Skeatching – The Art of Life

An Advanced copy of the original: The Art of Joy!

“Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh

Life is never perfect, it comes with a few struggles and joys. Thought, sometimes it seems that life is throwing a lot more struggles then joys at us. That may be true, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t also have joy. With one single smile, or a positive remark we create our own joy, and by being joyful we can also light up our dreary surroundings.
You see, joy doesn’t just come from sunshine and happy friends, it can also be spread by a signal smile. In my opinion smiles our the greatest kind of joy, for a smile can be contagious.

Like smiles, moments can also bring you joy, a good song, new cloths, a clean room, a peppy pup, a beautiful meadow, great friends. Theses moments can be truly joyful, but not all moments our sunshine and rainbows. Sometimes moments in life can be a tragedy, a hateful comment, a bad friend, a violent act, a great loss. When theses moments arise life can become dreary and gray very fast. That’s why when I see or experience a great moment I grab it and hang on to that memory. So, when the bad moments come and bet you up like a violent storm you can go back and reminisce over those joyful moments.

Images: “Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky.”
― Rabindranath Tagore, Stray Birds

Thought, Occasionally when enjoying a good moment a bad one can come back to haunt. That’s when I use the ‘sunset rule’ as I like to call it. My golden inspiration came from a casual stroll threw the woods. The woods dominion: dancing snowflakes, ruddy-bark warped trees; shaven clean from a million mooses majestic antlers. Peaceful, hazy calm. Mound upon mound of crisp, clear white snow; twinkling and blinking lazily up at me, and walking into a wide clearing, stood my sunset: fiery and golden, flashing array intense orange and yellow. With splashes of scarlet and delicate Violet. The sunset was really just a ordinary AK sunset, but to me it was incomparable and it taught me an important lesson. As I stood looking into that magnificent orb, of golden light and beauty, I realized that when you are looking at a captivating sunset you don’t go back and think of a dreary cloudy day. No, you enjoy that sunset and the moment that it brings.
It’s the same with life: when you come across a joyful moment, don’t go back to an awful moment in your life, instead try to enjoy that moment and the joy that it brings, with all your heart. For every moment in life either
good or bad can equip us for the battles ahead.

Any of us can choose to be dropy, But can we choose to be happy? It takes a human with real courage and persistence to make sunshine out of your shadows, instead of resorting to a frown and a stormy life.

“Any fool can be happy. It takes a man with real heart to make beauty out of the stuff that makes us weep.”
― Clive Barker, Abarat: Days of Magic, Nights of War

Ann Frank, wrote in her diary—“I don’t think of all the misery, but of the beauty that still remains.” Locked in an office, hiding from Hitler and his hell, Ann, a teen girl had every right to embrace sadness and self pity, but no, she chose to look around her and see the beauty among the raging fires, of her home and the ashes of Bergen-Belsen. If Ann Frank can take the stand to chose Joy, then how much more can we make the same choice? Not, just once but continually.

Next time, when you stub your toe, or lock your keys in the car…take a breath and choose joy.

“Sorrow prepares you for joy. It violently sweeps everything out of your house, so that new joy can find space to enter. It shakes the yellow leaves from the bough of your heart, so that fresh, green leaves can grow in their place. It pulls up the rotten roots, so that new roots hidden beneath have room to grow. Whatever sorrow shakes from your heart, far better things will take their place.”
― **Rumi**

—Joy

“A painter should begin every canvas with a wash of black, because all things in nature are dark except where exposed by the light.”
― Leonardo da Vinci

Nature with its majestic domes, flying vapors, enchanting greenery, dashing white caps, and its waters turquoise hue can be alluring to any eye – whether artist or not. Though, through the eyes of one that has come to see art in any surrounding; nature and it’s exuberant colors can be transformed onto paper or camra through the eyes of one that sees every light brush of snow, every wedge of rock, dusting of seeding or shrub.

Nothing escapes the eye of an artists. Every perfect and unique detail gets captured with one snap of the leans; one stroke of the brush; and a few patient dustings of lead from a pencils tip. Though their eyes and the art that an artist creates, the world is enabled to partake in nature’s beauty; just because the artists took the time to snap the lends or move the paint brush at the right moment.

“Where the spirit does not work with the hand, there is no art.” Leonardo da Vinc

You see through anyone that has the ability to see and mimic creation into sculptures or sketches. Humanity will be seeing through your eyes, the eyes that saw its beauty in every beautiful or imaginable way. We all don’t see beauty or draw it the same, but what we all see is art and what comes out of us is so unique that no other being can try to master are very own ways of ‘drawing’ art.

The world is so beautiful that is has caused me many times to stop and make somthing out of it, so that meany more people can enjoy. I have found that art is really a way to express the emotions and images of what we see and feel – inside and around us. If we aren’t motivated, or are depressed and forget to look around us, we can miss a lot.

So, keep your head up, get along for awhile, breath in the scents, vapors, sights, and sounds of nature; and learn to cherish and grasp it so others also can enjoy its magnificent beauty.

“Eleanor was right. She never looked nice. She looked like art, and art wasn’t supposed to look nice; it was supposed to make you feel something.”
― Rainbow Rowell, Eleanor & Park

Another breath-taking thing to realize is that you, yourself are art. You ask, “How could I be art?” Or more precise, “How could one so flawed be art?” No one’s perfect, we all have are misgivings and flaws; but the glorious thing to realize that art isn’t perfect either! Art was never meant to be perfect. There will always going to be some kind of flaw or thing we don’t see right about it, but art was never meant to be perfect. Art was meant to make you feel somthing or see somthing a different way. Just remember, art is you, and what you create, no matter how flawed or unworthy of expectation. Always remember that others can see threw your eyes and what you see must not be perfect, but mystifying, breathtaking and will make another shout,“supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!“

Whether you are good at art or not; it doesn’t matter. What matters is that you are able to express yourself and find beauty in the small things.

Plus art isn’t just charcoal and paints: it’s elaborate sculptures, well-structured businesses, industrial wonders, beautifully, crafted pastries, exquisite flowers, elegant outfits, awing sketches. Theses all are true works of art, and threw them we can see nature and beauty.

Always remember that at the hand of an artist extraordinary things can arise, and that your not perfect, but through you the world can see the art of nature. So, in the words of E.A. Bucchianeri, from Brushstrokes of a Gadfly, “Make your lives a masterpiece, you only get one canvas.”

“At the hand of an artist truly extraordinary things can arise”
—Joy Tiberend (Mwah)

Here’s a few images of my kind of art, thought definitely not without a-few imperfections. Even though, I tried to show nature, humanity, and feeling threw theses few imperfect sketches and photos: