Realistic Drawing Quotes

What we like to think of ourselves and what we really are rarely have much in common....

He was a romantic in his own harsh way…yet he was also realist enough to know that some times love actually did conquer all.

...when you look at a photo or realistic drawing of a face, you see it as the face of another . But when you enter the world of the cartoon , you see yourself.

He’s right-handed, so I told him to draw his self-portrait with his left hand, because it’d look so ugly it’d look realistic. Since he’s a DC politician, I figured a little reality was needed in his life.

You were with Margo Roth Spiegelman last night? At THREE A.M.? I nodded. Alone? I nodded. Oh my God, if you hooked up with her, you have to tell me every single thing that happened. You have to write me a term paper on the look and feel of Margo Roth Spiegelman's breasts. Thrity pages, minimum! I want you to do a photo-realistic pencil drawing. A sculpture would also be acceptable. I was wondering if it would be possible for you to write a sestina about Margo Roth Spiegelman's breasts? Your six words are: pink, round, firmness, succulent, supple, and pillowy. Personally, I think at least one of the words should be buhbuhbuhbuh.

Laughter has the remarkable power of making an object come up close, of drawing it into a zone of crude contact where one can finger it familiarly on all sides, turn it upside down, inside out, peer at it from above and below, break open its external shell, look into its center, doubt it, take it apart, dismember it, lay it bare and expose it, examine it freely and experiment with it. Laughter demolishes fear and piety before an object, before a world, making of it an object of familiar contact and thus clearing the ground for an absolutely free investigation of it. Laughter is a vital factor in laying down that prerequisite for fearlessness without which it would be impossible to approach the world realistically.

We are training our minds to see the subtle shapes in the visual world around us. Shade

A writer's knowledge of himself, realistic and unromantic, is like a store of energy on which he must draw for a lifetime: one volt of it properly directed will bring a character to life.

If the passage absolutely demands cursing, be moderate. A little of it goes a long way. I've seen beginning writers pepper curse words through sentence after sentence. 'If you don't -blanking- get your -blanking-blank-blank- in to this house this -blanking- minute, I'm going to -blank- your -blank- and nail it to the -blanking- door.' Two things happen when I read this junk: I get bored and I get angry. I didn't pick up your book to read garbage. If this is as clever as you can be, I don't want to read your prose. In life if you met someone who spoke like this, you'd want to flee. Then why put this stuff on the page? As near as I can determine, this abomination occurs because a writer is corrupted by the awful -blanking- dialog that movies inflict on us these days. It's also a sign of insecurity. The writer wonders if the dialog is strong enough and decides a lot of -blanking-blank- will do the trick. Someone might object that this kind of dialog is realistic in certain situations--intense scenes involving policemen or soldiers for example. I can only reply that in my research I spend considerable time with policemen and soldiers. Few of them curse any more than a normal person would. This garbage isn't realistic. It merely draws attention to itself and holds back the story. Use it sparingly.

He sank back into his black-and-white world, his immobile world of inanimate drawings that had been granted the secret of motion, his death-world with its hidden gift of life. But that life was a deeply ambiguous life, a conjurer's trick, a crafty illusion based on an accidental property of the retina, which retained an image for a fraction of a second after the image was no longer present. On this frail fact was erected the entire structure of the cinema, that colossal confidence game. The animated cartoon was a far more honest expression of the cinematic illusion than the so-called realistic film, because the cartoon reveled in its own illusory nature, exulted in the impossible--indeed it claimed the impossible as its own, exalted it as its own highest end, found in impossibility, in the negation of the actual, its profoundest reason for being. The animated cartoon was nothing but the poetry of the impossible--therein lay its exhilaration and its secret melancholy. For this willful violation of the actual, while it was an intoxicating release from the constriction of things, was at the same time nothing but a delusion, an attempt to outwit mortality. As such it was doomed to failure. And yet it was desperately important to smash through the constriction of the actual, to unhinge the universe and let the impossible stream in, because otherwise--well, otherwise the world was nothing but an editorial cartoon.

There's folly in her stride that's the rumor justified by lies I've seen her up close beneath the sheets and sometime during the summer she was mine for a few sweet months in the fall and parts of December ((( To get to the heart of this unsolvable equation, one must first become familiar with the physical, emotional, and immaterial makeup as to what constitutes both war and peace. ))) I found her looking through a window the same window I'd been looking through She smiled and her eyes never faltered this folly was a crime ((( The very essence of war is destructive, though throughout the years utilized as a means of creating peace, such an equation might seem paradoxical to the untrained eye. Some might say using evil to defeat evil is counterproductive, and gives more meaning to the word “futile”. Others, like Edmund Burke, would argue that “the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men and women to do nothing.” ))) She had an identity I could identify with something my fingertips could caress in the night ((( There is such a limitless landscape within the mind, no two minds are alike. And this is why as a race we will forever be at war with each other. What constitutes peace is in the mind of the beholder. ))) Have you heard the argument? This displacement of men and women and women and men the minds we all have the beliefs we all share Slipping inside of us thoughts and religions and bodies all bare ((( “Without darkness, there can be no light,” he once said. To demonstrate this theory, during one of his seminars he held a piece of white chalk and drew a line down the center of a blackboard. Explaining that without the blackness of the board, the white line would be invisible. ))) When she left she kissed with eyes open I knew this because I'd done the same Sometimes we saw eye to eye like that Very briefly, she considered an apotheosis a synthesis a rendering of her folly into solidarity ((( To believe that a world-wide lay down of arms is possible, however, is the delusion of the pacifist; the dream of the optimist; and the joke of the realist. Diplomacy only goes so far, and in spite of our efforts to fight with words- there are times when drawing swords of a very different nature are surely called for. ))) Experiencing the subsequent sunrise inhaling and drinking breaking mirrors and regurgitating just to start again all in all I was just another gash in the bark ((( Plato once said: “Only the dead have seen the end of war.” Perhaps the death of us all is called for in this time of emotional desperation. War is a product of the mind; only with the death of such will come the end of the bloodshed. Though this may be a fairly realistic view of such an issue, perhaps there is an optimistic outlook on the horizon. Not every sword is double edged, but every coin is double sided. ))) Leaving town and throwing shit out the window drinking boroughs and borrowing spare change I glimpsed the rear view mirror stole a glimpse really I've believed in looking back for a while it helps to have one last view a reminder in case one ever decides to rebel in the event the self regresses and makes the declaration of devastation once more ((( Thus, if we wish to eliminate the threat of war today- complete human annihilation may be called for. )))

Ummiye is currently working on a screenplay called "Footless on Her Own Feet." It tells the story of a handicapped girl whose fifty-year-old mother pushes her to school every day in a wheelbarrow. Eventually, she wins a national drawing contest, making a super-realistic picture of herself in the wheelbarrow. With the prize money, she buys a wheelchair. Like the Arslankoy theatre, the girl's drawing uses artistic representation to change the thing represented. By drawing a truthful picture of the humiliating wheelbarrow, she transforms it into a dignified wheelchair-- much as a theatre, by representing the injustice of village women's life, might make that life more just. Nabokov once claimed that the inspiration for Lolita was an art work produced by an ape in the Jardin des Plantes: a drawing of the bars of its cage. It's a good metaphor for artistic production. What else do we ever draw besides the bars of our cage, or the wheelbarrow we rode in as crippled children? How else do cages get smashed? How else will we stand on our own feet?

But I never did escape from this plot-driven world into a more congenial, subtly probable, innerly propelled narrative of my own devising--didn't make it to the airport,...--and that was because in the taxi I remembered a political cartoon I'd seen in the British papers when I was living in London during the Lebanon war, a detestable cartoon of a big-nosed Jew, his hands meekly opened out in front of him and his shoulders raised in a shrug as though to disavow responsibility, standing atop a pyramid of dead Arab bodies. Purportedly a caricature of Menachem Begin, then prime minister of Israel, the drawing was, in fact, a perfectly realistic, unequivocal depiction of a kike as classically represented in the Nazi press. The cartoon was what turned me around. Barely ten minutes out of Jerusalem, I told the driver to take me back to the King David Hotel.

The recent experience of totalitarianism in Europe was foreshadowed at the French Revolution, when the Committee of Public Safety acted in the same way as the Nazi and Communist parties, setting up 'parallel structures' through which to control the state and to exert a micromanagerial tyranny over every aspect of civil society. Let us at least be realistic, and recognize that, if totalitarian governments have arisen and spread with such rapidity in modern times, this is because there is something in human nature to which they correspond and on which they draw for their moral energy.

An important dimension of Tess of the d’Urbervilles is its debt to the oral tradition; to stories about wronged milkmaids, tales of superstition, and stories of love, betrayal and revenge, involving stock figures. This gives Tess of the d’Urbervilles an anti-realistic inflection. From the world of ballad and folktale Hardy draws such fateful coincidences as the failure of Angel to encounter Tess at the ‘Club-walking’ on which he intrudes with his brothers, the letter to Angel that she accidentally slips under the carpet, the loss of her shoes when she tries to visit his family, and the family portraits on the wall of their honeymoon dwelling, as well as several omens. This chimes effectively with a world in which the rural folk have a superstitious and fatalistic attitude to life.

I now have three binders overflowing with the success of this program. My husband and I travel across the country teaching composite and forensic art to law enforcement agencies ranging from the FBI to two-person departments. Our students' sketches have identified such perpetrators as child killers, rapists, abductors, murderers, bank robbers, drug dealers and the largest serial arsonist in U.S. history.

My idea is not to try and charm you with subtle psychological observations. I have no desire to draw applause from you with my finesse and my humour. There are some authors who employ their talent in the delicate description of varying states of soul, character traits, etc. I shall not be counted among these. All that accumulation of realistic detail, with clearly differentiated characters hogging the limelight, has always seemed pure bullshit to me, I’m sorry to say. Daniel who is Hervé’s friend, but who feels a certain reticence about Gérard. Paul’s fantasy as embodied in Virginie, my cousin’s trip to Venice … One could spend hours on this. Might as well watch lobsters marching up the side of an aquarium (it suffices, for that, to go to a fish restaurant). Added to which, I associate very little with other human beings. To reach the otherwise philosophical

Among the people to whom he belonged, nothing was written or talked about at that time except the Serbian war. Everything that the idle crowd usually does to kill time, it now did for the benefit of the Slavs: balls, concerts, dinners, speeches, ladies' dresses, beer, restaurants—all bore witness to our sympathy with the Slavs. With much that was spoken and written on the subject Konyshev did not agree in detail. He saw that the Slav question had become one of those fashionable diversions which, ever succeeding one another, serve to occupy Society; he saw that too many people took up the question from interested motives. He admitted that the papers published much that was unnecessary and exaggerated with the sole aim of drawing attention to themselves, each outcrying the other. He saw that amid this general elation in Society those who were unsuccessful or discontented leapt to the front and shouted louder than anyone else: Commanders-in-Chief without armies, Ministers without portfolios, journalists without papers, and party leaders without followers. He saw that there was much that was frivolous and ridiculous; but he also saw and admitted the unquestionable and ever-growing enthusiasm which was uniting all classes of society, and with which one could not help sympathizing. The massacre of our coreligionists and brother Slavs evoked sympathy for the sufferers and indignation against their oppressors. And the heroism of the Serbs and Montenegrins, fighting for a great cause, aroused in the whole nation a desire to help their brothers not only with words but by deeds. Also there was an accompanying fact that pleased Koznyshev. It was the manifestation of public opinion. The nation had definitely expressed its wishes. As Koznyshev put it, ' the soul of the nation had become articulate.' The more he went into this question, the clearer it seemed to him that it was a matter which would attain enormous proportions and become epoch-making.

I'm going to examine cartooning as a form of amplification through simplification. When we abstract an image through cartooning, we're not so much eliminating details as we are focusing on specific details. By stripping down an image to its essential "meaning" an artist can amplify that meaning in a way that realistic art can't. [...] Simplifying characters and images toward a purpose can be an effective tool for storytelling in any medium. Cartooning isn't just a way of drawing, it's a way of seeing.

Step 1: Draw a cloud on a piece of paper. Step 2: Write the aspiration “Get better sleep” inside the cloud. Step 3: Come up with ten or more behaviors that would lead you to your aspiration of getting better sleep. Write each behavior outside the cloud with arrows pointing toward the cloud. You’ve now created your Swarm of Behaviors. Step 4: Put a star by four or five behaviors that you believe would be highly effective in reaching your aspiration. Step 5: Circle any effective behavior that you can easily get yourself to do. Be realistic.

So here are my questions and my appeal to you as we talk about a healthy soul. Are you intentional about your friends? Are they helping you? Do you fit together? Yes, I think we should live big. We should draw big circles, be inclusive, be forgiving, and be kind—but we can’t be intimate friends with all seven billion people on this planet. We can’t be close friends with a few thousand people. Probably not even a few hundred people. Realistically, we might be close, intimate friends with only a dozen people. Maybe a few more or a few less, depending on our individual capacities and personalities. So we had better choose those people intentionally, carefully, and prayerfully.

When people look at my work, they often say, “Your picture is so good. I can’t even draw a straight line.” I think everyone can learn to draw. The important thing is to keep trying, keep drawing. […] Young children make marvelous pictures. There is nothing they can’t draw. They paint and draw from their imaginations and the world around them. And they are not afraid to draw anything. I saw a child’s picture, a country landscape. It had fifteen trees that looked like lollipops, both a sun and a moon in the sky and a crazy river running through. It wasn’t very realistic, but it was a miracle of design. … And when children draw people or portraits of themselves, even if they are only stick figures, they have an animate quality that a professional rarely gets.

So: Then what? He had known people—he knew people—who were, technically, much better artists than he was. They were better draftsmen, they had better senses of composition and color, they were more disciplined. But they didn’t have any ideas. An artist, as much as a writer or composer, needed themes, needed ideas. And for a long time, he simply didn’t have any. He tried to draw only black people, but a lot of people drew black people, and he didn’t feel he had anything new to add. He drew hustlers for a while, but that too grew dull. He drew his female relatives, but found himself coming back to the black problem. He began a series of scenes from Tintin books, with the characters portrayed realistically, as humans, but it soon felt too ironic and hollow, and he stopped.

Imagine, for instance, that all of Washington’s 100,000 lobbyists were to go on strike tomorrow.3 Or that every tax accountant in Manhattan decided to stay home. It seems unlikely the mayor would announce a state of emergency. In fact, it’s unlikely that either of these scenarios would do much damage. A strike by, say, social media consultants, telemarketers, or high-frequency traders might never even make the news at all. When it comes to garbage collectors, though, it’s different. Any way you look at it, they do a job we can’t do without. And the harsh truth is that an increasing number of people do jobs that we can do just fine without. Were they to suddenly stop working the world wouldn’t get any poorer, uglier, or in any way worse. Take the slick Wall Street traders who line their pockets at the expense of another retirement fund. Take the shrewd lawyers who can draw a corporate lawsuit out until the end of days. Or take the brilliant ad writer who pens the slogan of the year and puts the competition right out of business. Instead of creating wealth, these jobs mostly just shift it around.

The Four Manifestations of Beauty. “Would you like to know what’s inside?” he asked. I nodded. Anyone who overheard us would have thought we were speaking of school lessons. But really, he was speaking of love. He turned the page. “With any form of beauty, there are four levels of ability. This is true of painting, calligraphy, literature, music, dance. The first level is Competent.” We were looking at a page that showed two identical renderings of a bamboo grove, a typical painting, well done, realistic, interesting in the detail of double lines, conveying a sense of strength and longevity. “Competence,” he went on, “is the ability to draw the same thing over and over in the same strokes, with the same force, the same rhythm, the same trueness. This kind of beauty, however, is ordinary. “The second level,” Kai Jing continued, “is Magnificent.” We looked together at another painting, of several stalks of bamboo. “This one goes beyond skill,” he said. “Its beauty is unique. And yet it is simpler, with less emphasis on the stalk and more on the leaves. It conveys both strength and solitude. The lesser painter would be able to capture one quality but not the other.

Time management also involves energy management. Sometimes the rationalization for procrastination is wrapped up in the form of the statement “I’m not up to this,” which reflects the fact you feel tired, stressed, or some other uncomfortable state. Consequently, you conclude that you do not have the requisite energy for a task, which is likely combined with a distorted justification for putting it off (e.g., “I have to be at my best or else I will be unable to do it.”). Similar to reframing time, it is helpful to respond to the “I’m not up to this” reaction by reframing energy. Thinking through the actual behavioral and energy requirements of a job challenges the initial and often distorted reasoning with a more realistic view. Remember, you only need “enough” energy to start the task. Consequently, being “too tired” to unload the dishwasher or put in a load of laundry can be reframed to see these tasks as requiring only a low level of energy and focus. This sort of reframing can be used to address automatic thoughts about energy on tasks that require a little more get-up-and-go. For example, it is common for people to be on the fence about exercising because of the thought “I’m too tired to exercise.” That assumption can be redirected to consider the energy required for the smaller steps involved in the “exercise script” that serve as the “launch sequence” for getting to the gym (e.g., “Are you too tired to stand up and get your workout clothes? Carry them to the car?” etc.). You can also ask yourself if you have ever seen people at the gym who are slumped over the exercise machines because they ran out of energy from trying to exert themselves when “too tired.” Instead, you can draw on past experience that you will end up feeling better and more energized after exercise; in fact, you will sleep better, be more rested, and have the positive outcome of keeping up with your exercise plan. If nothing else, going through this process rather than giving into the impulse to avoid makes it more likely that you will make a reasoned decision rather than an impulsive one about the task. A separate energy management issue relevant to keeping plans going is your ability to maintain energy (and thereby your effort) over longer courses of time. Managing ADHD is an endurance sport. It is said that good soccer players find their rest on the field in order to be able to play the full 90 minutes of a game. Similarly, you will have to manage your pace and exertion throughout the day. That is, the choreography of different tasks and obligations in your Daily Planner affects your energy. It is important to engage in self-care throughout your day, including adequate sleep, time for meals, and downtime and recreational activities in order to recharge your battery. Even when sequencing tasks at work, you can follow up a difficult task, such as working on a report, with more administrative tasks, such as responding to e-mails or phone calls that do not require as much mental energy or at least represent a shift to a different mode. Similarly, at home you may take care of various chores earlier in the evening and spend the remaining time relaxing. A useful reminder is that there are ways to make some chores more tolerable, if not enjoyable, by linking them with preferred activities for which you have more motivation. Folding laundry while watching television, or doing yard work or household chores while listening to music on an iPod are examples of coupling obligations with pleasurable activities. Moreover, these pleasant experiences combined with task completion will likely be rewarding and energizing.

The top surface of the computer is smooth except for a fisheye lens, a polished glass dome with a purplish optical coating. Whenever Hiro is using the machine, this lens emerges and clicks into place, its base flush with the surface of the computer. The neighborhood loglo is curved and foreshortened on its surface. Hiro finds it erotic. This is partly because he hasn't been properly laid in several weeks. But there's more to it. Hiro's father, who was stationed in Japan for many years, was obsessed with cameras. He kept bringing them back from his stints in the Far East, encased in many protective layers, so that when he took them out to show Hiro, it was like watching an exquisite striptease as they emerged from all that black leather and nylon, zippers and straps. And once the lens was finally exposed, pure geometric equation made real, so powerful and vulnerable at once, Hiro could only think it was like nuzzling through skirts and lingerie and outer labia and inner labia. . . . It made him feel naked and weak and brave. The lens can see half of the universe -- the half that is above the computer, which includes most of Hiro. In this way, it can generally keep track of where Hiro is and what direction he's looking in. Down inside the computer are three lasers -- a red one, a green one, and a blue one. They are powerful enough to make a bright light but not powerful enough to burn through the back of your eyeball and broil your brain, fry your frontals, lase your lobes. As everyone learned in elementary school, these three colors of light can be combined, with different intensities, to produce any color that Hiro's eye is capable of seeing. In this way, a narrow beam of any color can be shot out of the innards of the computer, up through that fisheye lens, in any direction. Through the use of electronic mirrors inside the computer, this beam is made to sweep back and forth across the lenses of Hiro's goggles, in much the same way as the electron beam in a television paints the inner surface of the eponymous Tube. The resulting image hangs in space in front of Hiro's view of Reality. By drawing a slightly different image in front of each eye, the image can be made three-dimensional. By changing the image seventy-two times a second, it can be made to move. By drawing the moving three-dimensional image at a resolution of 2K pixels on a side, it can be as sharp as the eye can perceive, and by pumping stereo digital sound through the little earphones, the moving 3-D pictures can have a perfectly realistic soundtrack. So Hiro's not actually here at all. He's in a computer-generated universe that his computer is drawing onto his goggles and pumping into his earphones. In the lingo, this imaginary place is known as the Metaverse. Hiro spends a lot of time in the Metaverse. It beats the shit out of the U-Stor-It.

Where would you draw the line between justice and privacy, and between protecting society and protecting personal freedom? Wherever you draw it, will it gradually but inexorably move toward reduced privacy to compensate for the fact that evidence gets easier to fake? For example, once AI becomes able to generate fully realistic fake videos of you committing crimes, will you vote for a system where the government tracks everyone’s whereabouts at all times and can provide you with an ironclad alibi if needed?

The presentation scene itself we skip. It is not a good idea to interrupt the narrative too often, since storytelling works by lulling the reader or listener into a dreamlike state in which the time and space of the real world fade away, superseded by the time and space of the fiction. Breaking into the dream draws attention to the constructedness of the story, and plays havoc with the realist illusion. However, unless certain scenes are skipped over we will be here all afternoon. The skips are not part of the text, they are part of the performance.

Since the earliest days of the art form, humans have been the most difficult characters to animate. The more realistic the human being, the more difficult the animation becomes. Audiences will accept distortions in the actions of a cartoony character: no one has ever seen a four-foot-tall rabbit walk on its hind legs, so an artist animating Bugs Bunny enjoys considerable freedom. But everyone knows how human beings move, and if those movements are not rendered accurately, viewers won't believe in the characters. Ward Kimball, one of Disney's "Nine Old Men," commented, "As long as we deal in fantasy, we are on safe ground. The eye has no basis for comparison. But the more we try to duplicate nature realistically, the tougher our job becomes. The audience compares what we draw with what it knows to be true. Any false movement is easily detected.

Hiro’s view of Reality. By drawing a slightly different image in front of each eye, the image can be made three-dimensional. By changing the image seventy-two times a second, it can be made to move. By drawing the moving three-dimensional image at a resolution of 2K pixels on a side, it can be as sharp as the eye can perceive, and by pumping stereo digital sound through the little earphones, the moving 3-D pictures can have a perfectly realistic sound track. So Hiro’s not actually here at all. He’s in a computer-generated universe that his computer is drawing onto his goggles and pumping into his earphones. In the lingo, this imaginary place is known as the Metaverse. Hiro spends a lot of time in the Metaverse.

I wonder, though—do you know a face if you know it only as a photograph? I read a philosopher once who railed against the projected world of perspective drawing, where you align all the edges of things to a single point in the infinite distance. This is considered realism, but in what way is this realistic? These landscapes, he said, have an air of decency, remain at a distance, do not involve or require the viewer. But this is not how the world appears when we encounter it in perception.

M is for measurable–As you work on achieving the goal, you must track or measure your progress or lack thereof (more on this later). This shows where you are along the way and keeps you motivated as you draw nearer to the goal. A is for achievable–Is the goal you’ve set for yourself achievable? How? Is it realistic? Notice, I didn’t say how easy. You want to stretch yourself, but not to the point of wanting to give up. R is for relevant–Is the goal relevant to your personal growth and what you’re trying to achieve? T is for timely–Establish a time frame you believe would be realistic based on your schedule for accomplishing the goal. Every goal needs a deadline to keep you motivated as you move forward. Keep in mind, when selecting goals, you may find that a larger goal will include smaller goals that help you reach the larger one. Breaking goals down, where possible, into smaller achievable “bites” make the most overwhelming goals more attainable.

Here is another illustration of how the self-image operates. Picture us living inside two boxes. The line farthest out, the solid line, represents real or realistic limits. The dotted line, in the first drawing shown tightly confining Self, represents self-imposed limits. The area between the two is your area or range of under-utilized potential. As you discover the means of strengthening and liberating your self-image, you move the dotted line closer to the solid line, permitting greater use of your true potential. Success

The men who pile up the heaps of discussion and literature on the ethics of means and ends... are passionately committed to a mystical objectivity where passions are suspect. They assume a nonexistent situation where men dispassionately and with reason draw and devise means and ends as if studying a navigational chart on land.

It is quite possible that, even if you set the most relevant, realistic goals, you may not achieve them in the way or the time you wanted to. Life may throw something unexpected in your path, which stops you from achieving what you want, when you want. This is not failure. Feeling like you have failed is bound to lead to low mood, and can often come about if things haven't quite gone according to plan. However, the best thing to do is to draw a mental line under the experience, learn from what has happened and try again. As long as you are still trying, you are working towards your long-term aims; and as long as you are doing that, you are never truly failing.

You have expressed an interest in the process used to carve detailed feathers on realistic duck decoys. The tools used are the same ones needed to prepare the carving up to this point: flexible-shaft grinder, stone bits, soft rubber sanding disc, pencil, and knife. My intention is to explain the ease with which mastery of this process can be achieved. There are five steps involved: drawing, outlining, and concaving the feathers, stone carving the quill, and grinding the barbs. The key to drawing the feathers is research. Good-quality references have been used in getting the carving to this stage and they will prove invaluable here. When comfortable with the basic knowledge of placement and types of feathers, drawing can begin. As with the actual carving, drawing should be done in a systematic manner. All feathers should be drawn in from front to back and top to bottom. Drawing should be done lightly so that changes can be made if necessary. All of the other steps are determined by what is done here, so the carver must be satisfied before beginning. Outlining creates a lap effect Copyright

When the world one loves is seen to be dying, the viewer dies a little with it. A great American painter, Reginald Marsh, exemplifies this truism. Every day until his death at the age of 56, he sketched and painted the most earthy, sweaty and lusty examples of humanity he could lay his eyes upon. His productive voyeurism led him through the entire spectrum of cheap cafes, carnivals, amusement parks, skid rows, exclusive clubs, opera openings, coming-out parties and everything in-between. His super-realistic canvases were jammed with the kind of people he loved to watch in the environments he loved to haunt. As his closing years approached, Reginald Marsh grew depressed at the changing scene. New styles were emerging and it now became more difficult to immerse himself in the vistas from which he had so long drawn, both in his paintings and life itself. His canvases of lumpy women and pot-bellied men were too unappealing for the “think thin” era of the 1950s, and his floozies violated the then-current Grace Kelly/Ivory Soap look. His disdain for modern masters (“Matisse draws like a three-year-old, “Picasso ... a false front”) became exemplified as he summed up modern art as “high and pure and sterile — no sex, no drink, no muscles.” Marsh’s “out of date” feeling reached its zenith when he was asked to take part in an art symposium. The first speaker, who was a then-popular New York painter, enthusiastically championed current trends. Then followed a professor who advocated new and dynamic experimentation in visual appeal. At last it was Reginald Marsh’s turn to speak. He stood on the platform for a moment, as if trying to collect his thoughts. A sad look of resignation appeared in his eyes as he gazed down at the audience. The talented watcher of his innermost secret lusts and life-giving scintillations declared softly, “I am not a man of this century,” and sat down. He died shortly thereafter.

Process tells us how. Purpose tells us why. But in reality, it is academic to draw a line between them, they are part of a continuum. Process and purpose are so welded to each other that it is impossible to mark where one leaves off and the other begins, or which is which. The very process of democratic participation is for the purpose of organization rather than to rid the alleys of dirt. Process is really purpose.

PERSONAL COACHING TOOLKIT: POWER QUESTIONS TO ENHANCE YOUR THINKING STYLE Answer each of these questions in a journal or with a coach or friend who can listen objectively and give you the space to explore your answers without attempting to give you the answers. 1. Spend some time in meditation. The perfect dream for you is the one God uniquely equipped you for. Paint a picture of what the next level of success looks like for you. What is your real dream (not the downsized one)? 2. What would it mean to you to be able to accomplish that dream? Picture yourself living that vision. What does it feel like? 3. What gifts, talents, passions, or experiences will you draw on to reach your goal? 4. Think back to a time when you were at your best and reached a particularly meaningful goal. How did you do it? What did you learn about yourself? 5. Consider that meaningful goal you described in the last question. What enabled you to be at your best? Who were the people, circumstances, and other key factors surrounding your success? 6. How could you go about recreating similar circumstances to empower you to reach that “next level of success” you described in the first question? 7. Think back to a time when you failed to reach a goal. What personal factor(s) led you to fail? What external factor(s) led you to fail? What lesson(s) can you glean from these contributing factors to help you succeed when reaching future goals? 8. Realistically, when you look at the picture you painted in the first question, what are the most significant obstacles you might face? If you don’t know, take a look at role models who have already been where you aim to go and pinpoint the obstacles they faced. 9. How can you reduce the risk of those obstacles occurring as you move forward? How will you navigate around those obstacles if they occur? 10. Describe your best possible future self. Who is she and how does she approach life? Think Differently Be intentional about what you say to yourself when you fail as well as when you succeed. Choose hope. Dream big. Learn new skills. Believe all things are possible.

But given all the inherent limitations in recording dreams, interpreting them, comparing them to subsequent and prior events across the span of a whole lifetime, and sharing them with others, there would really be no way to make a firm assessment of how many dreams may relate to future experiences, and certainly no way to make an estimate that would hold water scientifically. We have to appeal to the philosopher’s reason on this question: if anywhere near a quarter of them can be shown reasonably to be precognitive, then it is reasonable that many more may be precognitive and we just don’t detect them as such. You will seldom see precognition if you aren’t looking for it, and until now, few have looked for it. The worst mistake would be to assume that, since precognition is hard to fathom, the brain therefore finds it hard to do. That’s a fallacy. If you accept the basic premise that some dreams do relate to future experiences, it raises the reasonable—indeed natural—question: Why would evolution create a brain that reaches into its own future but only manifest that ability occasionally? Might all dreams be precognitive? It may really be a mistake to speak of precognitive dreams as some distinct set of dreams targeting a future event versus one in the past. Dunne suspected that dreams draw equally on past and future experiences.5 Again, dreams that seem to be about past experiences, per our cultural assumptions or per some standard dream theory like Freud’s, could simply be using past bricks (identifiable items and experiences in memory) to pre-present some future experience that goes unnoticed by the dreamer or dream researcher. Thus, coming to some realistic estimate of the true prevalence of dream precognition is the kind of question that is going to require many precognitive dreamworkers sharing their experiences to help answer. The bottom line is this: we should stop thinking of precognition as something like the special holiday china our moms kept in a certain cupboard and brought out just once a year. Our brains likely use it every day, every night, possibly even every dream, for all occasions big and small. If the brain ever does it, it probably always does it. Principle #9 of precognitive dreamwork isn’t a conclusion so much as a working presumption: Assume (without ever being able to prove it) that all your dreams may be precognitive.

Soon after the West Coast Computer Faire, where we introduced the Apple II, a couple of other ready-to-use personal computers came out. One was the Radio Shack TRS-80, and the other was Commodore’s PET. These would become our direct competitors. But it was the Apple II that ended up kicking off the whole personal computer revolution. It had lots of firsts. Color was the big one. I designed the Apple II so it would work with the color TV you already owned. And it had game control paddles you could attach to it, and sound built in. That made it the first computer people wanted to design arcade-style games for, the first computer with sound and paddles ready to go. The Apple II even had a high-resolution mode where a game programmer could draw special little shapes really quickly. You could program every single pixel on the screen—whether it was on or off or what color it was—and that was something you could never do before with a low-cost computer. At first that mode didn’t mean a lot, but eventually it was a huge step toward the kinds of computer gaming you see today, where everything is high-res. Where the graphics can be truly realistic. The fact that it worked with your home TV made the total cost a lot lower than any competitors could do. It came with a real keyboard to type on—a normal keyboard—and that was a big deal. And the instant you turned it on, it was running BASIC in ROM.

Actual drawing papers can make shading look more realistic and can be easier for the artist to get results faster. Papers made especially for drawing will help the artist to achieve a tight consistency between tones. Also, higher quality drawing papers are made from cotton or linen fibers, which makes them more resistant to chemical breakdown and degrading over time. Archival papers are of the highest quality, acid-free papers are of medium quality, and other papers are best used for sketching.

Nine years later another computer hit 1.8 teraflops. But instead of simulating nuclear explosions, it was devoted to drawing them and other complex graphics in all their realistic, real-time, three-dimensional glory. It did this not for physicists, but for video game players. This computer was the Sony PlayStation 3, which matched the ASCI Red in performance, yet cost about five hundred dollars, took up less than a tenth of a square meter, and drew about two hundred watts.11 In less than ten years exponential digital progress brought teraflop calculating power from a single government lab to living rooms and college dorms all around the world. The PlayStation 3 sold approximately 64 million units.

By drawing a slightly different image in front of each eye, the image can be made three-dimensional. By changing the image seventy-two times a second, it can be made to move. By drawing the moving three-dimensional image at a resolution of 2K pixels on a side, it can be as sharp as the eye can perceive, and by pumping stereo digital sound through the little earphones, the moving 3-D pictures can have a perfectly realistic sound track. So Hiro’s not actually here at all. He’s in a computer-generated universe that his computer is drawing onto his goggles and pumping into his earphones. In the lingo, this imaginary place is known as the Metaverse. Hiro spends a lot of time in the Metaverse.

a. Train yourself to recognize and write down the self-critical thoughts as they go through your mind; b. Learn why these thoughts are distorted; and c. Practice talking back to them so as to develop a more realistic self-evaluation system. One effective method for accomplishing this is the “triple-column technique.” Simply draw two lines down the center of a piece of paper to divide it into thirds (see Figure 4–1, page 63). Label the left-hand column “Automatic Thoughts (Self-Criticism),” the middle column “Cognitive Distortion,” and the right-hand column “Rational Response (Self-Defense).” In the left-hand column

displacement might occur as a protection against unpleasant truths. A woman might work at a job she hates but cannot realistically leave. Simply, she cannot express or even acknowledge that she resents her job because this draws a threatening attention to her financial bind. What she might do, though, is take that resentment and put it elsewhere. She might come home every day and kick the dog or yell at her children, convinced that they are the ones making her angry. It is easier and less risky to confront her feelings of anger when they are directed to her pets or children.

Being a realist does not mean seeing the truth for what it is. It is a question of determining our relationship with the truth in the way that is most beneficial for us. What do you achieve by accepting reality as it is? What will that offer apart from a slew of petty decisions that are neither meaningful nor valuable on their own? You can't do anything but draw up endless lists of what you need and do not have. What difference does that make? If anything, it only leads you away from your true path. You become permanently settled in pessimism and eventually you are crushed beneath it. To see the truth as it is...is to admit defeat. Yes, it is the very definition of defeatism, for it is its very genesis.

Realistically speaking, every teenaged girl spends a lot of time convinced that something is deeply, profoundly wrong with her, and I was no exception. All the world hates a girl, in special and vicious ways that goes way beyond even the mountain of shit we shovel onto young dudes. They get toxic masculinity and we get “you throw like a girl” and “scream like a girl” and “you’re such a pretty girl.” Mansplaining and creepers on BART and whistling out of car windows. I internalized the full measure of girl-hating, hating the sound of my recorded voice, the sight of my photographed face, my own body in the mirror. I hated my handwriting, the loopy letters I’d taught myself to draw when we first moved to America and I’d had to unlearn Russian and figure out the strange English glyphs all the perfect girls could write perfectly. I hated my hair and the way I walked. I hated my tits and I hated my bras. I hated my mother and I hated all the girls in the world, more than anything. Even more than boys. I don’t believe I was special in this regard. There’s a lot of self-hating girls out there in the world. We’re the secret, seething, silent majority. Some starve. Some cut. Some try to screw their way to happiness. Me, I idolized strong, powerful women who seemed to have risen above it all. Never mind that they were drunks or sadists or war criminals. They were leaning in, doin’ it for themselves, and that was what counted. Compared to being trapped in girlhood, alcoholism and war crimes were small potatoes. (less)

This is an older history being taught here, not the one often taught in schools and universities now, in which the story of the West is reduced to atrocity and little more. It is true that historical research is necessary to defeat jingoistic nationalism. The more history we know, the more complex the story of our past becomes and the more realistic we can be about it. But without some kind of usable past, there is no possibility of affecting geopolitics for the good. How do we know where to go if we can’t draw upon some inspiration from the past? There is too much destruction coming out of the academy, not enough inspiration. We require a proper balance.

Lina. Andrius lowered his voice. You have to make the picture... flattering. You're telling me how to draw? I said. He sighed. I like your drawings. Some are very realistic, but some, they're, well, twisted.

I'm going in. Be careful. I am using a faint draft. No worries, I am creating a nice habitat for the black witch moth. It isn't small, it has a seven-inch wingspan, but the undead would not believe a hunter would use such a creature to spy on them. I, however, will have to give my moth at least eight inches to be realistic. Dragomir nearly choked. Leave it to Sandu. The black witch moth was legendary as a harbinger of death. And eight inches? It was starting. He shouldn't have shared humor with any of them. Found another entrance here on the street. Ferro this time. I will go in as a black witch moth. Perhaps I should make my wingspan that little bit bigger as in keeping with my size. Say, nine inches? Dragomir would have laughed if his present form allowed it. They might not find humor in the things they said, but they were funny. Now that he had regained his emotions, he shared them automatically with the others. It had been so long since any of them had felt anything, they almost didn't remember what humor was. If we went by that, I would go for a ten-ing wingspan, Andor said, his voice droll. Sandu, I hope that you do not feel embarrassed Given that much larger than eight to nine inches is going to draw attention and be smashed by some stubby vampire, I have no reason to feel this emotion - this embarrassment you speak of. That rules out my twelve-inch wingspan, Benedik grumbled.

One of Smale’s first contributions, as it happened, was his faulty conjecture. In physical terms, he was proposing a law of nature something like this: A system can behave erratically, but the erratic behavior cannot be stable. Stability—“stability in the sense of Smale,” as mathematicians would sometimes say—was a crucial property. Stable behavior in a system was behavior that would not disappear just because some number was changed a tiny bit. Any system could have both stable and unstable behaviors within it. The equations governing a pencil standing on its point have a good mathematical solution with the center of gravity directly above the point—but you cannot stand a pencil on its point because the solution is unstable. The slightest perturbation draws the system away from that solution. On the other hand, a marble lying at the bottom of a bowl stays there, because if the marble is perturbed slightly it rolls back. Physicists assumed that any behavior they could actually observe regularly would have to be stable, since in real systems tiny disturbances and uncertainties are unavoidable. You never know the parameters exactly. If you want a model that will be both physically realistic and robust in the face of small perturbations, physicists reasoned that you must surely want a stable model.

Of all the current social theories, the rational/utilitarian tradition, in its modern incarnation, is most finely tuned to a way of making social policies work. The conflict tradition, with its tradition of conflicting movements and revolutionary upheavals, has a tendency to focus on the evils that exist, and the conditions that will bring about an uprising against them. Where conflict theory is weak is in explaining what will happen after the revolution, or after a successful movement has won some power. Its attitude tends to be: put the oppressed peoples in charge and everything will be great. At this point conflict theory stops being realistic. In their own ways, the other lines of social theory also tend to be vague about social theory. The Durkheimian tradition, with its emphasis on the conditions that produce solidarity and its ideals, doesn’t see people as very capable of generating specific social results; its victories are symbolic and emotional rather than practical. The micro-interaction theories, with their emphasis on the shifting cognitive interpretations of social reality, are also not very good at specific social policies. They assume either that somehow a social belief will be created that people find satisfactory, or that people live in their own little worlds of cognitive reality-construction, like separate bubbles in a stream. The modern rational/utilitarians, for all their faults, nevertheless are no the forefront in attempting to apply sociological insights to propose policies that have a realistic chance of succeeding. That is not to say that the theoretical basis of rational/utilitarian theory is necessarily adequate yet to this task. We have seen a consistent problem in the utilitarian tradition, on the level of how to motivate people for collective action. Can the appeal to interests alone motivate people to adopt great reforms, whether this appeal is embodies in the legal codes advocated by Bentham, in Adam Smith’s freedom of the market, or in schemes for new rules of the social game such as those proposed by Rawls, Buchanan, or Coleman? There is an element of pulling oneself up by one’s own bootstraps in these proposals, as long as one starts from the isolated individual concerned for his or her own interests. As an alternative, we may still need to draw on the conflict theory, which suggests that people fight for their interests rather blindly, solving one problem but creating new ones. The other alternative is the Durkheimian tradition of social solidarity, which explains precisely the emotional links among people that rational/utilitarian theory leaves out.

Instead of going for a quick weight loss today, you’re better off using your self-control to make gradual changes that will produce lasting effects, and you have to be especially careful in your strategies. You face peculiarly powerful challenges at every stage of the self-control process—from setting a goal to monitoring yourself to strengthening your willpower. When they wheel over the dessert cart, you’re not facing an ordinary challenge. It’s more like the perfect storm. The first step in self-control is to establish realistic goals. To lose weight, you could look in the mirror, weigh yourself, and then draw up a sensible plan to end up with a trimmer body. You could do that, but few do. People’s goals are so unrealistic that an English bookmaker, the William Hill agency, has a standing offer to bet against anyone who makes a plan to lose weight.

The Benefits of Furniture 3D Rendering for Custom Designs Benefits of Furniture 3D Rendering for Custom Designs Customers crave personalization, especially when it comes to furniture. Imagine this: You’re shopping for a dining table, but none of the options fit your space or style perfectly. Wouldn’t it be great if you could tweak the design, change the color, or adjust the dimensions to suit your preferences? This is where 3D rendering for custom furniture designs comes in, revolutionizing the industry and making personalization a breeze. From offering lifelike visuals to streamlining the design process, 3D product rendering services have become a game-changer for furniture retailers, manufacturers, and customers alike. Let’s dive into how 3D furniture design, 3D product visualization, and 3D furniture models are reshaping the furniture customization experience. What is Furniture 3D Rendering? First, let’s clarify what we mean by furniture 3D rendering. In simple terms, it’s a technology that creates realistic, computer-generated images of furniture designs. These designs can range from simple chairs to complex modular systems. What makes it special? The ability to customize every detail and visualize the final product with stunning accuracy. Unlike traditional sketches or 2D drawings, 3D furniture models allow you to see how a piece will look from every angle, in various materials and finishes, even before it’s built. Why is 3D Rendering Essential for Custom Designs? Custom furniture design often comes with challenges: meeting customer expectations, managing production costs, and ensuring flawless execution. Here’s how 3D product rendering services solve these issues: 1. Bringing Ideas to Life Describing it in words or rough sketches can lead to miscommunication. With 3D product visualization, designers can translate these ideas into realistic models, making it easier for customers to see their vision come to life. Imagine being able to adjust the size, color, or material of a couch and instantly viewing the changes on-screen. This level of interactivity makes the design process exciting and collaborative. 2. Eliminating Guesswork One of the biggest pain points in custom furniture design is uncertainty. Customers often worry: “Will this color match my living room?” “Will the table fit in my dining area?” 3D furniture design removes this uncertainty by providing photorealistic visuals. Some services even allow customers to use augmented reality (AR) to virtually place the furniture in their space, ensuring it’s the perfect fit. 3. Reducing Costs and Errors In traditional furniture customization, errors during production can be costly. A miscalculation in dimensions or a misunderstanding about the design can lead to wasted materials and delayed timelines. By using 3D furniture models, manufacturers can catch potential issues early. How 3D Product Visualization Enhances Custom Furniture Experiences Customization isn’t just about making changes; it’s about making the process enjoyable and rewarding for customers. Here are some ways 3D product visualization elevates the experience: Interactive Customization Through interactive 3D tools, customers can mix and match materials, try different finishes, and even adjust design elements like armrests or leg styles. This hands-on approach makes them feel more connected to the product, increasing satisfaction and loyalty. Speeding Up Decision-Making The ability to see real-time changes to designs helps customers make decisions faster. They no longer have to imagine how a walnut finish might look compared to oak—they can see it immediately. Showcasing Versatility For businesses, 3D furniture models are a fantastic way to showcase a single product’s versatility. For example, a modular sofa can be displayed in various configurations, sizes, and colors, all without the need for multiple physical prototypes.

The next important utensil in an artist’s toolkit is a blending tool. Blending is the process of merging different shades together so that each lay down of tone flows smoothly into the next. Blending utensils can be helpful if an artist plans on combining tones to create realistic shade and shadow. Stump A blending stump is a great option to choose when blending one area into another. A stump is a solid, cylinder of felt paper that is tightly rolled up into a solid wand with two pointed ends. Stumps are used to blend marks made by pencil or charcoal into one another so that tones appear smooth in a drawing. These tools can work well for large areas that require detail and control. Stumps tend to be large and wide but are available in thinner forms for use in areas with more detail. Care needs to be taken when using stumps because over-blending with them can create an area of muddiness and blend fine gradations into flat tones. Also, too much use in one area can destroy the tooth of the paper surface. Stumps can become soiled with use but can be cleaned by rubbing the points with fine sandpaper to keep them tapered. Tortillon tortillons are another blending tool, similar to a blending stump in that they are created with rolled paper. The difference is that a tortillon forms a tight cone, having only one pointed end and is typically narrower and shorter than a stump. An artist should use the tortillon at an angle because when it is used vertically, the tip will get pushed back into itself and become blunt. This can be remedied by pushing the tip back out with a paperclip or toothpick. The tip of a tortillon is effective when shading in fine areas where precision and detail is important. With a tortillon, more effort is required to keep an even tone because the material is not as soft as the felt of a paper stump. The differences between a tortillon and a blending stump can be subtle but significant. Each creates a very specific effect, so knowing how to use them properly is crucial when choosing a tool to blend with.