I love road trips. When I was very small we moved from one side of the country to the other a number of times. We did it again when I was a teenager. I did it twice during undergraduate and graduate years and once again as an adult with a family. Those were just the moves. The road trips include journeys to the North, Northeast, Northwest, South, Southeast and Southwest all from Oklahoma, the middle coast of the USA.
Here are some of the photographs I have taken on those journeys.
Piranha Beef Jerky in NebraskaThe Old Church in The Badlands, South DakotaThe Vermeer Discovery, Plimoth Plantation, MassachusettsDunes – Cape Cod, MassachusettsOn The Other Side – Grand Canyon, ArizonaSunset among Friends – Del Mar, CaliforniaThe Stressed Mother, DisneyWorld, Orlando, FloridaSelf-Portrait while Tired, DisneyWorld, Orlando, FloridaThe Hot Cheerleader, Baylor University, Waco, TexasThe Grandson, Rural Oklahoma
I like this quote – it’s about art, it’s funny and it rhymes – what more can I ask?
Creativity is so much about freedom. Letting the dot in your head take it’s walk where it wants to go and not stopping it. Are you able to do that? What stop signs do you have? I tried something a bit different today. I drew the line drawing on the napkin but then did the color work in the computer, just for fun and a change.
Are you ignoring Ms. Creativity? She doesn’t like to be ignored. She dresses to get noticed and if you don’t pay attention she will secretly push hunches on you all day until you do. So, PAY ATTENTION, she is trying to tell you something!
Living in Oklahoma a photographer can either be cursed by the wind or blessed by it. I feel blessed by it. After many outdoor photo sessions I found I had a great collection of images with hair and expressions all over the place. I started to find an emotional aspect to the images that I liked and a series, Emotional Wind, came out of it.
On Wednesday I had a guest post, ‘Writing Lesson #4’, at Rachelle Gardner’s blog. I have been drawing a series of ‘Writing Lessons’ for her readers, who are mostly writers and publishing industry people. I realized that for some reason I forgot to post Writing Lesson #2 to my own blog when I first drew it a few weeks back so here it is.
It’s day #3 of The Great Quotists – Mr. Samuel Langhorne Clemens if you please.
The words ‘mark twain’ are what the steamboat pilots of the 1800s would call out when the measurement of the water on the river was at least 2 fathoms. It meant that the water was deep enough for the boats to travel safely. Samuel Clemens was a steamboat pilot along the Mississippi River and took those words as his pen name in 1863. It also is the case that an earlier Mississippi steamboat captain, one Captain Sellers, used that as his pen name before Clemens did. Clemens supposedly chose the name in honor of that first writer and as a connection to his roots on the river.
Drawing by Marty Coleman of The Napkin Dad Daily
Quote by Mark Twain – NOTE: While this quote has long been attributed to Twain, there is some reason to doubt whether he actually said it. Record going back to early in his life attribute the quote to Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar.
Don’t quote me, but it’s day #2 of ‘The Great Quotists’ series at the NDD Next up is François-Marie Arouet, better known by his pen name, Voltaire.
Voltaire is the wit of France. Born into the enlightenment era he skewered royalty, religion, pretension, society, and politics with a sharpness of tongue that no other could match.
But he was much more than just a sarcastic wit. He was an amateur scientist, working to discover the elements of fire. He was one of the first to write history in a modern way, paying attention to culture and society as much as military and political events. He was a crusader for the separation of church and state and religious freedom. He wrote more than 20,000 letters and 2,000 books and pamphlets.
Another example of a man who had humor until the end, his famous last words were, “Now, now, my good man, this is not the time for making enemies.” in response to a priest asking him to renounce Satan.
Drawing and commentary by Marty Coleman of The Napkin Dad Daily
This week I am going to highlight some of my favorite quotists; the authors, aphorists, journalists and commentators who have contributed the most over the years to The Napkin Dad Daily.
First up, Oscar Wilde
An irish wit if ever there was one, Oscar Wilde lived in the 1800s and ruled the literary world for some time with writings such as ‘The Picture of Dorian Grey’ and ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’.
Unfortunately, the Victorian laws ruled over the land and when it was discovered he had committed ‘the sin that isn’t mentioned’ he was thrown in jail. When he got out he departed for France, never to return.
Nonetheless, he did not lose his wit. The story goes that on his death bed he still had enough left in him to give what has to be the wittiest final words in history, “Either those curtains go, or I do.” The curtains stayed and he went. A variation on the final words is sometimes quoted as, “My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One or the other of us has got to go.”
Oscar Wilde holds a dear place in my heart solely because my eldest daughter, Rebekah, loved reading him when she was a teenager. She would always be telling us various quotes and when I was drawing the napkins and putting them in their lunches (read that story here) my most frequent quotist was Mr. Wilde.
Drawing and commentary by Marty Coleman of The Napkin Dad Daily
Have you ever read a book where you liked everyone and everything they did? Did you like everything about how they behaved, all their quirks and eccentricities, all their choices and concerns? If that was the case I think you read a pretty boring book.
The essence of a story is conflict. Maybe it’s not through a ‘good vs. evil’, black and white dilemma, but in a story you are introducing characters who have to go through something. They can be very nice people, but if you don’t show some aspect of their character and their methods contributing to the problem as well as the solution, then they really aren’t all that engaging.
You can’t root for someone who has nothing to overcome. What they have to overcome isn’t always something on the outside. It’s often overcoming their own shortcomings. It makes you annoyed seeing those things inside them holding them back while at the same time you are rooting for them to overcome.
Sort of like real life, isn’t it.
Drawing, commentary and Chapter 12 by Marty Coleman of The Napkin Dad Daily
Quote by Kingsley Amis, 1922-1995, English novelist
