea is a species of flowering plant in the family Fabaceae, native to the Indian subcontinent and Myanmar, and widely introduced elsewhere in tropical and subtropical areas of the world. 

Rough Pen Drawing

 

Rough Pen Drawing

 

RJX

Trees - Oil Pastel

 

RJX