Brushed Off Strokes

I am a poor student sitting at the feet of giants, yearning for their wisdom and begging for lessons that might one day make me a complete artist, so that if all goes well, I may one day sit beside them.

Rod Taylor
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Hello Cotonou, Benin. Have a peaceful day.
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There can be great sadness in missed opportunities. We can regret those things that were almost in our hands but somehow slipped away, those things that we hoped for and expected one day we would achieve and those things that we carry with us as dreams, only to realize one day the dreams will never become realities.

When I was at the Art Students League in New York City I took life drawing classes from three excellent teachers and a course in anatomy for artists with a fourth. One day one of my teachers encouraged me to start painting. I have been painting since but I never got to study painting with a teacher.

My enthusiasm for art was slow in coming, I was in my 40's before I ever began to draw. The League offered courses in illustration, realistic and abstract painting, water color and murals. It taught graphic arts, etching, engraving, lithography, wood cutting and linoleum cutting. There were classes in sculpture: wood, stone and clay sculpture.

I was so hungry for it I wanted to learn all of it. There were inspiring teachers there, some of them famous artists. I was looking forward, even in my advanced years, to sit at their feet and get their wisdom. But, unfotunately my career as an actor interfered. That wouldn't have been so bad except that it took me out of town for many months, and since it was the way I made a living and enabled me to pay for the art classes, I needed to go. When I was back in New York I was looking for work and didn't have the money to pay for any classes.

Years later I went back to the League and took some drawing classes, but it wasn't the same and I soon saw that the hopes of really learning about all the possibilities of artistic expression that had been available to me as a student were going to be lost.

Now I still yearn for that knowledge but there is no access to it other than books and magazines which I pour over. I don't even know if I would have ever become as great an artist as those I admired. It doesn't matter. I just wanted to know what they knew.

That I was never able to fully follow that desire is one of the sadnesses of my days.

Moral: Follow your dreams, even if you have to go slowly.

DB - The Vagabond
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This Week's Contest

This is one I put up a few years ago and people seemed to enjoy it, so here it goes again.

You are now ordered to take a famous remark, a cliche or otherwise and restate it in the most verbose manner possible. Example:

Night is an inappropriate time for the manufacture of animal feed.
(Make hay while the sun shines.)

Get it? Ken Riches won this contest the last time, so you're up against some heavy competition.

dbdacoba@aol.com

Good luck. Enter as often as you wish. The decision of the ornery, biased, curmudgeon is final.
DB
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SPRING QUESTION
(This is not a contest)

NASA has planned to send a two man mission on an 18 month trip to the planet Mars. It would take 6 months for the astronauts to get there and after 6 months of exploration another 6 months to return.

Should they do it and why, and if not, why not?

dbdacoba@aol.com

4 answers so far

I eagerly await your answer.

DB
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