Canvas Of Nature Quotes

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A painter should begin every canvas with a wash of black, because all things in nature are dark except where exposed by the light.
Leonardo da Vinci
Love is a canvas furnished by Nature and embroidered by imagination.
Voltaire
It’s in our nature to want to watch our human frailties played out on a huge, epic canvas. Ancient societies had anthropomorphic gods: a huge pantheon expanding into centuries of dynastic drama: fathers and sons, star-crossed lovers, warring brothers, martyred heroes. Tales that taught us the danger of hubris and the primacy of humility. It’s the everyday stuff of everyman’s life, but it’s writ large, and we love it.
Tom Hiddleston
On my canvas of life, you bring colors of love and joy, Just like in winters, The setting sun brings beams of red and purple to the sky.
Hareem Ch (Muse Buzz)
Each miracle writes for us in small letters something that God has already written, or will write, in letters almost too large to be noticed, across the whole canvas of Nature.
C.S. Lewis
We will preserve the capacity for independent thought through a society so heterogeneous that it will make our own look trite. We will intentionally craft new ethnicities, religions, and ways of existing. The genome will be our canvas and flesh our clay. Man is a young species. We still occupy the same bodies with which our ancestors hunted and picked berries. We are so trapped by the limitations of our biology that we lack the capacity to conceive our ultimate potential. 
Simone Collins (The Pragmatist’s Guide to Crafting Religion: A playbook for sculpting cultures that overcome demographic collapse & facilitate long-term human flourishing (The Pragmatist's Guide))
Once upon a time, there was a king who ruled a great and glorious nation. Favourite amongst his subjects was the court painter of whom he was very proud. Everybody agreed this wizzened old man pianted the greatest pictures in the whole kingdom and the king would spend hours each day gazing at them in wonder. However, one day a dirty and dishevelled stranger presented himself at the court claiming that in fact he was the greatest painter in the land. The indignant king decreed a competition would be held between the two artists, confident it would teach the vagabond an embarrassing lesson. Within a month they were both to produce a masterpiece that would out do the other. After thirty days of working feverishly day and night, both artists were ready. They placed their paintings, each hidden by a cloth, on easels in the great hall of the castle. As a large crowd gathered, the king ordered the cloth be pulled first from the court artist’s easel. Everyone gasped as before them was revealed a wonderful oil painting of a table set with a feast. At its centre was an ornate bowl full of exotic fruits glistening moistly in the dawn light. As the crowd gazed admiringly, a sparrow perched high up on the rafters of the hall swooped down and hungrily tried to snatch one of the grapes from the painted bowl only to hit the canvas and fall down dead with shock at the feet of the king. ’Aha!’ exclaimed the king. ’My artist has produced a painting so wonderful it has fooled nature herself, surely you must agree that he is the greatest painter who ever lived!’ But the vagabond said nothing and stared solemnly at his feet. ’Now, pull the blanket from your painting and let us see what you have for us,’ cried the king. But the tramp remained motionless and said nothing. Growing impatient, the king stepped forward and reached out to grab the blanket only to freeze in horror at the last moment. ’You see,’ said the tramp quietly, ’there is no blanket covering the painting. This is actually just a painting of a cloth covering a painting. And whereas your famous artist is content to fool nature, I’ve made the king of the whole country look like a clueless little twat.
Banksy (Wall and Piece)
Your life is your artwork and you are to paint life as a beautiful struggle. With your brush, paint the colors of joy in vibrant shades of red. Color the sky a baby blue, a color as free as your heart. With rich, earthy tones shade the valleys that run deep into the ground where heaven meets hell. Life is as chaotic as the color black, a blend of all colors, and this makes life a beautiful struggle. Be grateful for the green that makes up the beautiful canvas, for nature has given you everything that you need to be happy. Most of all, don’t ever feel the need to fill the entire canvas with paint, for the places left blank are the most honest expressions of who you are.
Forrest Curran (Purple Buddha Project: Purple Book of Self-Love)
When you know you’re worth loving, you can be a little imperfect. Hell, look at me—a lot imperfect. It makes all the difference in the world when you believe someone loves you enough that they don’t overlook the spot and the messed up hair. They just add it to the things about you that make them love you all the more.
Joey W. Hill (Rough Canvas (Nature of Desire, #6))
With each spring comes new life, energy and green growth. In summer comes the sun, warm, kind and enduring. Fall brings its canvas of color in careful, gentle change. Winter brews into faithful strength, beauty in pure white. And then comes you. You are all that Nature offers, a blessing, a gift.. You are the fifth season.
Jason F. Wright
You're what my art's all about, Marcus. We see something and think we know it, understand it, but really we're lucky if we ever understand any more than a small piece about anything. The infinite of the universe is in each one of us. You're grace, faith. Hopelessness, despair. Violence and anger. Beauty. You overwhelm me.
Joey W. Hill (Rough Canvas (Nature of Desire, #6))
I thought...it was easy when I thought it was something to do with the flesh. But what I'm seeing is more than that. It's love, and love isn't a sin. So how can God be so cruel as to give that feeling to two men or two women if it's a sin? I've always believed God to be compassionate. Loving.
Joey W. Hill (Rough Canvas (Nature of Desire, #6))
I was here, pet. I was always here. Even if you told me you needed me just for an hour, for this, I would have been there." Marcus spoke gruffly into his hair, holding him tighter. "Why is it so fucking hard for you to believe I love you?
Joey W. Hill (Rough Canvas (Nature of Desire, #6))
The only thing that ever scared him was finding out there was something he couldn't do, so he damn well made sure there was anything he couldn't.
Joey W. Hill (Rough Canvas (Nature of Desire, #6))
As artist Nature splashes color across the vast canvas of the sky with the radiance and splendor of sunrise and sunset. She arches rainbows against the passing storm, creates flowers and foliage, sets autumn woods on fire with the beauty of turning leaves and touches mountaintops with snow crystals.
Wilferd Peterson
What I have is surface. Grooming, good genetics, whatever. Whether you've rolled out of bed an hour ago without having had a shower for three days, or you're wearing a designer suit, there is a deep, perfect beauty to you that takes my breath away.
Joey W. Hill (Rough Canvas (Nature of Desire, #6))
The knight is a man of blood and iron, a man familiar with the sight of smashed faces and the ragged stumps of lopped-off limbs; he is also a demure, almost maidenlike, guest in a hall, a gentle, modest, unobtrusive man. He is not compromise or happy mean between ferocity and meekness; he is fierce to the nth and meek to the nth. The man who combines both characters – the knight – is not a work of nature but of art; of that art which has human beings, instead of canvas or marble, for its medium.
C.S. Lewis
But it so happens that everything on this planet is, ultimately, irrational; there is not, and cannot be, any reason for the causal connexion of things, if only because our use of the word "reason" already implies the idea of causal connexion. But, even if we avoid this fundamental difficulty, Hume said that causal connexion was not merely unprovable, but unthinkable; and, in shallower waters still, one cannot assign a true reason why water should flow down hill, or sugar taste sweet in the mouth. Attempts to explain these simple matters always progress into a learned lucidity, and on further analysis retire to a remote stronghold where every thing is irrational and unthinkable. If you cut off a man's head, he dies. Why? Because it kills him. That is really the whole answer. Learned excursions into anatomy and physiology only beg the question; it does not explain why the heart is necessary to life to say that it is a vital organ. Yet that is exactly what is done, the trick that is played on every inquiring mind. Why cannot I see in the dark? Because light is necessary to sight. No confusion of that issue by talk of rods and cones, and optical centres, and foci, and lenses, and vibrations is very different to Edwin Arthwait's treatment of the long-suffering English language. Knowledge is really confined to experience. The laws of Nature are, as Kant said, the laws of our minds, and, as Huxley said, the generalization of observed facts. It is, therefore, no argument against ceremonial magic to say that it is "absurd" to try to raise a thunderstorm by beating a drum; it is not even fair to say that you have tried the experiment, found it would not work, and so perceived it to be "impossible." You might as well claim that, as you had taken paint and canvas, and not produced a Rembrandt, it was evident that the pictures attributed to his painting were really produced in quite a different way. You do not see why the skull of a parricide should help you to raise a dead man, as you do not see why the mercury in a thermometer should rise and fall, though you elaborately pretend that you do; and you could not raise a dead man by the aid of the skull of a parricide, just as you could not play the violin like Kreisler; though in the latter case you might modestly add that you thought you could learn. This is not the special pleading of a professed magician; it boils down to the advice not to judge subjects of which you are perfectly ignorant, and is to be found, stated in clearer and lovelier language, in the Essays of Thomas Henry Huxley.
Aleister Crowley
At least she (Thomas' mom) knows what she wants is dead. What I want just refuses to be with me. Maybe I should compare notes with her on what's worse, for I swear to God sometimes I think if you were dead this would hurt less.
Joey W. Hill (Rough Canvas (Nature of Desire, #6))
I can imagine you and us a million ways here, Thomas. I will make my home where you are, because you are my home. I don't know any way to say it any more clearly. So now the ball's in your court.
Joey W. Hill (Rough Canvas (Nature of Desire, #6))
I want you to marry me, Thomas." Marcus' attention had weight and heat on every exposed, raw part of him. "We can get a license in a state where it's legal, have a ceremony wherever you want, however you want. And I don't care if there's no law for it on the books, it will be the law between you and me and whatever God there is. I want it to be impossible for us to leave each other without a hell of a lot of paperwork, ugly custody battles over furniture, whatever. "I want to marry you," he repeated. "I want you to know that every morning when you wake up and see me that I want to be there, that I made an oath to be there. To stand by you. And that there's no one else for me. Not ever.
Joey W. Hill (Rough Canvas (Nature of Desire, #6))
That's when I got it. The rough canvas. God paints our bodies over that, over our heart and soul. It's the eyes that tell us what we're really seeing, what's underneath. So all I painted in the picture were greens. Patterns, random slashes, shapes over shapes, shadows, emotions, it's all there.
Joey W. Hill (Rough Canvas (Nature of Desire, #6))
The crowd is his element, as the air is that of birds and water of fishes. His passion and his profession are to become one flesh with the crowd. For the perfect flâneur, for the passionate spectator, it is an immense joy to set up house in the heart of the multitude, amid the ebb and flow of movement, in the midst of the fugitive and the infinite. To be away from home and yet to feel oneself everywhere at home; to see the world, to be at the centre of the world, and yet to remain hidden from the world - impartial natures which the tongue can but clumsily define. The spectator is a prince who everywhere rejoices in his incognito. The lover of life makes the whole world his family, just like the lover of the fair sex who builds up his family from all the beautiful women that he has ever found, or that are or are not - to be found; or the lover of pictures who lives in a magical society of dreams painted on canvas. Thus the lover of universal life enters into the crowd as though it were an immense reservoir of electrical energy. Or we might liken him to a mirror as vast as the crowd itself; or to a kaleidoscope gifted with consciousness, responding to each one of its movements and reproducing the multiplicity of life and the flickering grace of all the elements of life.
Charles Baudelaire (The Painter of Modern Life and Other Essays (Phaidon Arts and Letters))
See yourself the way I see you. Feel the way my hands touch you, think about the way I look at you. I see all of you, Thomas. You think I don't, but I do. Hide it, don't hide it, I know all of it, feel all of it. You're mine. Just let go. Let go and see it. I always have.
Joey W. Hill (Rough Canvas (Nature of Desire, #6))
Oh, for Christ's sake. Nothing is going to make your boy straight, Elaine. I didn't drag him into anything. But you're absolutely right. This is a battle for his soul, and while you may think I'm Lucifer, you sure as hell aren't God. This isn't about you or me. It's about the gift that defines his soul more than you or I will ever hope to do. If he doesn't have that for himself, neither of us will have anything.
Joey W. Hill (Rough Canvas (Nature of Desire, #6))
Life is like an empty canvas, that can be painted with love, compassion, kindness and behold everyone with its beauty.
Tonmoy Acharjee
Pain. You overwhelm me," he said quietly. "And every time I see you or think of you, I can't grab a brush fast enough. I thought I couldn't paint you, but it turns out I've been painting you all along, from the beginning, before I even knew you.
Joey W. Hill (Rough Canvas (Nature of Desire, #6))
Accepting what people are, what they can't change and loving them with every part of yourself anyway. That's what love is about." He glared at Elaine. "You take that away from him, you make him believe that kind of love doesn't exist…It would be better for you to shoot him rather than destroy him inch by inch, year after year. If you do that, you're not saving his soul, you're killing it. If you'd look into his eyes for once, you'll see it. How we love is our soul.
Joey W. Hill (Rough Canvas (Nature of Desire, #6))
White is the absence of color. All the colors bounce off it. Nothing stays. Black absorbs all the colors. It is the culmination of color consumption. So really, I’m a blank canvas, and you are full of it. I think that fits.
K.F. Breene (Natural Witch (Magical Mayhem Trilogy, #1))
The world is a glorious bounty. There is more food than can be eaten if we would limit our numbers to those who can be cherished, there are more beautiful girls than can be dreamed of, more children than we can love, more laughter than can be endured, more wisdom than can be absorbed. Canvas and pigments lie in wait, stone, wood, and metal are ready for sculpture, random noise is latent for symphonies, sites are gravid for cities, institutions lie in the wings ready to solve our most intractable problems, parables of moving power remain unformulated and yet, the world is finally unknowable.
Ian L. McHarg (Design With Nature)
Love is a canvas furnished by Nature and embroidered by imagination. —Voltaire
Steven D. Price (1001 Smartest Things Ever Said)
My hands are flowing like sunlight. The shapes and colors are astounding. I don't understand these images that are empowering me. My brush touches the canvas like photons to the earth, and a new world develops, free from my control, yet intrinsically dependent upon me. I am sweating with elation. I have no idea what I am doing, or what it is my hands are trying to see. There is so much strength in this clarity I am overpowered by the independence of it.
Daniel J. Rice (This Side of a Wilderness)
My thoughts fill the canvas in the sky with a spectrum of emotions. The landscape is painted through my vision. My heart warms the environment with love. The beauty lies in the depths of my soul. I am one with nature.
Jason Micheal Ratliff
Since landscape changes like this from country to country it must owe very little to Nature: Nature is no more than the canvas, and landscape the self-portrait the people who live there paint on it. But no, hold hard! Surely, rather the people who have lived there; for landscape is always at least one generation behind in its portrayal.
Richard Hughes (The Fox in the Attic (The Human Predicament, #1))
Leanoardo wrote that a painter should begin every canvas with a wash of black, because all things in nature are dark except where exposed by the light. Most painters do the opposite, starting with a whitewash and adding the shadows last. But Paul, who knows Leonardo so well you'd thing the old man slept on the bottom bunk, understands the value of starting with the shadows. The only things people can ever know about you are the ones you let them see.
Ian Caldwell
It is human nature to take the most magical of worlds for granted, turning each one into a blank canvas upon which to paint the lives of those who would live there. Only an outsider can see a world's wonders for what they truly are.
Neal Shusterman (Downsiders (Downsiders, #1))
The personal eludes biology in just the way that the face in the picture eludes the theory of pigments. The personal is not an addition to the biological: it emerges from it, in something like the way the face emerges from the colored patches on a canvas.
Roger Scruton (On Human Nature)
Your life is written in indelible ink. There's no going back to erase the past, tweak your mistakes, or fill in missed opportunities. When the moment's over, your fate is sealed. But if look closer, you notice the ink never really dries on any our experiences. They can change their meaning the longer you look at them. Klexos. There are ways of thinking about the past that aren't just nostalgia or regret. A kind of questioning that enriches an experience after the fact. To dwell on the past is to allow fresh context to trickle in over the years, and fill out the picture; to keep the memory alive, and not just as a caricature of itself. So you can look fairly at a painful experience, and call it by its name. Time is the most powerful force in the universe. It can turn a giant into someone utterly human, just trying to make their way through. Or tell you how you really felt about someone, even if you couldn't at the time. It can put your childhood dreams in context with adult burdens or turn a universal consensus into an embarrassing fad. It can expose cracks in a relationship that once seemed perfect. Or keep a friendship going by thoughts alone, even if you'll never see them again. It can flip your greatest shame into the source of your greatest power, or turn a jolt of pride into something petty, done for the wrong reasons, or make what felt like the end of the world look like a natural part of life. The past is still mostly a blank page, so we may be doomed to repeat it. But it's still worth looking into if it brings you closer to the truth. Maybe it's not so bad to dwell in the past, and muddle in the memories, to stem the simplification of time, and put some craft back into it. Maybe we should think of memory itself as an art form, in which the real work begins as soon as the paint hits the canvas. And remember that a work of art is never finished, only abandoned.
John Koenig
the sunset looked way too pigmented—as if the color palette of sorrow had been thrown on it. yes, if sorrow had colors, they would be lilac mixed with pinks and some sneaky whites like the clouds at twilight. i thought it was a masterpiece; a way for nature to share that at the end of the day, each sobbed whisper goes directly to the skies. but before that, it leaves its color on the canvas of earth one last time.
Noor Unnahar (Yesterday I Was the Moon)
Thomas stood in the manacles, vibrating , overwhelmed with words he couldn't say. Didn't know if he knew how to say them, because they contained all the heartbreak of the world mixed with it's ephemeral joy. Waking to the aroma of breakfast when he was eight. Feeling the heat of the setting sun on his skin while falling asleep on Kate's back at ten. Turning and seeing Marcus for the very first time. Moments too powerful to be contained by the human heart and therefore having a peculiar way of making the soul hurt, as if there was something to mourn in the midst of the happiness. As if happiness itself couldn't exist without shadows to define it...
Joey W. Hill (Rough Canvas (Nature of Desire, #6))
The painter does not rest with a brush on the canvas. And so it is with Vim. Normal mode is the natural resting state. The clue is in the name, really.
Drew Neil
The sub has the upper hand in a true Master and sub relationship, Thomas. Always. I can possess you only as long as you want to belong to me.
Joey W. Hill (Rough Canvas (Nature of Desire, #6))
You'd think someone who could see the beauty in nature and capture it on canvas could see mold on the shower tile.
Beverley Andi (A Kachina Dance)
Always (it was in her nature, or in her sex, she did not know which) before she exchanged the fluidity of life for the concentration of painting she had a few moments of nakedness when she seemed like an unborn soul, a soul reft of body, hesitating on some windy pinnacle and exposed without protection to all the blasts of doubt. Why then did she do it? She looked at the canvas, lightly scored with running lines....What was the good of doing it then, and she heard some voice saying she couldn't paint, saying she couldn't create, as if she were caught up in one of those habitual currents in which after a certain time experience forms in the mind, so that one repeats words without being aware any longer who originally spoke them.
Virginia Woolf (To the Lighthouse)
I wanted everything for him. I wanted to see him achieve every dream, embrace every desire. I wanted to protect him from anyone who would cause him harm or a moments pain, tear them apart with my bare hands. Never let him out of my sight, even as I wanted him to stretch out his wings as far as they could go and soar. And at the bottom, top and middle of it all, I just wanted to stand there, just that way forever. Not disturb him. Just look at him and love him. Do nothing but simply love him for everything he is, a creation too perfect to be anything but God's gift to the rest of us.
Joey W. Hill (Rough Canvas (Nature of Desire, #6))
In The Sunset Sky The sunset sky dazzling with the golden hues, Taking bow in brilliant sparkle of experience Is it not a climax, of the story so far, that was today? Or is it building anticipation of the night yet to come. Watch the days go, some proud of their accomplishments Some leaving sighs of disappointments, Leaving all in awe of its Amaranthine twists and turns And the fortunate get to see the moon trying to steal the show from setting sun, Oh she is such a show off, isn't she, basking in reflected glory Its magical, the sunset sky,Puzzling, sometimes just like a riddle, Leaving the nature stunned and amazed For it has been filling the canvas whole day with colours And now the sunset threatens to hide them all And in dark all the colours will be same A cue for the wise. Sunset sky has so much to offer, is she not a fine exampleof how uncertain a life can be Often reminding no matter what you planned, there will besome unexpected returns For End has its own brain, its own script Charting its own course So why just the beginning,every moment of the life should be grand, meted with equal passion and fervor She has been so clever; the sunset sky Leaving Twinkling cryptic messages for the night sky For even the dark has sparkle and hope if you keep your head up, A constant reminder that exuberance is an attitude of deep,rich, warm hearts I want my sunset sky to be grand, magical, and full of stories of my life that has been And its memories to linger on in this world, in the tomorrow and a few more years to come
Soma Mukherjee
Today everyone on our side knows that criminality is not the result of the Algerian's congenital nature nor the configuration of his nervous system. The war in Algeria and wars of national liberation bring out the true protagonists. We have demonstrated that in the colonial situation the colonized are confronted with themselves. They tend to use each other as a screen. Each prevents his neighbor from seeing the national enemy. And when exhausted after a sixteen-hour day of hard work the colonized subject collapses on his mat and a child on the other side of the canvas partition cries and prevents him from sleeping, it just so happens it's a little Algerian. When he goes to beg for a little semolina or a little oil from the shopkeeper to whom he already owes several hundred francs and his request is turned down, he is overwhelmed by an intense hatred and desire to kill—and the shopkeeper happens to be an Algerian. When, after weeks of keeping a low profile, he finds himself cornered one day by the kaid demanding "his taxes," he is not even allowed the opportunity to direct his hatred against the European administrator; before him stands the kaid who excites his hatred—and he happens to be an Algerian.
Frantz Fanon (The Wretched of the Earth)
Science, art, community, and nature make manifest that bad will or mistakes can lead to progress, like Bob Ross on his show The Joy of Painting reminding us that when we make big mistakes on canvas, we can turn them into birds—“Yeah, they’re birds now!
Anne Lamott (Almost Everything: Notes on Hope)
When you let the Holy Spirit paint dreams and a vision upon the canvas of your heart, a picture will emerge that will stagger your imagination and test your faith. If the vision doesn’t seem impossible to accomplish with your natural ability, it’s probably not from God. Throughout
Robert Morris (The Blessed Church: The Simple Secret to Growing the Church You Love)
I would pretend (metaphorically) to have seen nature and universe themselves not as a picture made or fastened on an immovable wall, but as a sort of painted canvas roof or curtain in the air, incessantly pulled and blown and flapped by a something of an immaterial unknown and unknowable wind.
Boris Pasternak (Doctor Zhivago (Vintage International))
This could be your big ticket,” he said. “You know what happens to you at art school?” I shook my head. “All that good natural technique you have? All that detail? They’ll beat it right out of you. They’ll be so threatened by it, they’ll make you start throwing paint at the canvas like a monkey. By the time you graduate, the only thing you’ll be able to do is teach art to high school kids.” Okay, I thought. I’m glad he’s excited for me. “On the plus side, you’ll probably get laid a lot.” I gave him a nod and a quick thumbs-up. He patted me on the shoulder and then left me alone.
Steve Hamilton (The Lock Artist)
Let me tell you something about the beauty of destruction. There is a distinct art in boxing, because there is method, strategy, technique rules and all the bells and whistles that the general public knows. However, since the beginning of time mankind was destined to appreciate the art of combat; and that is the mortal sacrifice - you put yourself out there and display a virtual painting, an interactive canvas that portrays the nature of the human body and what it’s capable of, and as an outcome, the object of combat is not to sacrifice yourself to entertain spectators, no, but to make the other bastard sacrifice himself to entertain spectators - thus comes the art of honor. It’s not a thirst for blood, not at all - but an astonishment, an appreciation for the capabilities of a human that bares his soul naked for the art of combat using strictly his body. That’s entertainment.
Ghaleya Aldhafiri
He did not know how much time passed. He got up, ripped the canvas off the frame, threw it into a corner, and put on a new one. He mixed some paints, sat down, and began work. One starts with a hopeless struggle to follow nature, and everything goes wrong; one ends by calmly creating from one’s palette, and nature agrees with it and follows. On croit que j’imagine—ce n’est pas vrai—je me souviens. It was just as Pietersen had told him in Brussels; he had been too close to his models. He had not been able to get a perspective. He had been pouring himself into the mould of nature; now he poured nature into the mould of himself. He painted the whole thing in the colour of a good, dusty, unpeeled potato. There was the dirty, linen table cloth, the smoky wall, the lamp hanging down from the rough rafters, Stien serving her father with steamed potatoes, the mother pouring the black coffee, the brother lifting a cup to his lips, and on all their faces the calm, patient acceptance of the eternal order of things. The sun rose and a bit of light peered into the storeroom window. Vincent got up from his stool. He felt perfectly calm and peaceful. The twelve days’ excitement was gone. He looked at his work. It reeked of bacon, smoke, and potato steam. He smiled. He had painted his Angelus. He had captured that which does not pass in that which passes. The Brabant peasant would never die.
Irving Stone (Lust For Life)
For a moment or two before the spell took effect, he was aware of all the sounds around him: rain splashing on metal and leather, and running down canvas; horses shuffling and snorting; Englishmen singing and Scotsmen playing bagpipes; two Welsh soldiers arguing over the proper interpretation of a Bible passage; the Scottish captain, John Kincaid, entertaining the American savages and teaching them to drink tea (presumably with the idea that once a man had learnt to drink tea, the other habits and qualities that make up a Briton would naturally follow). Then silence. Men and horses began to disappear, few by few at first, and then more quickly – hundreds, thousands of them vanishing from sight. Great gaps appeared among the close-packed soldiers. A little further to the east an entire regiment was gone, leaving a hole the size of Hanover-square. Where, moments before, all had been life, conversation and activity, there was now nothing but the rain and the twilight and the waving stalks of rye. Strange wiped his mouth because he felt sick.
Susanna Clarke (Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell)
From the first time Thomas has seen him, he hadn't known who or what Marcus was, just that he wanted him. Wanted to be his. And the fact Thomas has thought of it that way should have given him a clue to the hidden craving in his own makeup. An unexpected sexual preference. Preference. There was a grimly amusing word. As if any need this elemental was a choice.
Joey W. Hill (Rough Canvas (Nature of Desire, #6))
Women do not simply have faces, as men do; they are identified with their faces. Men have a naturalistic relation to their faces. Certainly they care whether they are good-looking or not. They suffer over acne, protruding ears, tiny eyes; they hate getting bald. But there is a much wider latitude in what is esthetically acceptable in a man’s face than what is in a woman’s. A man’s face is defined as something he basically doesn’t need to tamper with; all he has to do is keep it clean. He can avail himself of the options for ornament supplied by nature: a beard, a mustache, longer or shorter hair. But he is not supposed to disguise himself. What he is “really” like is supposed to show. A man lives through his face; it records the progressive stages of his life. And since he doesn’t tamper with his face, it is not separate from but is completed by his body – which is judged attractive by the impression it gives of virility and energy. By contrast, a woman’s face is potentially separate from her body. She does not treat it naturalistically. A woman’s face is the canvas upon which she paints a revised, corrected portrait of herself. One of the rules of this creation is that the face not show what she doesn’t want it to show. Her face is an emblem, an icon, a flag. How she arranges her hair, the type of make-up she uses, the quality of her complexion – all these are signs, not of what she is “really” like, but of how she asks to be treated by others, especially men. They establish her status as an “object.
Susan Sontag
In order to understand how engineers endeavor to insure against such structural, mechanical, and systems failures, and thereby also to understand how mistakes can be made and accidents with far-reaching consequences can occur, it is necessary to understand, at least partly, the nature of engineering design. It is the process of design, in which diverse parts of the 'given-world' of the scientist and the 'made-world' of the engineer are reformed and assembled into something the likes of which Nature had not dreamed, that divorces engineering from science and marries it to art. While the practice of engineering may involve as much technical experience as the poet brings to the blank page, the painter to the empty canvas, or the composer to the silent keyboard, the understanding and appreciation of the process and products of engineering are no less accessible than a poem, a painting, or a piece of music. Indeed, just as we all have experienced the rudiments of artistic creativity in the childhood masterpieces our parents were so proud of, so we have all experienced the essence of structual engineering in our learning to balance first our bodies and later our blocks in ever more ambitious positions. We have learned to endure the most boring of cocktail parties without the social accident of either our bodies or our glasses succumbing to the force of gravity, having long ago learned to crawl, sit up, and toddle among our tottering towers of blocks. If we could remember those early efforts of ours to raise ourselves up among the towers of legs of our parents and their friends, then we can begin to appreciate the task and the achievements of engineers, whether they be called builders in Babylon or scientists in Los Alamos. For all of their efforts are to one end: to make something stand that has not stood before, to reassemble Nature into something new, and above all to obviate failure in the effort.
Henry Petroski
The quality of interpersonal relationships that we forge when purposefully engaging in work that advances the interest of the multitudes is the shining endorsement to a life well lived. Within the corners of each person’s private and public canvas lies his or her masterpiece. Each person’s matchless artistry provides an indelible testament to how he or she lived. A person’s lifetime body of work unequivocally expresses a road map to their innermost salvation. Only by actualizing our innate natural mind can any of us funnel our motivational forces into directional inspiration that leads us to peacefulness and wisdom. All efforts to achieve meaningful tributes to a life well lived are noisy affairs that clang in our hearts. Only through death can any of us attain a state of soundless perfection.
Kilroy J. Oldster (Dead Toad Scrolls)
...It's not something shared with society, but rather its a personal possession. I've never thought that I wanted to share morality with someone. I feel it's like a white canvas on which nothing is yet drawn, a silent room which accepts any sounds of music and nature, a litmus paper that has not yet been dipped into a solution. In future, it will be a white canvas on which anyone should be allowed to draw anything.
Ayako Sono (No Reason for Murder)
I learned to listen to my heart, which taught me that you and I are connected to each other and everything else on this planet. We are joined together by the mysterious nature of life itself, the fundamental creative energy of the universe. In this complicated world of ours, where contradictions abound, we find breathtaking beauty in the most unlikely places. The brightest rainbows appear after the heaviest of storm clouds. Magnificent butterflies emerge from the drabbest cocoons. And the most beautiful lotus flowers bloom from the deepest and thickest mud. Why do you suppose life works this way? Perhaps those rainbows, butterflies, and lotus flowers are meant to remind us that our world is a mystical work of art—a universal canvas upon which we all paint our stories, day by day, through the brushstrokes of our thoughts, words, and deeds.
Tina Turner (Happiness Becomes You: A Guide to Changing Your Life for Good)
I SEEK SOLACE IN THE CRIMSON SUNRISE, That splashes the east with beauty; I am captivated by the azure skies, Which follow with an air of serenity! I watch the color of the seas That paints the canvas of my heart; I brush my thoughts with the elegant breeze That translates my ideas to art! The dainty garden of beauteous flowers - Red, yellow, lilac and white - Toss and frolic in breezy hours Spreading the waves of lucid delight. The hills covered with foliage green, And the faded ones, blue and grey, Enthrall me as my eyes glean Their glimpses while I move away. Each speck of dust, each grain of rice, And the farms reflect life and mirth; Colors of nature, at ease, entice, Bringing the sweet scent of earth. I chase the mesmerizing butterflies Laden with hues of heaven, Solitude becomes a joyous exercise. When by beauty, I am madly driven! The world is filled with colors galore, Each day is a colorful festivity; Every moment you amass more and more, There is no end to beauty!
Saravanakumar Murugan (Shades of Life)
I began to understand my sensations, to know what I wanted, at around the age of forty - but only vaguely. At fifty, that is in 1880, I formulated the idea of unity, without being able to render it. At sixty, I am beginning to see the possibility of rendering it. Cover the canvas at the first go, then work at it until you see nothing more to add. Don't be afraid in nature: one must be bold, at the risk of having been deceived and making mistakes. God takes care of imbeciles, little children and artists.
Camille Pissarro
Art is not a metonym for truth telling. All art is a form of a falsifying; otherwise why would anyone need art to tell us what we already know? Art makes us stand back and see what lies outside the four corners of a canvas, it makes us look inside ourselves and realize the sublime truth that previously eluded us. Art makes us realize what already lies within ourselves waiting for the resolute seeker to discover. Art frequently concentrates on the blemishes of nature. When one sees nature disfigured, it reveals both sides of the same notion.
Kilroy J. Oldster (Dead Toad Scrolls)
And the principal tenet of Pasternak’s thought—that Nature and History do not belong to two different orders but form a continuum in which human lives find themselves immersed and by which they are determined—can be articulated better through narration than through theoretical propositions. In this way these reflections become one with the broad canvas of all the humanity and nature in the novel, they do not dominate or suffocate it. The result is that, as happens with all genuine storytellers, the book’s meaning is not to be sought in the sum of the ideas enunciated but in the totality of its images and sensations, in the flavour of life, in its silences. And all the ideological proliferations, these discussions which constantly flare up and die down, about nature and history, the individual and politics, religion and poetry, as though resuming old conversations with friends long gone, create a deep echo chamber for the strictly humble events the characters undergo, and come forth (to adopt a beautiful image used by Pasternak for the revolution) ‘like a sigh which has been held back too long’. Pasternak has breathed into his whole novel a desire for the kind of novel which no longer exists.
Italo Calvino (Why Read the Classics?)
I had sat at table with an old, semiliterate man in a dirty jacket and canvas boots and felt in my heart an excitement I had seldom known. By then Armenia and Russia no longer seemed to matter. I was no longer thinking about the nature of greatness or the characteristics of a particular nation. There was only the human soul, the soul that did not lose faith as it suffered anguish and torment among the scree and vineyards of Palestine, the soul that remains equally human and good in a little village near Penza, under the sky of India, and in a northern yurt—because there is good in people everywhere, simply because they are human beings.
Vasily Grossman (An Armenian Sketchbook)
Inasmuch as the public cannot recognise the charm, the beauty, even the outlines of nature save in the stereotyped impressions of an art which they have gradually assimilated, while an original artist starts by rejecting those impressions, so M. and Mme. Cottard, typical, in this respect, of the public, were incapable of finding, either in Vinteuil’s sonata or in Biche’s portraits, what constituted harmony, for them, in music or beauty in painting. It appeared to them, when the pianist played his sonata, as though he were striking haphazard from the piano a medley of notes which bore no relation to the musical forms to which they themselves were accustomed, and that the painter simply flung the colours haphazard upon his canvas.
Marcel Proust (In Search Of Lost Time (All 7 Volumes) (ShandonPress))
Have you ever just laid down on the grass and watch as the day slowly transitions to evening? The sky flows through hues of orange and slowly fades to greys, the incredible palette of dusk. This is where the magic begins to happen. First the planets reveal themselves as bright pinpoints of light against the bleak canvas, and for a few moments they are the only thing you can focus on - they’re so bright that they draw away from anything else. When you stare at only one, when there is so much distance between it and anything else, it almost seems to be dancing back and forth in space, playing mind tricks on you. However, as you emerge from its hypnotic trance, you begin to see the less significant stars awaken from what seems like nowhere. They too earn your attention, but in a different way. You can’t look at them directly because otherwise you won’t see their beauty. You have to glance at them from the side, from the corner of your eye to really see them in their fullness. The sky is not yet completely in darkness and the universe is already showing off. Distant stars even further light years away and planets orbiting from afar being to emerge and before you know it you almost don’t know where to look, there are little grains of sand lighting up the sky from everywhere. This happens every night - a spectacular natural light show but so many people miss it. It’s sad to think that, but it makes viewing it that much more special when you get to experience it. Just you and the universe, watching itself through your own very eyes.
Madeleine Jane Hall
Some people will tell you that Toronto, in the summer, is the nothing more than a cesspool of pollution, garbage, and the smells of a hundred ethnicities competing for top spot in a race won historically by curry, garlic, and the occasional cauldron of boiled cabbage. Take a walk down College Street West, Gerrard Street East, or the Danforth, and you'll see; then, they add—these people, complaining—that the stench is so pervasive, so incorrigible, nor merely for lack of wind, but for the ninety-nine percent humidity, which, after a rainstorm, adds an eradicable bottom-note of sweaty Birkenstocks and the organic tang of decaying plant life. This much is true; there is, however, more to the story. Take a walk down the same streets and you'll find racks of the most stunning saris—red with navy brocade, silver, canary, vermillion and chocolate; marts with lahsun and adrak, pyaz and pudina; windows of gelato, zeppole, tiramisu; dusty smoke shops with patio-bistros; you'll find dove-white statuary of Olympian goddesses, mobs in blue jerseys, primed for the World Cup—and more, still, the compulsory banter of couples who even after forty years can turn foul words into the bawdiest, more unforgettable laughter (and those are just the details). Beyond them is the container, the big canvas brushed with parks and valleys and the interminable shore; a backdrop of ferries and islands, gulls and clouds—sparkles of a million wave-tips as the sun decides which colours to leave on its journey to new days. No, Toronto, in the summer, is the most paradisiacal place in the world.
Kit Ingram (Paradise)
The color-patches of vision part, shift, and reform as I move through space in time. The present is the object of vision, and what I see before me at any given second is a full field of color patches scattered just so. The configuration will never be repeated. Living is moving; time is a live creek bearing changing lights. As I move, or as the world moves around me, the fullness of what I see shatters. “Last forever!” Who hasn’t prayed that prayer? You were lucky to get it in the first place. The present is a freely given canvas. That it is constantly being ripped apart and washed downstream goes without saying; it is a canvas, nevertheless. But there is more to the present than a series of snapshots. We are not merely sensitized film; we have feelings, a memory for information and an eidetic memory for the imagery of our pasts. Our layered consciousness is a tiered track for an unmatched assortment of concentrically wound reels. Each one plays out for all of life its dazzle and blur of translucent shadow-pictures; each one hums at every moment its own secret melody in its own unique key. We tune in and out. But moments are not lost. Time out of mind is time nevertheless, cumulative, informing the present. From even the deepest slumber you wake with a jolt- older, closer to death, and wiser, grateful for breath. But time is the one thing we have been given, and we have been given to time. Time gives us a whirl. We keep waking from a dream we can’t recall, looking around in surprise, and lapsing back, for years on end. All I want to do is stay awake, keep my head up, prop my eyes open, with toothpicks, with trees.
Annie Dillard (Pilgrim at Tinker Creek)
Once it had been second nature to savour the contrast of new grass against dark, tilled soil, or an amethyst brooch nestled in folds of emerald silk; once I'd dreamed and breathed and thought in colour and light and shape. Sometimes I would even indulge in envisioning a day when my sisters were married and it was only me and Father, with enough food to go around, enough money to buy some paint, and enough time to put those colours and shapes down on paper and canvas or the cottage walls. Not likely to happen anytime soon- perhaps ever. So I was left with moments like this, admiring the glint of pale winter light on snow. I couldn't remember the last time I'd done it- bothered to notice anything lovely or interesting. Stolen hours in a decrepit barn with Issac Hale didn't count; those times were hungry and empty and sometimes cruel, but never lovely.
Sarah J. Maas (A Court of Thorns and Roses (A Court of Thorns and Roses, #1))
To admirers and students of Anthony Trollope, the interest of this play, now printed for the first time and from the original manuscript, is out of all proportion to its artistic qualities. So far as is known, Trollope wrote only two plays during the prolific five and thirty years of his life of authorship. The genre was uncomfortable to him. It limited his elbow-room and forbade him the subtle accumulation of detail that was his genius. He liked a large canvas and a crowded one. Unrivalled as a manipulator of interdependent groups and individuals, he loved to sustain the interest and vitality of half a dozen societies, weaving them into one absorbing narrative. The more one reads his novels, the more one marvels at the skill with which he takes the reader from one set of characters to another; at the knowledge of human nature that enabled him to present so many personalities from so many walks of life; at the technique that could keep each individual distinct, and at the same time each group of individuals generically alike.
Anthony Trollope (Complete Works of Anthony Trollope)
To that end, we are ALL worshippers. "Human beings by their very nature are worshipers. Worship is not something we do; it defines who we are. You cannot divide human beings into those who worship and those who don't. Everybody worships; it's just a matter of what, or whom, we serve." (Paul David Tripp). Our jobs, relationship, reputations, and treasure- these are just a few things that compete for our worship. We were made for one worship and one satisfaction, but our taste buds are skewed until our appetites are formed in and for Him. The question isn't whether we will use our everyday moments to worship because we will- in the midst of ordinary places, people, sights, sounds, joys, and pains. How we direct our eyes, minds, hearts, and hands in the everyday will determine whom we ultimately worship, and what we ultimately become. We were made to behold Him and be transformed in Him. The art of everyday worship is the journey from canvas to masterpiece. We all have an invitation to be transformed, one everyday moment at a time.
Ruth Chou Simons (Beholding and Becoming: The Art of Everyday Worship)
A BATH   Sitting in the bath with her I carefully remove the paint from her shoulders to her elbows, creating the kind of memory that I will never forget. She takes her turn removing as much paint from off me as she can. The entire bar of soap is slowly reduced to a nib successfully loosening all of the paint from our wet bodies. The colors and suds slip through my hands and fingers as I move across the canvas of her slender physique. The vibrant colors eventually become more muddied as they blend together, sliding off of her and down into the drain. Gripping at her body has never felt so natural––almost sculptural like, gliding across the smoothness of the human medium that captivates me so. She too takes the initiative of making sure that I am washed clean as she feels for me and any dirty thing left clinging to me. Her hands slip passed the ridges of my rib as if to remember, the way that moisture catches between the shapes that mark a turtles back. Her eyes now watch me the way that nature studies her curious guest who seeks for himself the origin of his creation.
Luccini Shurod
The slightly vulgar lady whom the man with an eye for women wouldn’t bother to look at as he passed by and would exclude from the poetic scene nature presents to his eyes, is beautiful too; the light on her dress is the same light that falls on the sail of that boat, everything is equally precious, the tawdry dress and the sail that is beautiful in itself are both mirrors of the same light. All the worth they have is conferred upon them by the painter’s eye.’ And this eye had been able to arrest the passage of the hours for all time in this luminous moment when the lady had felt hot and stopped dancing, when the tree was encircled by a ring of shade, when the sails seemed to be gliding over a glaze of gold. But precisely because that moment had such a forceful impact, the fixity of the canvas conveyed the impression of something highly elusive: you felt that the lady would soon return home, the boats vanish from the scene, the shadow shift, night begin to fall; that pleasure fades away, that life passes, and that the instant, illuminated by multiple and simultaneous plays of light, cannot be recaptured.
Marcel Proust (The Guermantes Way)
A written word is the choicest of relics. It is something at once more intimate with us and more universal than any other work of art. It is the work of art nearest to life itself. It may be translated into every language, and not only be read but actually breathed from all human lips;—not be represented on canvas or in marble only, but be carved out of the breath of life itself. The symbol of an ancient man’s thought becomes a modern man’s speech. Two thousand summers have imparted to the monuments of Grecian literature, as to her marbles, only a maturer golden and autumnal tint, for they have carried their own serene and celestial atmosphere into all lands to protect them against the corrosion of time. Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations. Books, the oldest and the best, stand naturally and rightfully on the shelves of every cottage. They have no cause of their own to plead, but while they enlighten and sustain the reader his common sense will not refuse them. Their authors are a natural and irresistible aristocracy in every society, and, more than kings or emperors, exert an influence on mankind.
Henry David Thoreau (Walden)
Even when you're keeping score, golf is all about focusing on the shot at hand, the total score being a sum of those shots. On magic mushrooms, each shot was an act of self-expression - a karate kick, a pirouette, a paintbrush stroke. The course was an aren, a stage, and a canvas. That's the way it felt playing in the backcountry, too. Going beyond the simple visual appreciation of a landscape and interacting with it beyond the reach of the physical body. Launching shots across canyons and rivers and down mountainsides and beaches. The motion of the body determining the motion of the ball - its flight an extension of the body like a spider riding the wind on a silken thread or a perfectly cast fly arcing down onto the surface of the water. This is the part of the game that is hard for nongolfers to see. You have to play to feel it. It isn't visible through the TV screen or from outside the picket fences and privet hedges. The forest gets lost in tress of tartan and argyle, visors and V-necks. Golf seems to be one thing but is very much another, and backcountry golf and mushroom night golf are as true to the nature of the game as any stuffy country club championship or Saturday Nassau or fourball.
John Dunn (Loopers: A Caddie's Twenty-Year Golf Odyssey)
I placed the tubes of paint on the palette and selected a small canvas. I prepared the palette with an assortment of colors, then closed my eyes, remembering the way the moors had looked when I rode into town with Lord Livingston. He'd been so different on that drive into the village before he left for London. Had that been the side of him that Lady Anna had fallen in love with? I dipped my brush into the black paint and then mixed in some white until I'd created the right shade of gray, then touched the brush to the canvas. I loved the feeling of the paintbrush in my hand. He'd been kind to buy me the art supplies, but I remembered how he'd behaved in the dining room and at other times before that. 'How could he be so cruel, so unfeeling?' Once I'd painted the clouds, I moved on to the hills, mixing a sage green color for the grass and then dotting the foreground with a bit of lavender to simulate the heather. I stepped back from the canvas and frowned. It needed something else. But what? I looked out the window to the orchard. The Middlebury Pink. 'Who took the page from Lady Anna's book? Lord Livingston?' I dabbed my brush into the brown paint and created the structure of the tree. Next I dotted the branches with its heart-shaped leaves and large, white, saucer-size blossoms with pink tips.
Sarah Jio (The Last Camellia)
She finds herself, by some miraculous feat, no longer standing in the old nursery but returned to the clearing in the woods. It is the 'green cathedral', the place she first kissed Jack all those weeks ago. The place where they laid out the stunned sparrowhawk, then watched it spring miraculously back to life. All around, the smooth, grey trunks of ancient beech trees rise up from the walls of the room to tower over her, spreading their branches across the ceiling in a fan of tangled branches and leaves, paint and gold leaf cleverly combined to create the shimmering effect of a leafy canopy at its most dense and opulent. And yet it is not the clearing, not in any real or grounded sense, because instead of leaves, the trees taper up to a canopy of extraordinary feathers shimmering and spreading out like a peacock's tail across the ceiling, a hundred green, gold and sapphire eyes gazing down upon her. Jack's startling embellishments twist an otherwise literal interpretation of their woodland glade into a fantastical, dreamlike version of itself. Their green cathedral, more spectacular and beautiful than she could have ever imagined. She moves closer to one of the trees and stretches out a hand, feeling instead of rough bark the smooth, cool surface of a wall. She can't help but smile. The trompe-l'oeil effect is dazzling and disorienting in equal measure. Even the window shutters and cornicing have been painted to maintain the illusion of the trees, while high above her head the glass dome set into the roof spills light as if it were the sun itself, pouring through the canopy of eyes. The only other light falls from the glass windowpanes above the window seat, still flanked by the old green velvet curtains, which somehow appear to blend seamlessly with the painted scene. The whole effect is eerie and unsettling. Lillian feels unbalanced, no longer sure what is real and what is not. It is like that book she read to Albie once- the one where the boy walks through the wardrobe into another world. That's what it feels like, she realizes: as if she has stepped into another realm, a place both fantastical and otherworldly. It's not just the peacock-feather eyes that are staring at her. Her gaze finds other details: a shy muntjac deer peering out from the undergrowth, a squirrel, sitting high up in a tree holding a green nut between its paws, small birds flitting here and there. The tiniest details have been captured by Jack's brush: a silver spider's web, a creeping ladybird, a puffy white toadstool. The only thing missing is the sound of the leaf canopy rustling and the soft scuttle of insects moving across the forest floor.
Hannah Richell (The Peacock Summer)
The biggest canvas is wider than my arm span. It’s bursting with so much color it looks like a graffiti artist got too excited with a spray can. But it’s my story, told in brushstrokes and acrylic paint. There's Jamie and me as children, hiding in trees and searching for ladybugs. There's me alone, searching for stars in the dark. There's my mom, the queen of the starfish, existing in a tornado of glitter that poisons anything else it touches. There are my brothers and me, living on opposite sides of a triangle, experiencing the same things but never together. There's my dad, never knowing or doing as much as he should but trying to fix the poison all the same. There's Hiroshi, painting my hands so I can paint my voice. There's me split in half—Japanese and white—stitching myself together again because I am whole only when I’ve embraced the true beauty of my heritage. And there's Jamie and me in June, the sun on our faces and the sand at our feet, finding each other again after all those years. Our lives trail around us, sometimes broken and sometimes beautiful, but all puzzled and tangled up into the lump that is us. We fit together not because we need each other, but because we choose each other. Our friendship was always our choice. Love was a natural progression. Jamie stares at the painting for so long that I think the room actually starts to get darker. When he turns to face me, he looks relieved. Calm. Jamie turns back to the painting. We don’t need words. We just know. Our fingers find each other’s.
Akemi Dawn Bowman (Starfish)
So, you want to improve your home like you have some knowledge and respect for the endeavor, yes? Very well. First, you need to know the basics associated with it to showcase what type of knowledge you actually have about it. If that is not enough, try reviewing the article listed below to assist you. Home improvement is often a daunting task. This is because of the time and the amounts of money required. However, it doesn't have to be so bad. If you have several projects in your house, divide them up into several smaller DIY projects. For example you may want to redo the entire living room. Start simple, by just replacing the carpet, and before you know it, your living room will be like new. One great way to make the inside of your home sparkle is to put new molding in. New molding helps create a fresh sense in your living space. You can purchase special molding with beautiful carvings on them to add a unique touch of elegance and style to your home. When it comes to home improvement, consider replacing your windows and doors. This not only has a chance of greatly improving the value of the home, but may also severely decrease the amount of money required to keep your house warm and dry. You can also add extra security with new doors and windows. Change your shower curtain once a month. Showering produces excessive humidity in a bathroom that in turn causes shower curtains to develop mold and mildew. To keep your space fresh and healthy, replace your curtains. Don't buy expensive plastic curtains with hard to find designs, and you won't feel bad about replacing it. Sprucing up your walls with art is a great improvement idea, but it doesn't have to be a painting. You can use practically anything for artwork. For instance, a three-dimensional tile works great if you contrast the colors. You can even buy some canvas and a frame and paint colored squares. Anything colorful can work as art. If you are renovating your kitchen but need to spend less money, consider using laminate flooring and countertops. These synthetic options are generally much less expensive than wood, tile, or stone. They are also easier to care for. Many of these products are designed to closely mimic the natural products, so that the difference is only visible on close inspection. New wallpaper can transform a room. Before you add wallpaper, you need to find out what type of wall is under the existing wallpaper. Usually walls are either drywall or plaster smoothed over lath. You can figure out what kind of wall you are dealing with by feeling the wall, plaster is harder, smoother, and colder than drywall. You can also try tapping the wall, drywall sounds hollow while plaster does not. Ah, you have read the aforementioned article, or you wouldn't be down here reading through the conclusion. Well done! That article should have provided you with a proper foundation of what it takes to properly and safely improve your home. If any questions still remain, try reviewing the article again.
GutterInstallation
Now there is this song on the saxophone. And I am ashamed. A glorious little suffering has just been born, an exemplary suffering. Four notes on the saxophone. They come and go, they seem to say: You must be like us, suffer in rhythm. All right! Naturally, I’d like to suffer that way, in rhythm, without complacence, without self-pity, with an arid purity. But is it my fault if the beer at the bottom of my glass is warm, if there are brown stains on the mirror, if I am not wanted, if the sincerest of my sufferings drags and weighs, with too much flesh and the skin too wide at the same time, like a sea-elephant, with bulging eyes, damp and touching and yet so ugly? No, they certainly can’t tell me it’s compassionate—this little jewelled pain which spins around above the record and dazzles me. Not even ironic: it spins gaily, completely self-absorbed; like a scythe it has cut through the drab intimacy of the world and now it spins and all of us, Madeleine, the thick-set man, the patronne, myself, the tables, benches, the stained mirror, the glasses, all of us abandon ourselves to existence, because we were among ourselves, only among ourselves, it has taken us unawares, in the disorder, the day to day drift: I am ashamed for myself and for what exists in front of it. It does not exist. It is even an annoyance; if I were to get up and rip this record from the table which holds it, if I were to break it in two, I wouldn’t reach it. It is beyond—always beyond something, a voice, a violin note. Through layers and layers of existence, it veils itself, thin and firm, and when you want to seize it, you find only existants, you butt against existants devoid of sense. It is behind them: I don’t even hear it, I hear sounds, vibrations in the air which unveil it. It does not exist because it has nothing superfluous: it is all the rest which in relation to it is superfluous. It is. And I, too, wanted to be. That is all I wanted; this is the last word. At the bottom of all these attempts which seemed without bonds, I find the same desire again: to drive existence out of me, to rid the passing moments of their fat, to twist them, dry them, purify myself, harden myself, to give back at last the sharp, precise sound of a saxophone note. That could even make an apologue: there was a poor man who got in the wrong world. He existed, like other people, in a world of public parks, bistros, commercial cities and he wanted to persuade himself that he was living somewhere else, behind the canvas of paintings, with the doges of Tintoretto, with Gozzoli’s Florentines, behind the pages of books, with Fabrizio del Dongo and Julien Sorel, behind the phonograph records, with the long dry laments of jazz. And then, after making a complete fool of himself, he understood, he opened his eyes, he saw that it was a misdeal: he was in a bistro, just in front of a glass of warm beer. He stayed overwhelmed on the bench; he thought: I am a fool. And at that very moment, on the other side of existence, in this other world which you can see in the distance, but without ever approaching it, a little melody began to sing and dance: “You must be like me; you must suffer in rhythm.
Jean-Paul Sartre (Nausea)
To paint after nature is to transfer three-dimensional corporeality to a two-dimensional surface. This you can do if you are in good health and not colorblind. Oil paint, canvas, and brush are material and tools. It is possible by expedient distribution of oil paint on canvas to copy natural impressions; under favorable conditions you can do it so accurately that the picture cannot be distinguished from the model. You start, let us say, with a white canvas primed for oil painting and sketch in with charcoal the most discernible lines of the natural form you have chosen. Only the first line may be drawn more or less arbitrarily, all the others must form with the first the angle prescribed by the natural model. By constant comparison of the sketch with the model, the lines can be so adjusted that the lines of the sketch will correspond to those of the model. Lines are now drawn by feeling, the accuracy of the feeling is checked and measured by comparison of the estimated angle of the line with the perpendicular in nature and in the sketch. Then, according to the apparent proportions between the parts of the model, you sketch in the proportions between parts on the canvas, preferably by means of broken lines delimiting these parts. The size of the first part is arbitrary, unless your plan is to represent a part, such as the head, in 'life size.' In that case you measure with a compass an imaginary line running parallel to a plane on the natural object conceived as a plane on the picture, and use this measurement in representing the first part. You adjust all the remaining parts to the first through feeling, according to the corresponding parts of the model, and check your feeling by measurement; to do this, you place the picture so far away form you that the first part appears as large in the painting as the model, and then you compare. In order to check a given proportion, you hold out the handle of your paintbrush at arm's length towards this proportion in such a way that the end of the thumbnail on the handle coincides with the other end of the proportion. If then you hold the paintbrush out towards the picture, again at arm's length, you can, by the measurement thus obtained, determine with photographic accuracy whether your feeling has deceived you. If the sketch is correct, you fill in the parts of the picture with color, according to nature. The most expedient method is to begin with a clearly recognizable color of large area, perhaps with a somewhat broken blue. You estimate the degree of matness and break the luminosity with a complimentary color, ultramarine, for example, with light ochre. By addition of white you can make the color light, by addition of black dark. All this can be learned. The best way of checking for accuracy is to place the picture directly beside the projected picture surface in nature, return to your old place and compare the color in your picture with the natural color. By breaking those tones that are too bright and adding those that are still lacking, you will achieve a color tonality as close as possible to that in nature. If one tone is correct, you can put the picture back in its place and adjust the other colors to the first by feeling. You can check your feeling by comparing every tone directly with nature, after setting the picture back beside the model. If you have patience and adjust all large and small lines, all forms and color tones according to nature, you will have an exact reproduction of nature. This can be learned. This can be taught. And in addition, you can avoid making too many mistakes in 'feeling' by studying nature itself through anatomy and perspective and your medium through color theory. That is academy.
Kurt Schwitters (The Dada Painters and Poets: An Anthology)
Well, for a century, our takeover of your kingdom has been inevitable. You should have acclimated yourselves to the idea by now.” “You’re right. This is our fault, really. We’ve never been superb at preparation here in Hytanica.” Saadi shrugged, and I thought for one stunned moment that he had taken my statements to be sincere. Then his expression changed, and he looked at me with what appeared to be sympathy, perhaps even regret. “I do understand it, Shaselle. Being second tier, overrun, overlooked. Not having influence.” It disturbed me that he not only remembered my relation to Cannan and Steldor, but also my name. Yet I did not flee. “You have to take what you’re handed and make what you can of it,” he finished. “That’s the sorry truth.” “I plan to make them pay,” I snarled, hating his words and how similar they were to the message Queen Alera had been trying to send for weeks. “Them? What about me?” “Stop it!” I stamped my foot, not even sure what was upsetting me. “You killed my father!” “And you want revenge. Naturally. Just like the butcher in there. But the problem is, Shaselle, revenge isn’t a very satisfying goal. It eats away at you, destroys you from the inside out. You end up bitter and empty just like that butcher. And that’s not a pretty sight.” “What is wrong with you? You think you know everything about me! You don’t. Stay out of my way and out of my business.” I spun on my heel and began to stride away, but he called me back. “Don’t you want this?” I turned to see that he was still holding my canvas bag filled with fruit. I breathed in and out heavily, my stomach complaining, my pride aching just as much. “So far, it’s been you who’s getting in my way.” He chuckled. “If you don’t like it, let that uncle of yours catch up with you.” I warily returned to him to reclaim my bag, but he held it away from me for a moment longer. “There is the matter of the damages for the door,” he said, and my heart sank, for lack of money was what had gotten me into this mess in the first place. But before I could speak, he added, “I’ll cover the cost for now. But you’ll owe me.” Annoyed that I would be in his debt, I snatched my bag from his hand, then sprinted in the other direction, his laughter nipping at my heels.
Cayla Kluver (Sacrifice (Legacy, #3))
Da Vinci said, “A painter should begin every canvas with a wash of black, because all things in nature are dark except where exposed by the light.” And so, perhaps, if this day were a painting, I would begin with black. Mermaid Tears By the time Avery woke up, I was sick of painting.
T. Greenwood (The Golden Hour)
The trees were turning, nature’s own canvas; glorious ochres and russets and paprika, glowing in a sunburst against the grey of the rainclouds. I love Autumn.
Jade West (Teach Me Dirty)
And the kind of equality which implies that the equals are interchangeable (like counters or identical machines) is, among humans, a legal fiction. It may be a useful legal fiction. But in church we turn our back on fictions. One of the ends for which sex was created was to symbolize to us the hidden things of God. One of the functions of human marriage is to express the nature of the union between Christ and the Church. We have no authority to take the living and semitive figures which God has painted on the canvas of our nature and shift them about as if they were mere geometrical figures.
C.S. Lewis
How best to portray the story of Lydia---a woman who has mixed Japanese, Malaysian, and English heritage, and who is a vampire, a creature inherently half-demon, half-human---who is constantly trying to resist the temptation of her nature? I designed many versions of this cover; some depicted Lydia, while others focused on specific details from the story, like bite marks, or a pig whose blood she drinks in order to stave off her cravings for human blood. In the end, though, the most powerful visual was not one of Lydia herself, but of the novel's antagonist. Because Lydia is an artist, it felt fitting to use a painting on the cover, but it needed to be a piece that spoke to the story on multiple levels. Caravaggio's Boy with a Basket of Fruit felt just right; the sidelong glance peering back at the viewer, the lush basket filled with food that Lydia can never eat, not to mention Caravaggio's own less-than-pristine reputation, not dissimilar to our antagonist's. The final touch: a perfectly-placed crack in the canvas---or is it a bite mark?
Claire Kohda (Woman, Eating)
No believer, no matter how sincere, could possibly write the Divine Comedy today, even if he possessed a talent equal to Dante’s. Visions and symbols do not have the immediate and overwhelming reality for us that they had for the medieval poet. In the Divine Comedy the whole of nature is merely a canvas upon which the religious symbol and image are painted. Western man has spent more than five hundred years – half a millennium – in stripping nature of these projections and turning it into a realm of neutral objects which his science may control. Thus it could hardly be expected that the religious image would have the same force for us as it did for Dante. This is simply a psychic fact within human history; psychic facts have just as much historical validity as the facts that we now, unlike the man of Dante's time, travel in airplanes and work in factories regulated by computing machines. A great work of art can never be repeated – the history of art shows us time and again that literal imitation leads to pastiche – because it springs from the human soul, which evolves like everything else in nature. This point must be insisted upon, contrary to the view of some of our more enthusiastic medievalists who picture the psychic containment of medieval man as a situation of human completeness to which we must return. History has never allowed man to return to the past in any total sense. And our psychological problems cannot be solved by a regression to a past state in which they had not yet been brought into being.
William Barrett (Irrational Man: A Study in Existential Philosophy)
You may even find that there’s no reason to ever stop doing it, even once you’ve graduated to heading your own projects. Let it become natural and permanent; let others apply it to you while you’re too busy applying it to those above you. Because if you pick up this mantle once, you’ll see what most people’s egos prevent them from appreciating: The person who clears the path ultimately controls its direction, just as the canvas shapes the painting.
Timothy Ferriss (Tools of Titans: The Tactics, Routines, and Habits of Billionaires, Icons, and World-Class Performers)
The introduction sets the scene and gives elaborate physical and mental portraits of the actors. This portrait gallery is an astounding performance, as a piece of writing hardly ever equalled. They are monstrous figures, well over life size, painted with extreme naturalism, yet crystallised to an individuality the naturalist school never attained. De Sade is absolutely merciless; we are not spared a single wrinkle, a single sore, unpleasant smell or habit, not a single meanness or treachery; no detail of cowardice or filth is hidden. But the canvas is not monotonous; religion and beauty are there too, childishness and romanticism; the whole gamut of human possibilities are exhibited in their extremest development.
Geoffrey Gorer (The Life and Ideas of the Marquis de Sade)
I try to cast off the Brechtian mechanism that comes naturally to me, of thinking about the hands and feet of history. In other words, to think more about the constantly empty plates that led to the storming of the Bastille than about the proclamations of Girondists and Jacobins. I can't stop thinking about it. It's a bad habit. Like someone in front of a Vermeer painting who, instead of contemplating the portrait, thinks about who mixed the colors, stretched the canvas, and made the pearl earrings.
Roberto Saviano (Gomorrah)
The woods offer a unique canvas for photographers, with an ever-changing landscape of light and shadow.
Ajaz Ahmad Khawaja
Why paint at all? ... Do you like painting? Yes? Very well, then, that is a good enough reason. "But the results are rather laughable," you may say. All right, laugh. It will do you a lot of good. You find it impossible to say all that you want to say? So did Rembrandt and any other artist who ever lived. "My perspective drawing is weak." So it was in all art up to the Renaissance. "I can't get the colours as bright." Agreed - and here the position is worse than you think! Take a sheet of white paper or a piece of canvas painted with your whitest white. Hold it up against the light. It is a dirty grey. And your blackest black is not as dark as the absence of light in nature. Your keyboard, so to speak, is restricted. That is why it is stating the obvious to look at a landscape and say, "Look at that. No artist could paint it." He can paint much of what the speaker sees, however, and because the artist sees deeper, he may paint something more.
G. Cameron Foley (Every Child's Book of Painting)
My mind suddenly flooded with memories of our relationship. But one in particular was crystalline. Willy and I, years before in Spain. A beautiful valley, the air glittery with that uncommonly clear Mediterranean light, the two of us kneeling behind a green canvas wall as the first hunting horns sounded. Lowering our flat caps as the first partridges burst towards us, bang bang, a few falling, handing our guns to the loaders, who handed us new ones, bang bang, more falling, passing our guns back, our shirts darkening with sweat, the ground filling with birds that would feed nearby villages for weeks, bang, one last shot, neither of us able to miss, then standing at last, drenched, starved, happy, because we were young and together and this was our place, our one true space, away from Them and close to Nature. It was such a transcendent moment that we turned and did that rarest of things—we hugged. Really hugged.
Prince Harry (Spare)
Nature is the canvas on which love and life are painted, each stroke a testament to the beauty and harmony of existence.
Matheesha Prathapa
Your future rests on three distinct premises: You are creative by nature, endowed with a near limitless capacity to make and grow new things. Accessing this capacity requires a kind of creative muscle that must be strengthened to achieve your full potential. By identifying as a creative person, accepting the world around you as your canvas, and manifesting your ideas regularly, you will intuitively create the life you truly want for yourself.
Chase Jarvis (Creative Calling: Establish a Daily Practice, Infuse Your World with Meaning, and Succeed in Work + Life)
Amidst the towering peaks, I found my truest self, soaring higher than I ever imagined. The mountains are my canvas, and with each step, I paint a masterpiece of strength, courage, and relentless passion. In the embrace of nature's grandeur, I discover the boundless heights of my spirit.
Bhawna Dehariya
Lift your gaze, and the same divine proportion unravels across the vast canvas of nature. In the precise way petals unfurl in a rose, or the intricate designs on a seashell spiral, the echo of φ is omnipresent. Sunflowers, with their mesmerizing seed arrangements, stand as nature's mandalas, a testament to this universal code.
John Frei (Convergence (Nova))
Pregnancy Skincare: Nurturing Your Glow with Expert Care – Motherhood Chaitanya Hospital Pregnancy – a wondrous journey that transforms your world in every conceivable way. As you prepare to welcome a new life into the world, your body takes center stage, and so does your skincare routine. Amidst the excitement and anticipation, the canvas of your skin undergoes its own set of changes. But fret not, for the guidance of best gynecologist obstetricians in Chandigarh and the expert care at Motherhood Chaitanya Hospital can help you navigate the realm of pregnancy skincare with grace and confidence. The Glow and the Challenges Ah, the famed pregnancy glow! While it’s true that many expectant mothers experience a certain radiance, it’s also a time when your skin decides to throw a few curveballs. Hormones like estrogen and progesterone, the maestros behind many pregnancy changes, might lead to increased oil production. This could result in unexpected acne or that elusive “glow” turning into a somewhat excessive shine. And let’s not forget about the infamous melasma, often referred to as the “mask of pregnancy.” This uneven pigmentation might make an appearance on your face, especially if you’re basking in the sun’s rays without proper protection. But worry not, for the guidance of the best gynaecologist in Chandigarh, you can take steps to manage these challenges and let your true radiance shine through. Dos and Don’ts In this symphony of pregnancy skincare, it’s crucial to compose a harmonious routine that nurtures both your skin and the life growing within you. First and foremost, let’s talk hydration. Drinking water is like giving your skin a refreshing dose of vitality, ensuring that it remains supple and resilient. As you venture into the world of skincare products, remember that less is more. Opt for gentle, pregnancy-safe cleansers that cleanse without stripping away your skin’s natural moisture. Ingredients like hyaluronic acid and glycerin can be your skin’s best friends, offering hydration without clogging pores. Ah, the allure of sunscreen! Now more than ever, shielding your skin from the sun’s rays is of paramount importance. Look for a broad-spectrum SPF and ensure that it’s pregnancy-safe. A hat and sunglasses can also join the ensemble of sun protection. Now, as you scan the beauty aisles, you might come across a wide array of products promising miracles. But be cautious – not all ingredients are pregnancy-friendly. Best gynecologist in Sector44C would advise steering clear of retinoids, salicylic acid, and benzoyl peroxide. Instead, embrace the calming embrace of ingredients like chamomile and aloe vera. Treating Yourself with Care Amidst the whirlwind of preparations, don’t forget to treat yourself to moments of self-care. A gentle exfoliation once or twice a week can help slough away dead skin cells and keep your complexion radiant. Opt for exfoliants with natural granules to ensure that your skin is treated with the gentleness it deserves. Expert Support for Your Glow The journey of pregnancy is as unique as a fingerprint, and so is your skin’s response to it. That’s why seeking guidance from the best obstetricians in Chandigarh can make all the difference. As you navigate the realms of pregnancy skincare, remember that the changes your skin undergoes are a testament to the incredible journey you’re on. It’s a journey of growth, transformation, and the anticipation of new beginnings. With the guidance of experts, a touch of self-care, and the support of Motherhood Chaitanya Hospital, you can stride through this journey with confidence, letting your inner glow shine as brightly as your dreams.
Dr. Poonam Kumar
Based on the parts of this... this scene that are not covered in refuse, and the drawings you have done for me, I know you are an artist with talent. Maybe I have old-fashioned views, but I simply don't understand why you would spend your time creating something like this." He shrugged his shoulders. "The sort of art I am used to seeing is more..." I raised an eyebrow. "More what?" He bit his lip, as though searching for the right words. "Pleasant to look at, I suppose." He shrugged again. "Scenes from nature. Little girls wearing filly white dresses and playing beside riverbanks. Bowls of fruit." "This piece shows a beach and a lake," I pointed out. "It's a scene from nature." "But it's covered in refuse." I nodded. "My art combines objects I find with images I paint. Sometimes what I find and incorporate is literal trash. But I also feel that my art is more than just trash. It's meaningful. These pieces aren't just flat, lifeless images on canvas. They say something." "Oh." He came even closer to the landscapes, kneeling so he could peer at them up close. "And what does your art... say?" His nose was just a few inches from an old McDonald's Quarter Pounder wrapper I'd laminated to the canvas so it looked like it was rising out of Lake Michigan. I'd meant for it to represent capitalism's crushing stranglehold on the natural world. Also, it just sort of looked cool. But I decided to give him a broader explanation. "I want to create something memorable with my art. Something lasting. I want to give people who see my works an experience that won't fade away. Something that will stay with them long after they see it." He frowned skeptically. "And you accomplish that by displaying ephemera others throw away?" I was about to counter by telling him that even the prettiest painting in the fanciest museum faded from memory once the patrons went home. That by using things other people throw away, I took the ephemeral and make it permanent in a way no pretty watercolor ever could.
Jenna Levine (My Roommate Is a Vampire)