You would think the apples would be easy, but I like to work in layers and red and green are compliments. That means when I layer green over red I get gray. So I had to get the same value, so the red and the green look like they are on the same apple, differently. Both have nice contrast and I think I was trying to get darker darks.
I often work lighter, letting the shadows be a color change, rather than really dark. Working lighter works better when painting people, where dark contrast is unflattering and weird looking. Just like painting noses. If I painted a nose as detailed and contrasted as it really is, it would visually jump off the page as the most important thing on the face. We visually dismiss noses. (Except for that woman that Dad and I saw on CSPAN that not only had this giant nose that hooked down over her mouth that we could not stop talking about, but she had downward arching eyebrows that pointed right towards it like arrows.)
I had a moment of inspiration last night before I fell asleep and finally wrote a good mission statement for my painting business. That helped me get through the executive summary and management plan and half done. I have an outline and notes for the balance of the document and I did half of the supporting documents, like listing my costs and inventory. I did sidetrack myself re-vamping my logo and fighting with the computer printer, but that seems inevitable. I am putting the business plan aside for a while and tomorrow I will write out what I propose to paint for children's hospitals, so I can explain it to the SCORE councilor.
The next enlightenment topic is Self-Reliance with an excerpt from an essay called "Self-Reliance" by Ralph Waldo Emerson. This is a long and difficult essay and the author of the book chose an excerpt about non-conformity that does not appear to be in the spirit of the essay,
"These are the voices which we hear in solitude, but they grow faint and inaudible as we enter into the world. Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. Society is a joint-stock company, in which the members agree, for the better securing of his bread to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty and culture of the eater. The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs.
Whoso would be a man, must be a nonconformist. He who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore if it be goodness. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of our own mind."
Is self-reliance the opposite of conformity? Does everyone's mind contain integrity? My mind is often my greatest enemy.
I preferred this part (although I confess, I could not read the whole essay),
"In what prayers do men allow themselves! That which they call a holy office is not so much as brave and manly. Prayer looks abroad and asks for some foreign addition to come through some foreign virtue, and loses itself in endless mazes of natural and supernatural, and mediatorial and miraculous. Prayer that craves a particular commodity—anything less than all good, is vicious. Prayer is the contemplation of the facts of life from the highest point of view. It is the soliloquy of a beholding and jubilant soul. It is the spirit of God pronouncing his works good. But prayer as a means to effect a private end is theft and meanness. It supposes dualism and not unity in nature and consciousness. As soon as the man is at one with God, he will not beg. He will then see prayer in all action. The prayer of the farmer kneeling in his field to weed it, the prayer of the rower kneeling with the stroke of his oar, are true prayers heard throughout nature, though for cheap ends."
In the last few years I learned to ask for help when I needed it and I learned to be true to myself. Is knowing when you cannot do it yourself not self-reliance? Are humility and self-reliance contradictory and opposite? Is self-reliance also dualism, where we think of ourselves as separate from everything else? These are questions that can make your head explode. I may have to learn more about transcendentalism before I can understand this essay, but not right before bedtime.
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