LET GO AND TRY AGAIN

"Buvver Fishing" by Martha Slavin

 An instructor once told me not to paint people I know because my hidden feelings about the person would arise as I painted. I don't paint portraits often, but I have followed that advice and have selected photos of strangers to use as models. I like to paint people, but I don't try to make the look exactly like the photo.

The Pacific Art League in Palo Alto offered a challenge this summer to paint something about my own memories. I was intrigued enough to look through old photos of myself growing up.

I found a photo of my sister and me as young children on the steps of the house we lived in until I was five years old. We spent time in the backyard looking for four-leaf clovers, watching the chickens scramble around their pen, or running in a circle playing Ring Around a Rosie with some of my sister's friends. I decided to ignore the old warning of painting someone I know and tried to draw this photo.

I think of myself as good at drawing, but I don't draw children very often. I drew my sister without much trouble, but when it came to me, I got stuck. I drew the outside of the head too large and the features way too small. I realized that I kept thinking that the figure should be child-sized,  so my hand kept making them small in comparison to the space on the paper. I just couldn't get the proportions right.

Once I started painting, I came up with other problems. When I painted the skin tone, I used my usual facial formula of Cadmium Red Light mixed with Raw Siena. I found the tint was too weighty for a toddler, so I added a touch of Permanent Red to make it pinker. That didn't work at all, but nothing I did with my brush or Viva paper towel got me back to a light enough tone.

I decided to start over and drew just the faces and shoulders of the two figures. Again, I had the same problem with proportion. My mind kept thinking of the two as small and so the features shrank within the ovals I had drawn for the heads.

I decided to try again. I drew only one of the figures. She turned out to look like one of those children in a horror movie who you would find hiding in a closet. I decided I needed help, so I looked online for watercolor artists whose focus is painting young children. Going through the examples, I was reminded of the grid system that many use to help them draw.

Lightly penciled grid system

I have avoided the grid system all my life because I can still hear my art school and college instructors imploring us to draw a figure freehand so that we would learn to intrinsically understand the figure. Why I hung on to this belief is a bit of a puzzle. Why didn't I use helpful techniques when I needed them? My ego saying I can draw without these kinds of aids? Belief that drawing without crutches creates a better understanding of that form? A little bit of both, I think. This week, finally, I gave in. It was time for me to try something different. I drew a light grid, dividing the paper into sixteen sections. It worked. In my mind, I knew how to draw the figure to make it look believable, but the grid helped me get the proportions right.

I never know when I am going to learn a new life lesson.

Unfinished painting with work needed on skin tone

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A long overdue holiday, Juneteenth. 

Kevin Levin writes: "Juneteenth is a federal holiday now. It belongs to the country, which I understand to mean that it belongs to all of us...because the story of how four million people moved from slavery to freedom is the central drama of this nation's history."

We haven't reckoned with what Juneteenth represents to this day. Watching the opening ceremony of the Obama Presidential Library reminded me of the forward-looking, kind, inclusive people we can be.

 

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Want some good news? Two websites I read give us all an uplift:

Americans of Conscience:    https://americansofconscience.com/checklist/

Reasons to be Cheerful:    https://reasonstobecheerful.world

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From Jalen Brunson:  "You are allowed to think about the worst possible scenario, 

but you gotta go out there and do something about it."

Masculine or Human

 

"All in the Eye of the Beholder" by M. Slavin

Have you seen the groups of young college-aged men who have been removing their shirts at sporting events lately? They make me laugh with a little bit of cringe. Such a typical, silly stunt for groups of men of that age. By showing off their pecks in this way, are they imitating Pete Hegseth and Putin who may have set the example? In this period of excessive masculinity, I wonder what it really means to be male in a period when many of our gains are being retracted.

I have noticed more and more women who are being fired or removed from political and military positions. In political races, women are targeted for their "bad behavior" (Katie Porter) that slips by or is hardly criticized for male candidates (Graham Platner). Women are losing much of what they have gained in the last fifty years. Why?

What does it mean to be masculine? I think of two brief instances that I observed when I saw men acting at their most natural.

"Leap" by M. Slavin

Riding on the Metro in Paris we came to a station somewhere in the north end where a parade filled the streets. Men in long white caftans, long beards, and turbans were beating drums with such power that they seemed to be shaking the earth around them. I felt like I had been transported to Africa. Their faces reached for the sun; they chanted with confidence. They were in their glory.

I grew up in California and know that many immigrants from South of the Border have lived near me working menial jobs, creating an unnatural inequality between us and the lasting impression of subservience. On a weekend at the beach, I walked on the sand just as a group of Latinos came dashing up from the surf, riding horses with authority and with a sense of security - the vaqueros of another era and place, with no deference to others. They were in command of their day.

In both instances, in Paris and on the California beach, I saw a group of men filled with joy, strong in their actions, subservient to no one.

Roger Tory Peterson, naturalist

Lately, I have been watching several Korean drama series. Their idea of masculinity as presented in film vary from ours. The men seem more in tune to their emotions. The films show how they care about each other. They are not afraid to cry. Yet, they can be strong and decisive as well as humble when they need to be, a more nuanced way to be male in films that too many American males see as feminine. But, they almost always have a scene which shows their bared pecks. 

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This weekend honor our founding thinkers, who brought us the Constitution and our ability to interpret and change its meaning: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglas, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Martin Luther King.

And don't forget American women thinkers and change-agents: Harriet Tubman, Susan B. Anthony, Ida B. Wells, Amelia Earhart, Eleanor Franklin, Sally Ride, Ophra Winfrey, Gloria Steinem, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Geraldine Ferraro, Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris. 

And each one of us who values what democracy offers.

BRAIN TRICKS

A special garden

As I get older, I receive more and more suggestions about keeping my memory or my body active. I've found some ideas to be intriguing. Whether they help me age better is another question, but each day, I now stretch my fingers apart. Not just spread-eagled. My left hand starts with my pinky and fourth finger together and my index and middle finger together. My right hand has the index finger separated, the middle and fourth finger together, and the pinky by itself.

Without looking at my hands, I try to switch the positions back and forth, keeping the two different patterns moving so that each hand has a different pattern. Not so easy as you would think. 

Bill and I play Wordle from the NYTimes and other games from the SF Chronicle. I guessed the correct word on Wordle for my first 100 attempts. Since then, I have only reached 70 days. Today it was 19 days before I succumbed to "Next Time."

I've also looked for memory games and found some online though I think they provide a disadvantage to left-handers because I have to use the arrow keys on the right side of the key pad. Well, that's my excuse for never passing more than 76 percent on the different quizzes except the one time I reached 98% for memories. No wonder I remember so much about moments in my life.

I also play a Poker Hands game (I learned to play poker with one of my grandmothers) where I choose sets of poker hands. The first few times I played, I came up with winning combinations and the score included how much money I had earned. I surprised myself when I started thinking that I ought to go to Vegas to try my luck. I'm not, or didn't think I was, a gambler. 

Now as I play both Wordle and poker, my abilities are slipping. With Wordle I think that any common word such as SMILE has already been used long before I started playing and I guess wrong. With poker, the more I play the fewer good hands I seem to create. I wonder if the less I play, the more wins I accumulate or if there really isn't any difference in my luck.

Try Italic, a hand that has been around for centuries.
Remember no one else will see your penmanship. Relax.

Being creative is also on the list of things to do as you get older. Even practicing handwriting is a good way to test my brain. Making a contour drawing of an object is also another way to keep my brain active. Even better, drawing with both hands at the same time is not only tricky, but using all those brain cells we leave fallow too often.

Words themselves can be a good brain exercise. Word Genius suddenly appeared in my email inbox. Each day it offers a little used or little known word such as 

Firth, an inlet or estuary

Someone who is breviloquent is someone who uses few words. 

A word that is monosyllabic or a one syllable word.

or woodshed, which means to practice a musical instrument

or obstreperous: rude, rambunctious, rowdy

or Agelast: someone without a sense of humor

Now the question is write a sentence with one of the words and not make it awkward.

"Each word here is monosyllabic, but not the fifth one though."

or    "Does anyone come to mind when you think of an agelast?"

You can find more at Word Genius:

https://www.wordgenius.com/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=blog&utm_campaign=3373431755

try your luck at BrainBashers:

https://www.brainbashers.com/showpuzzles.asp?page=2

Luminosity (annual fee to join):

https://app.lumosity.com/login

A walk down memory lane. Take a tour of David Lance Goines' artwork which is now housed at the UC Berkeley library. His work will remind you of life in 1960s and 1970s as well as the food revolution started by Alice Waters.

David Lance Goines:

https://www.lib.berkeley.edu/about/news/goines

Window View  May 2026