I’ve been busy for much of the past week working on two Intuitive/Spirit Portraits, one of which was a private commission. Although I will be posting it here at a later date. The second one I’m working on I shall continue with for the coming week’s portrait challenge.
I’ve noticed a definite change in my portraits after having taken such a long break from them. There is a certain completeness about them that perhaps didn’t appear very frequently before. Taking up this challenge over the last two weeks has really shown me what a conscious shift I have undergone in recent months, which I can mainly attribute to being here on WP and meeting some fantastic people. Here I can share what I love to do, and it’s been a very good tonic for my soul.
I could also attribute the change in my drawings to having moved from the dimly lit lounge to my nice bright workshop where I can see what I’m doing! 😀
So for this week I am posting probably one of my favourite spirit portraits (I’ve lost count of how many I’ve done in recent years). I call him the ‘New York Police Officer’ (endearing I know!). I’ve always had a sense when I look at this image that he is a police officer during 1940/50s New York, in the middle of a nocturnal downpour attending the scene of a burning building. There is an alertness and deep concern in his exhausted expression. It gives me chills every time I look at it. He is a man intent on doing his job until it’s done, ensuring that no-one comes to harm.
The most important thing to me when I’m engaged with one of my portrait people is that I capture their essence, the energy that I feel while I’m connected to them. I find it to be a fascinating and wonderful experience, and it still astounds me that I see these faces at all and be able to draw them.
IshaiyaFreshlySqueezed 
I’m deeply proud of you Ms Ishaiya. You pictures are amazing!
Thank you Dad x
I see a fisherman
I’ve drawn a lot of fishermen. Bit of a running theme of mine.
Hmmm. I saw an umpire, dismally waiting through a rain delay, but I have that on the brain lately.
Beautiful portrait. I really dig the emotions on the faces. Brilliantly done.
An umpire huh? Are you being a tennis nut at the moment? I love tennis too, and it’s drawing closer to Wimbledon.
Thank you, but it’s a channelling no-brainer, I just trace what I see before me. I’m not sure I could reproduce such nuances in facial expression if I consciously thought about it.
Ahhh. I should have specified. Major League Baseball. American style.
I did watch some of the open, though they have nothing on Wimbledon, which is the jewel of the slams. I’m English, and feel required to say that.
A sports nut in general. Hockey, Baseball, Football, mostly. Without cable though, it’s whatever is on the networks, and if I can find the time to watch.
Oh I see, not having baseball over here in Blighty I confused the reference.
Yes, it’s not quite cricket-or even close, really. There is a trophy, but no ashes.
As for the portrait, I can see the cop, the fisherman and the umpire(tennis or baseball). Very transitive and open for interpretation. Such a unique art form, and each suggestion can be seen as a real possibility.
Very intriguing, this art of yours. Lovely, and your work would stand on it’s own without the intuitive properties or interpretations.
Thank you for saying so. Maybe one day I’ll hold an exhibition of my work. That’s the dream anyway, and then to get rich from it 😀
Let me know when that happens! My ‘bard needs patron’ ad on craigslist has never been answered. 😉
That’s quite cynical my friend. 🙂
‘Tis True, though!…if you know of a patron, I will gladly immortalize their exploits for a fee, in the bardic tradition-ALL CYNICISM ASIDE-with rapier sharp satire provided upon dismissal of said bard. 🙂
Alas, yes, I am guilty as charged. How ever did you know?!? 😉 (the nature of the beast)
Yet being open minded is akin to being cynical(twin sons of different mothers, that) and falls under the laws of poetic license, which I will hide behind now.
Cynicism has a certain perfume about it, I can smell it from many miles away! “Being open minded is akin to being cynical”, I may have to use that, with full credits of course!
Please do! The thinly veiled sarcasm it’s gift wrapped in is of course free of charge, and no need to cite this author. It was self inflicted, and was not meant to have been inflicted on others, specially you…
Here’s another that may come in handy, as I’ve read some of your debates:
“You can lead a man to reason, but you can’t make him think.”
All mine, though the horse and water theme is not.
I can handle sarcasm by the bucket load. Thank you for your wisdom, but as an aside I happen to believe that reasoning and thinking are one and the same thing. We as humans have an amazing ability to split hairs and skin cats. It’s become a linguistic and cultural norm in these parts to be semantically evasive instead of just getting to the point, the crux of the blindingly obvious. I blame the french personally. William the Conquerer to be precise. Although it wasn’t until the time of Eleanor of Aquitaine that and the romantic language of the french court that such nuances in language became popular and began to infuse and linguistically level the wonderful gutteral english tongue, with its no nonsense delivery. (I am going to use this though for my next post) 🙂
Yes, reason and thinking should be the same, but they so often are not, regardless of linguistic variations. That was indeed one point of the quote.
I think for the most part, it is not true in the shallow pools of much human thought, which is clouded by blind faith in things beyond our mortal vision and perception, or at the very least, beyond physical proof.
For instance, the reason of accepted societal norms(such as religion)are widely accepted, instead of applying our own individual thinking, which would have led to our own individual conclusions. The reason and thoughts may indeed be the same, yet we may never know, where blind faith rules. If one person blindly accepts the reasoning of another as truth, he/she did not, or would not, think for themselves. For example: 51% of the global population is christian. Over half of them believe that the world was created about 7000 years ago, and that the words in Genesis are literal(although translated and indeed gutted), and not symbolic. At the same time, how many of them actually live their life as the Christ they worship, in a perpetual state of unconditional love, which was all he ever asked. (don’t quote me on the statistics, they are from the media, but I think they are probably close)
I would not classify my quote as wise(sarcasm and cynicism aside). I am not a scholar, just a common man with a primary education, who prefers to think for himself, take whatever truth I may find, where I find it, and leave the rest for others. Sans pretenses.
The quote just seemed applicable to some of the topics of your debates, where blind faith rules the podium, and provides the end by which the means are justified. You can lead that man to what you see as reason, but he has to choose to think for himself.
🙂
Even so it still provided me with good post fodder. Have you read my new post on the other side?