No Post Due to the Holiday Tomorrow.

Due to preparations for the Thanksgiving holiday, I am not blogging about the walking stick today.  The next post will be on Sunday, Dec. 1st.

Shaman Staff Walking Stick-Part 19

Another section complete!  In keeping with the story for the walking stick, (see earlier posts for full details on the story.) I've added pictures of edible plants and medicinal herbs.  They were somewhat difficult to wood burn onto the walking stick due to their small size.  I think that they came out pretty well. 

The corn on the cob is next to the corn plant, suggesting a connection between the two pictures.  Hopefully, everyone will be able to recognize the dandelion.  It's greens are edible in the spring.  The flowers make a nice dandelion wine also.  Although many people may only recognize the plantain plant as some week that grows in the yard, many old herbals have uses listed on it.  This is not the plantain that produces a fruit that looks like a banana.  You will have to find an herbal for more information.  My last picture is an aloe, or perhaps it could be interpreted as an agave plant.  So, perhaps an aloe as a treatment for burns or an agave, which was used for sugar or for creating alcohol.  Despite alcohol's bad reputation for misuse, I suspect that
it had a lot to do with the human race
managing to get through some tough times in history.

The plants are interspersed among the human silhouettes, to indicate their importance to the people.   It also helps fill in the empty spaces between the figures.

There is only one more section left on the walking stick.  I expect that I should have it burned onto the stick by the next post as long as the weather holds.  Check back for that post because I think it has some interesting ....?  Sorry, I don't want to give the ending away. 

Shaman Staff Walking Stick-Part 18

We have had a couple of rainy days here and I have not been able to get outside to do any wood burning  on the walking stick.  In keeping with the plan for the walking stick (see earlier posts for more details.) this section is about the showing what plants were safe to eat and which plants had healing properties.  The designs are interspersed among the human figures.  I have the images transferred to the stick and ready to go as soon as I can get out to burn the designs onto the stick. 

I did not have as much room as I thought I would in this section, so the clover and ferns did not make it onto the stick.  The plants that did make the cut were the corn plant, which has a picture of the plant and a picture of the corn on the cob; the dandelion, which has edible greens; a plantain, which is a medicinal plant according to one of my herbal books; and an aloe, which is another medicinal plant.  I suppose the aloe could also be interpreted as an agave plant, which could represent the development of sugar and alcohol.  I'll let the viewer decide which plant it should be. 

Shaman Staff-Part 17-The Human Figures- Probably NSFW

The models had trouble with the poses.

Not Safe For Work is probably too strong a designation.  The human figures are basically silhouettes, but in the manner of a lot of prehistoric art, the silhouettes are obviously nude and (more or less) anatomically correct.  However, I felt it was better to warn people and let them make their own decision about when and where to view this than to have them open it in an inappropriate venue and have the pictures cause a problem. 

The newest generation

(Once again the formatting is giving me a problem. Sorry things are so choppy.  It will let me type text into this blank section, but it will not allow me move the next paragraph up to this section.)

Warrior pose.

Goddess Pose.

A good deal of the petroglyphic art I saw during my research for this project displayed genitalia, even when the body shapes were no more than rectangular or triangular shapes.  It seemed important to those long ago artists to portray that this is what they looked like as much what the figures were doing.  Over the years, I have read about cave paintings and what archeologists think they represent.  There is a lot of emphasis on the religious aspects of the drawings and a contingent that suggests the cave drawings are indicating the use of  magic to influence the hunt.   Without being able to ask the artist or the artist's peers what his or her meanings for those drawings were, it is really all supposition for prehistoric art.   What we can really say is that someone took the time to put on a wall, "this is what we looked like, these are the things we did, these are the creatures and plants that had importance for us."  Perhaps it only indicates an awareness that one day they would no longer be here and wanted someone in the future to know of their existence.  A message to the future carved in stone.

Male fertility aspect.

After many hours of sketching, I finally realized that the stylized figures I thought I wanted really weren't right in relation to the art that was already on the stick.  I also realized that the small size of the figures did not lend itself to a lot of detail.  So after much effort, I got back on track with the silhouette style of drawing that was already on the stick.  Then I had to decide what I might want to say about humans.  What did they look  What did they do? 

Female fertility aspect.

The latest generation of humans is the youngest generation, so I began with an infant to symbolize that the bearer of the walking stick is the newest of the generations of the race of humans.  Only the infant has a face, because it represents the generation that is in the world of form.  The ancestors are in the world of spirit, and do not have a face, only an echo of form.  (That is my story and I'm stick to it.  Other than that, the drawings are so small that it was too difficult to do anything other than the most cartoonish of faces.)  The infant immediately follows the last line of the poem.  That line is, And now we are manifest in you, indicating that this is referring to the current bearer of the walking stick, the newest adult generation.

 I decided that one of the male figures would be in a warrior pose with a spear, to represent they considered themselves strong and having an ability to make weapons and protect themselves.  One woman is in a stance called Goddess Pose, to represent that humans had developed religious beliefs and rituals.  The other male and female represent the fertility aspect: they are the progenitors of the race of humans.  Anyway, that is my take on what I put on the stick.  It would be interesting to be able to look into the future and see what someone else says about it.  (I saw something humorously relevant on the graph-jam section of the cheeseburger.com website several weeks ago. I am sorry that I don't have time to go back and create a link to it, but it was so long ago that it might take a couple of hours to find it.  Anyway, it was a Vin Diagram that had over lapping circles.  One circle was labeled "What the author said the poem was about."  The other circle was labeled, "What the critic said the poem was about."  A third circle way off to the side said, "What I thought the poem was about."  And that is about the size of it when it comes to interpreting art.)

I wish I was better able to draw.  The figures are not as well drawn and burned on as I would have liked.  One thing about burning deeply into wood or carving in stone, once it is on there, it is not very easy to remove it without leaving some sort of permanent divot.  There are a couple of places that I would correct, but it really is too much trouble.  Since the figures are representative of drawings from prehistoric petroglyphs, I guess I'll leave them in their less than perfect state.

The next phase of the walking stick will be to add pictures of food plants and medicinal plants.  They will be shown on the next blog post.

Shaman Staff Walking Stick--Part 16

Rejected: looked like tin soldiers.

Before I get started, I wanted to note something for regular readers.  Yesterday we had a winter storm pass through.  Mostly it was a wind event, with a little rain and some snow flurries.  It reminded me that I should mention that if I have not posted for a few days that it is possible that our electricity is out.  In bad storms, we have been without electricity for as much as ten days.  If you don't see a post for several days, it could be that I am unable to use my computer or access the internet.  Please keep checking back if you don't see a post on a regular day.  I will be back online as soon as I am able.

Rejected simplified designs.

 

Now, on to today's subject.  I have been doing a good deal of sketching this week.  I think I have finally settled on the figures to be put on the walking stick.  Before I show you the ones that made the cut, I thought it might be interesting and instructive to see what sketches did not work.  Most of the time people see a finished work of art and don't really understand the amount of work that went on behind the scenes to bring the work to completion.  It is not just a matter of going with the first idea you come up with.  Sometimes what you think you want to put into the piece just does not work.

Another rejected idea.

In the case of this walking stick, I had envisioned that the ancestors would be portrayed in a style similar to carved statues and panes similar to some I had seen while visiting Hawaii.  The statues were intricately carved with spirals, wavy lines, and patterns.  Carved panels showed stacks of humans, similar to how Pacific Northwest Totem Poles are stacked.  For many hours of sketching, I was really stuck on the idea that the figures should look like that.  Unfortunately, I was not able to bring it off.  The size that the figures needed to be to fit on the walking stick was just too small to support that type of art.  The drawings were just too busy.  Even after I simplified the designs, it still was not working.  The simplified drawings looked more like toy tin soldiers than anything else.  Worse yet, the simple faces looked cartoonish.  There is only so much detail that you can sketch on a figure that is two and a half to three inches tall; and even less you can add with a wood burning tool on a figure that size. 

 So after working with a considerable number of sketches, I finally realized that I had to think something else.

Its really amazing what happens when you let go of what you want to happen on a piece and allow the piece to (metaphorically) speak to you.  When you let go of the attachment to a certain idea, new ideas and images can come to the forefront of your thoughts.  Until you let go, these ideas are repressed and cannot be seen by the minds eye.  Many times, the ideas are better than the one you had to begin with.  That is what happened here.  The new sketches seemed to work much better with the art work that is already on the stick. 

Next blog post:  the sketches that worked.

Shaman Staff - Part 15

I have completed the animal section of the walking stick.  Since then, I have begun to work on the portion of the stick regarding humans.  For a while, I felt as if I had painted myself into a corner.  Drawing the human form is not my best drawing ability.  Also, I am torn as to which way to go with the forms I wish to create.
There are a number of choices here, and I am trying to figure out which one will work best with what is already wood burned onto the stick.  After hours of drawing, I think I have finally figured it out, but now I am back at square one on starting to draw.

The premise of this piece of art was that the Shaman Staff walking stick would have a creation story on it.  Every culture has a story of how the universe was formed and how humans appeared on the scene.  In Western Civilization, this story has come from the book of Genesis for so long that we almost forget that there are other stories out there.  While doing research for this piece, I looked at traditional tribal art and prehistoric art.  One piece of art I came across a Maori drawing symbolizing the first man.  In traditional Maori style, the drawing was very stylized and had circles and spirals, but underneath it all, it was very obvious that there was a picture of a human fetus with a curved back, hands without fully developed fingers, and eyes large for its size.  The picture seemed to convey not only the knowledge that at first human beings don't look like what we consider human, but also some concept that we changed from something not quite human into what is now a human.   It was really this piece that gave me some direction for the next part of the walking stick.  Before there was the first adult man or woman, there was the first infant.

The poem burned into the walking stick has a line: "And now we are manifest in you".  The efforts, hopes, and dreams of all the ancestors have culminated in the current bearer of the walking stick.  I decided to use the shape of an infant to symbolize this person as the youngest, newest member of a long line of humans.  The line gives the person a charge to carry forward with their efforts, creating a bridge between numinous knowledge and the world of form.  Below the infant, there will be stacked silhouettes of humans to symbolize the ancestors.   And that is where I became jammed up, trying to figure out how to portray the ancestors. 

Many primitive drawings portray human bodies by using rectangular, rhomboid, or triangular shapes.  They looked a little too primitive given the writing and shapes already burned onto the Shaman Staff. I next went to attempting to draw human figures based on what I have seen on Polynesian carvings.  Unfortunately, the spirals and circles that look great on a carving six feet tall doesn't translate well to a figure only a couple of inches high.  (It was similar to what happens when you try to draw every stick you see into a landscape drawing.)  Next, I tried totem figures similar to what you see on Pacific Northwest totem poles.  It wasn't quite the look I wanted because I want to focus more on the human aspects rather than spirit aspects.  I finally decided that what I really needed to fit in with the rest of the walking stick was more silhouette figures.  I am just going to have to work on the drawings until I get them right.

I have drawn the figure of the infant.  You might notice in the picture that I have made a note to reduce the size of the drawing.  I have found that sometimes the drawing is good, but it is too large or too small for the space or in relation to some other figure.  It is easier to reduce it on a copier than to attempt to redraw it.  I can make multiple sizes and then choose which one looks best in the available space.  You will also see portions of the figures that are already burned onto the stick. 

Shaman Staff-Part 14

Deer print

Sorry about the format today.  The platform is giving me a problem and I don't have time to work with it today.  This was the best I could do with the time available.

Sheep

I have finished wood burning another section onto the walking stick.  This time I was working on animals.  In keeping with the theme that the shaman's stick would hold information that was crucial to the tribe, I decided that while I was adding the animals, that I would also add pictographs of the tracks the animals made.  I spent an afternoon reading through hunting and tracking sites to find out what various tracks looked like.  It was interesting to learn about how much you could learn about an animal's age and weight from its tracks.  Next to each drawing of an animal, is a drawing of its footprint.
 
There were plenty of animals that could have been put onto the stick, but I decided to use animals who might have been hunted for meat or for pelts, or ones that could have been considered a danger to the group.  After all, humans aren't the only ones doing the hunting.    

Wolf

Putting the animal tracks did throw me a bit of a curve though.  Among the animals that I planned to put on the stick, I had thought to put a deer, a sheep, and a moose.  In real life, the size and shape of the prints are very different.  When the prints are reduced to an inch or so in size, they appeared to be a bit redundant.  So I decided not to add the moose, which was probably for the good.  When reproduced as a basic silhouette drawing, it tended to look a lot like the Bullwinkle cartoon from the Rocky and Bullwinkle show.

Besides the deer and the sheep, I also added a wolf and a bear.   I ended that segment with a barbed spear pointed at the animals.  This is in keeping with the theme that the shaman's staff walking stick would show the implements used to catch various types of food.

Wolf print

It was a bit hard to get good pictures of the animals.  The walking stick is narrower at this point.  The animal figures curve around the stick, so it was hard to get all of the animal in one picture.  Hopefully the pictures I've posted will show enough of each animal that you get some concept of it.

It was a chilly day out with a stiff breeze while I was wood burning.  I am going out later in the afternoon so that I am working in the warmest part of the day.  Unfortunately, in the afternoon, my workbench is in the shade.  It sits where it sits because it is near an electrical outlet.  My fingers were really cold by the time I came inside.  It is supposed to be a little warmer this week, so perhaps I will get more done in the next session.

Bear

Bear print

Shaman Staff Walking Stick-Part 13

 It has been a while since I posted the words to the poem on the Shaman Staff walking stick.  I thought I'd begin with the poem this time just as a refresher, to get back in touch with what this art piece is all about.  Sometimes the projects take so long that it is easy to loose sight of the beginning of it on the blog.

We began as the dust of ancient stars.
Crossed time and space.
We took form in this place.
Living always with the hope of a better tomorrow.
And now we manifest in you.
Here past, present, and future are one.


Since my last blog post I have wood burned the section I had added onto the stick.  I draw all the images myself.  I use graph paper to help me keep the images to a size that can be fitted between the words of the poem spiraling around the walking stick.  It has been a challenge to draw something small that carry enough detail that can be done well with a wood burning tool.  At some points along the spiral, there is only three fourths to one inch in which to put an image.  At other points, the spiral opens wider.  The variance in width is caused by protrusions on the stick where branches once were.  In order to wrap the words around the stick I had to go above or below the protruding areas to be able to make sure that the words were legible.

There is a lot of empty space to fill on the stick.  At this point, I am still working with the section of the poem that says, "We took form in this place."  The stick is showing the diversity of forms that have developed in this world.  Creatures that swim, walk on the land, and fly.   I am also trying to express the shamanic world view that we are all connected by the commonality of our origin and that in our intelligence, we have chosen to inhabit different forms as directed by our need.  The creatures selected for the stick also reflect the food animals of a hunter gatherer society, animals that were used for pelts for clothing, and animals that were dangerous and that the tribe needed to be on guard against.   Even the insects have a functions.  Although it is not common in first world countries, many societies still eat insects as food.  And, where there are bees, there is honey to be had.

Of course there is also the other part of the story of the stick.  Folk tales and such information as there is on shaman's all suggest that they carried some sort of staff or wand that had strange markings on it.  I developed the idea that these markings had multiple functions.  The markings might have carried information on food sources, methods of catching or hunting their food, medicinal herbs, construction methods for clothing, baskets, and shelter.  The markings may also have acted as a touchstone to remind people of stories in their oral history so that important events were kept in order and information would not be forgotten by having a story attached to each mark on the walking stick.  As the stick progresses, more of these types of symbols will be added.

I have one more section of animals that will be wood burned onto the stick.  Then I will be moving on to other themes.  I'm not directly addressing the line of the poem that says, "Living always with the hope of a better tomorrow."  Having hope is an internal process.  I think that all life forms have some basic hopes.  Hope of enough to eat, hope for shelter,  hope of finding a mate, and hope that all that will be available tomorrow.   So from the end of the animals, I'll be moving on to the manifestation of humans.

A few of the wood burned pictures that I have wood burned on the stick are not shown.  Once I add more than a few photos, the blog platform starts giving me a hard time.  I'll add the missing ones next time.

The bottom photo is a long view of the Shaman Staff walking stick.  It is difficult to get a photo of the full stick and show any of the detail.