Nik was right
Michael Voytinsky
As all of you are no doubt aware, Nik is a communist, New Age crystal-
sucking artist type. However it appears that at least on one point he
was right.
Sometime ago he mentioned that some people look at his paintings and
say things like "Gee, I wish I could draw" and he could not understand
why they don't just go ahead and draw. Needless to say, a lot of
people, your truly included, told him how wrong he was, and how people
just can acquire new abilities by just wishing.
Well, last week I was talking to Nik and mentioned that the major
problem I had when trying to draw portraits is the nostrils. I would
try to draw them, and it would look like the face had horizontal
nostrils, a sort of pig snout effect. Nik told me that I really do not
have to draw the nostrils in, a quick squigle will suffice.
The same week I had a very boring and poorly organized class on SS7
(that's the signalling protocol that makes our telephone system work)
but on the other hand the instructor was rather funny-looking. Saw,
armed with my understanding of nostril-drawing techinique, I drew his
nose, and it actually looked like a human nose. Then I filled in the
rest of the face.
The face was funny looking, and if it was not funny looking in the same
way as the original, at least it was a recognizable human face, not a
stylized pig-head.
On the weekend I saw a photo of Raymond "Giant Asshole" Villeneuve in
the Shittizen. Mr. Villeneuve is a terrorist. So I drew his face and
the result looked OK. Just OK, but much better then any of my prior
effort.
Then I flipped through the paper and found a portrait of a woman who
murdered an eight year old boy, and drew a picture from that. Her ears
were oddly on top of hear head, but other then that it was OK.
Then I drew a portrait of some guy who embezzled billions of dollars
from the Bank of Thailand and Robert De Niro. (I mean that I drew two
portraits, not that they guy embezzled billions from the Bank of
Thailand, and from Robert De Niro.)
Nik looked at my efforts and suggested that I use the whole page rather
than drawing a small portrait in the middle. I tried to follow his
advice while drawing a portrait of Rene Denfeld (author of "The New
Victorians" - her photo was on the cover of the book) and it still was
fairly small.
After that I draw portraits of Madonna, Mikhail Gorbachev, Marshall
Applewhite (the late UFO nut) and Chick Corea - fortunately I had
photos of all of them lying around the house.
Late I draw a portrait of an economics student in the Second Cup, who
was busy pontificating about economics matters.
The end results were all vastly superior to stickmen and smiley faces -
I was rather surprised.
So what I am saying is that Nik's advice "Go ahead and draw" is
basically correct.
Om.... Viva la revolution! ... Om... Long live Marxism! Om.....
--
Michael Voytinsky
Ottawa Ontario Canada
http://www.igs.net/~michaelv
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
Nikolaus Maack
wrote:
>As all of you are no doubt aware, Nik is a communist, New Age crystal-
>sucking artist type. However it appears that at least on one point he
>was right.
Damn. I knew this was bound to happen eventually. After years and
years of deliberately choosing false beliefs, I have accidentally
discovered one that is right. This means I will now have to totally
dismantle my belief system and rebuild it from the ground up.
God damn you, Michael V.
Nik
---
The Nik Maack Art Gallery
http://www.chat.carleton.ca/~mrtribe
Now with exciting TEXT explaining why
each painting should not be burned.