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A drawing of Shunryu Suzuki

osmosisosmosis
edited April 2011 in Arts & Writings
I want to share my drawing of Shunryu Suzuki. If you have read his book Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, you should recognize it as the picture on the back of the book. The process of drawing it was meditative for me as I slowly concentrated on one tiny detail to the next until it came together into an image. I was struck by this image because he appears both old and very young at the same time. The facial expression is beyond words. Before I read this, I had read Alan Watts, but this book was the first to really make me fall in love with Buddhism. The image was sold several years ago.

http://bethwoodson.com/components/com_portfolio/includes/phpthumb/phpThumb.php?w=800&src=../../../../images/stories/portfolio/item_original/4_1242973945.jpg

Comments

  • federicafederica Seeker of the clear blue sky... Its better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak out and remove all doubt Moderator
    That is staggeringly good.
    How long do you suppose it took you?

    (I phrase the question thus, because I would surmise that as completing it bit by bit was a meditative exercise, you probably lost track of time.....)
  • shanyinshanyin Novice Yogin Sault Ontario Veteran
    That is staggeringly good.
    QFT

  • KungaKunga
    "Staggeringly good" is an excellent way to put it. You must have jedi-like powers of concentration. Thank you for sharing :-)
  • Malachy12Malachy12
    very awesome! Did you use a graph to help blow it up? We did an assignment like this recently. You had to take an image and draw an enlargement with the help of a graph. It made you focus on each little square and the different shapes and values in that square, and graphite was smudging all over the place. Very excellent job on the values and shading, he looks lifelike. You shoulda kept it!
  • JeffreyJeffrey Veteran
    :bowdown:
  • ShiftPlusOneShiftPlusOne Veteran
    That's a drawing?!? Jeebus Christ, you're good.
  • federicafederica Seeker of the clear blue sky... Its better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak out and remove all doubt Moderator
    It is good, isn't it?
    It is.
    It is bloody good.
    In fact it's so good, it's gooder than that.
  • andyrobynandyrobyn Veteran
    Wow ... it sure is, thank you for sharing it with us ( made my day :) )
  • osmosisosmosis
    Oh thank you so much. I must admit, this helps give me encouragement to finish a current painting I've been pushing myself to return to. I almost always start to lose inspiration as an image nears the end - maybe because at that point it no longer feels new to me; newness is what drives me.

    It took me a few months, I don't know how many. Maybe about 9 or 10. I slowly worked on it for about 2 hours a week in my free time, some weeks not at all, sometimes more. It is hard to say how many hours in total. When I'm drawing or painting, I forget everything. Sometimes I even forget I have a body! Time is one of the first concepts out the door. It was very relaxing because I liked the process. The dimensions are 18" x 24" I believe. When I was finished, I felt both amazed and sad at the same time. I was amazed at how each detail worked together to create it and sad that the process was over.

    @Malachy12 Yes, I used the grid method to render the basic shapes and then the detail was approached one area at a time. It's funny, when you focus on a tiny part of the visual world, it becomes abstract very easily. This is what the right hemisphere of the brain is good at. A drawing of a face is no longer made up of a nose, 2 eyes and a mouth but just various shades of gray. If we start to see this way then the supposed difficulty of the subject doesn't matter so much because everything in the visual world is communicated in gradation.
  • ShiftPlusOneShiftPlusOne Veteran
    I've had a look at your website. All your work is amazing. Thank you!
  • ThailandTomThailandTom Veteran
    truly outstanding drawing, almost photo realistic. Do you mostly use pencil or do you sometimes use colour in your work? I always use to prefer using only pencil, or charcoal or something which has no colour in it.
  • federicafederica Seeker of the clear blue sky... Its better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak out and remove all doubt Moderator
    Have a look at her website.....
  • ThailandTomThailandTom Veteran
    Which is where....
  • ShiftPlusOneShiftPlusOne Veteran
    http://bethwoodson.com
  • Malachy12Malachy12
    I like your untitled painting of the photograph of the androgynous woman (first painting). I'm always drawn to that photo, just staring at it, and I like your rendition of it.
  • VajraheartVajraheart Veteran
    Wow Beth, you're talented!! I know of only a very few amount of people who have this ability to display such exquisite eye popping detail. I also just noticed how pretty you are! Good line of DNA there... beauty and talent!

    Here's a friend of mines site, he also shares your eye for detail. Hmmm, I can't seem to find a website for some reason other than his facebook. I'm going to ask him. You might enjoy seeing some of his stuff.

    Here's two images I googled.

    http://siddhayogabookstore.org/images/products/detail/AsheshaBlueBaba.jpg

    http://siddhayogabookstore.org/images/products/detail/AsheshaTrust.jpg

    There's a few others but they're so small. I want to ask him if he has a website.

  • Jason_PDKJason_PDK Explorer
    edited April 2011
    That's a drawing?!? Jeebus Christ, you're good.
    I thought it was a picture too!
    I like all of your other work too!

    Jason

  • osmosisosmosis
    Thank you each one of you, what a positive group you are. Namaste.

    @ThailandTom I go through phases, sometimes I will do a lot of drawing and then sometimes I focus on painting. They both have their own appeal to me. Lately I've been trying to focus on finishing a larger than life size realist painting of Obama inside the Lincoln memorial. It is difficult to finish because I have grown weary of pure realism and I want to move into surrealism again with some of the imagery that comes to me in meditation. What I do seems small in the context of the world sometimes but an ocean is made of a billion drops, right? I want to give a message of oneness that the world really needs to hear right now. Sometimes I lose the energy to do it when dealing with other forces in my life that jostle for time and attention.

    @Malachy12 To me that painting expresses how it feels to be an androgynous gay person in a society that values dichotomous symbols of gender in our appearances.

    @Vajraheart Your friend's portrait is very good. I like the dramatic light and dark, it adds something to my projection of what the figure might be thinking.
  • Malachy12Malachy12
    @omosis Holy bean curd. I totally agree. I've always been attracted to that image for the same reasons. When I saw your rendition of it, I thought "So we meet again androgynous photograph! Why do you follow me?"
    I'm saddened over boxes like femme and butch in the gay community. Sometimes I want to check a box that says neither. When I'm drawing I usually don't know if I'm going to make a man or a woman and often change my mind as I go, then different people will see one or the other gender. What you wanted to express in that painting really came through. I hope you make more along those lines because I bet there are a lot of people who can relate to those sentiments.
  • fedaalisfedaalis
    Incredible!
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