Tiny Gems

Posted by Salvador Castío

Dr. Nina Ansary. 2020. Pencil preliminary in sketchbook

Some weeks ago I lamented the anti-intellectualism that’s running rampant in my beleaguered country. This week isn’t any different; the flagrant and callous imbecility continues unabated on social media and it isn’t going to stop. All the uneducated, misinformed wannabe epidemiologists and virologists spewing their opinions on social media were selfish assholes before all of this started and they’ll continue being selfish assholes long after this is over and done with. That, dear friends, is the last you’ll hear from me on this topic. I don’t know about you but I have better things to do.

Truth be told the aforementioned situation actually has some value to offer If you look for it. In the grand scheme of things, the daily shitshow on social media is nothing more than a pathetic example of just how stupid and self-centered humans can be. In that sense, it’s a complete and total waste of time, but if you dig beneath its bloated ego-laden surface, you’ll find a nice little tidbit of wisdom: Life is short. Live your best life without compromise.

It’s easy to get caught up in the anti-intellectual mire that is modern-day America, but that, dear friends, is a choice. Mental stimulation is always within arm’s reach, if you truly desire to have it. You can either watch another mindless sitcom or you can choose to read or watch something informative. Books like Anthony Bourdain’s classic culinary memoir, Kitchen Confidential offer profound understanding into the struggles and aspirations of a working chef. Documentaries like The Birth of the Cool, the recent Miles Davis documentary, are fantastic for giving you insight into the mind of a musical genius, and musicals like Hamilton expose you to the life of someone such as founding father Alexander Hamilton. The truth is that there are a plethora of things to choose from that will help stop brain rot. Choosing between a mindless sitcom or gameshow and Miles Davis is like choosing between a Big Mac or some gambas al ajillo. You get my point, right? Mental stimulation is out there, it’s not hiding. If you want to  continue growing as a person then the choice is yours. Evolving as a human being is part of living your best life. There’s many facets to living your best life, and a lot of that falls to the choices that you make as an individual. You either continue to grow or you stagnate. It’s all up to you. 

As an artist, I’m very mindful of all this. Perhaps because of my profession this kind of thing is that much more important to me than it is for other folks. For me, being an artist and learning new things go hand in hand. It’s because of this that I was able to go from being a kid from a humble background who read comic books by Jack Kirby to an art school graduate who counts people like Burne-Jones and Lord Leighton as influences.

At my age, my thirst for knowledge has not lessened; on the contrary, it has become even more insatiable. As I get older, my patience for conversations about mundane pedestrian things is getting shorter and shorter. I like to be around people who talk about ideas and about books they’re reading, different cultures, music, art, etc. This is where I’m at and it’s what I want.

These things are going to take on an even greater importance as time goes on. Art and  culture inform and influence me as a person and artist. Hispanophile, Anglophile, Francophile – yes, all of the above. This is just the tip of the iceberg. That fact that I speak fluent Spanish opens me up to an additional world of enrichment. As a kid, I grew up with Charlie Chaplin, Laurel & Hardy, and the Three Stooges while also taking in the work of the equally brilliant Mario Moreno “Cantinflas,” and Roberto Gómez Bolaños in all his various guises. Anyone who speaks another language fluently knows exactly what I’m talking about. All of this influences my interests, my tastes, and most importantly, my worldview. Growing as a person doesn’t have an age limit. The only limits that exist are the ones you put on yourself. The world is too vast and too interesting to limit myself to one culture, one way of seeing things, so yeah, you can be pretty sure that when it comes down to it I’m always going to choose Miles Davis over over a sitcom. 

Agribusiness cities aren’t exactly cultural meccas, but if you’re hungry enough you’ll view that sort of situation as a challenge rather than a nail in the coffin. It’s a choice you make. As an artist and individual it’s important for me to continue learning about the world I live in. That means looking beyond the limited parameters of where I’m at. I refuse to stagnate in the all too familiar humdrum situation that could easily derail me at any given moment if I let it. Life is short and the world is too vast – go beyond the never ending monotony of everyday life and nourish yourself with the hidden gems that are out there waiting for you. 

This week, I have chosen to show you a piece of work before it is fully worked out and completed. In this case, it’s a pen and ink portrait of Dr. Nina Ansary that I’m currently working on. What you see here is a pencil preliminary from my sketchbook. It’s close to being done but still needs some work. Dr. Ansary’s features are very fine so they must be handled with the utmost finesse when drawing them. This is why I do a preliminary study beforehand. I need to be sure of what I’m going to be doing when I do the final piece so I work everything out before my pen ever touches the paper. In case you were curious, this is how art is made.      

A special thanks to Dr. Ansary for graciously giving me permission to do this portrait. 

A Silver Lining

Posted by Salvador Castío

Dr. Nina Ansary. 2020. Pen, ink, and digital color.

This blog post originally started as a spontaneous “Here’s what I’m doing this Monday morning,” but after ingesting a near lethal dose of uneducated rubbish regarding, amongst other things, COVID-19 all day, it quickly changed. Sometimes I seriously wonder what the bleeding hell is wrong with people nowadays. Never in my life have I seen so many ego-driven, self-centered, fact-less opinions being doled out willy-nilly. Social media is an unending barrage of uneducated, misinformed bullshit – a literal daily shitshow. Sadly, the flame of anti-intellectualism has been fanned into a roaring blaze by the internet, social media, pop culture, and so called smartphones. We live in the information age and yet people seem to be dumber than ever. Nowadays, Joe Blow and Jane Doe are suddenly effing geniuses despite having barely crawled out of high school. Funny that. They don’t read; they have no intellectual curiosity, and they live on a steady diet of jalapeño poppers and pop culture. In short, they’re as hollow as the culture they come from. This is where we’re at as human beings: ”My ignorance trumps your knowledge.” It’s a sad state of affairs and it’s only going to get worse before it gets better.

I’m supposed to have sympathy for these schmucks? Yeah, that’s never going to happen. In the end, you have to decide how much of your time and energy you’re going to spend verbally slugging it out with the denizens of Slobville. They’re not going away anytime soon and verbally sparring down in Slobville isn’t high on my priorities list. The stupidity, the lack of empathy, and the all around selfishness have reached levels so nauseating that I think it’s time that I call it a day and cut back my time on social media before I suffer permanent brain damage. This, of course, excludes anything having to do with my work; the production and promotion of what I do will continue unabated.

Truth be told, I have much better things to do – you know, like make art. When I get sick and tired of people’s BS I retreat into my own little creative world where I can create, explore, and learn. Some might say that I live in a bubble. Perhaps. I might live in a bubble, but at least I’m being productive and that is reason enough to get away from social media and pop culture. Instead of going round and round with selfish, unempathetic idiots, I’d rather tell you about some of the things I’m currently working on. I’ve started to work on a new series of drawings that will likely carry me well into the fall; this batch of new work is some of the most complex work that I’ve ever done. I’m excited to be starting work on these new drawings which will represent me better than anything I’ve done previously.  Besides being some of my most ambitious work, these drawings will reflect my personal interests more clearly than ever before. Things such as Spanish cante, gitano culture, Moorish design, and late Victorian draftsmanship and painting will be woven into the images that I will be creating over the coming months.

We’re all living through an unprecedented moment in time, but we must all remember that as horrible as all this seems, it’s just a moment in time. In a few years it will all slowly fade into history as we start to return to a normal way of life. This unexpected pause to our daily life has a silver lining for creatives. This is an unexpected opportunity to be as creative as possible. I can’t help but feel as if the universe is tapping me on the shoulder and telling me to go balls out and create the best work that I’ve ever done. Hey, that sounds pretty good to me. Don’t miss out on this opportunity dear friends – the likelihood of something like this happening again anytime soon is pretty doubtful so unleash your creativity and go for it. For now, I will continue to remain positive and hopeful that a vaccine is developed in the coming months. Stay safe, wear a damn mask, and practice social distancing. We can get through this if we all do our part.

The drawing that adorns this week’s post is the second portrait that I’ve done of Dr. Nina Ansary. My first drawing of her from a few weeks ago wasn’t quite what I wanted; It didn’t really capture Dr. Ansary’s beauty, elegance and aplomb so I decided to do this second portrait. I like this drawing a lot better – it’s closer to what I would expect of myself and I’d like to believe that I’ve finally done Dr. Ansary justice. I hope that she feels the same way I do when she sees it.    

A Week In Review

Posted by Salvador Castío

Dr. Nina Ansary (Preliminary). 2020. Pen, ink, and gouache in sketchbook. 

Today will be another might-as-well-be-living-in-Sub-Saharan-Africa day in the Central Valley. Summers here are relentless and unforgiving and their effect on my ability to be creative is just one more hurdle I have to overcome in my daily routine. It is what it is.

This week I will continue to give you an insight into what it’s like to be a professional, working artist in the 21st Century. This week I am going to give you a peak into a working week from start to finish, warts and all.

Monday: My days start early, usually between 6:30 and 7:00 am. I normally start them with a book and my first of many cups of coffee. It’s always been important for me to read – an artist who doesn’t read is shallow in personality and short on ideas. I love reading about the lives of artists that I admire; it gives me an understanding of what I’m doing and where I’m going. 

This morning, I’m starting work on the second version of a portrait of Dr. Nina Ansary. My first preliminary pen and ink drawing adorns this week’s post. As always, I feel that it can be better, so I’ll likely redraw it. If I’m lucky, I’ll finish work on my preliminary pencil drawing by this afternoon amidst the sweltering and unbearable heat in my petit atelier. The drawing will be in a very elementary state: a tight but loose sketch that’s ready to be traced and transferred to my tracing pad where it will be refined. That probably won’t happen until tomorrow at the earliest because I’ve got lots of other projects that I need to get to. The pieces that I will be producing in the coming months are important to me and will likely be some of the best work that I’ll ever do. Great art takes time to create and I intend for these to be nothing short of extraordinary. After all these years, I’m still full of piss and vinegar, so without any hesitation whatsoever I can say that I will be going balls out on this new work and pulling no punches in its execution. My time has become precious and I despise wasting it. Most of these ideas are in a preliminary phase and there’s an unimaginable amount of hours left before I can even begin to fathom putting pen to paper and bringing them to completion. 

Tuesday: This morning my work continues on my second portrait of Dr. Ansary. I traced and transferred what I did yesterday over to my tracing pad, so now I can begin to refine and hone the drawing to where I want it to be – this usually happens after multiple tracings. Once I’ve got the drawing where I want it to be, I’ll trace it onto a thick sheet of 3 ply Strathmore series 500 Bristol board and start inking it with Rapidograph technical pens. 

By late in the afternoon, I’ve worked up my pencil preliminary of Dr. Ansary to a satisfactory level and move on to other projects. I’m in the process of organizing a publicity event for later this year that will showcase some of the new work that I’ve been talking about. All of my new work will reflect my love of 19th and 20th Century art, especially Pre-Raphaelite painters such as Sir Edward Burne-Jones and fin de siècle Symbolist painters, draftsman, and engravers such as Carlos Schwabe, Alphonse Mucha, and Gustave Doré. My new work will be a mélange of these influences and reflect personal interests such as Spanish cante, Moorish art, ancient English storytelling, and a myriad of others.

Wednesday: It’s midweek, and I’m feeling a little overwhelmed with the process of choosing which projects I want to work on in the coming months. Don’t get me wrong, I want to work on all of them, but I need to zero in on the ones that need to get done sooner. It’s tough doing this because all of these projects are important to me. This feeling isn’t anything new to me, however; it’s part of my creative process. Big projects usually start like this and slowly but surely get organized in my mind. That normally takes place late at night when I’m lying wide awake ruminating on what to do. 

Today was a scorcher. When I say scorcher, you should know that it’s an understatement. I was only half joking earlier when I called the weather here in The Valley Sub-Saharan. Summers here in the Central Valley can be brutal with stretches of days where the weather is over 100° F. The heat is stifling and makes it a challenge to be creative. Scorching weather or not, the show must go on. The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the dynamic for everyone including me. Initially I found myself struggling to adapt to it. My wife is a private tutor who usually goes from home to home all afternoon and evening, but all that changed with this pandemic. I was used to days where I could take a break and either read or watch TV whenever I wanted to, but that was taken away from me when my wife started working from home. The first month and a half were kind of rough and I wondered how I was going to adapt to the change. Thankfully, my wife and I worked together to develop a solution. I wake up early and have the morning hours to myself and she stays up late and enjoys the quiet hours of the night. In addition, time has helped resolve the issue. I’m grateful that both my wife and I are able to continue working and doing what we do amidst this worldwide tragedy. 

Thursday: Today it seems as if the universe has listened to my pleas and bestowed a cool and cloudy day upon me. The preliminary pen and ink that adorns this post is something that I’ve been working on over the past few days along with everything else I’ve mentioned. I’m done inking it and making corrections, so it’s time to scan it and get it ready for posting to my social media accounts. The drawing is well done and whatnot, but I’m not sure I’ve captured my subject’s elegance and aplomb. It’s a solid start that will lead to a much stronger drawing when it gets worked up into a more finished piece.

Out of the blue, I’ve decided to start writing the post you’re currently reading a little ahead of schedule because I’m driven to do it; I spend the better part of my afternoon at the computer pounding out the beginnings of this post. The urge to write is something that’s becoming stronger as time goes on. Aside from these weekly blog posts, I’ve also started working on two manuscripts and a collection of short snippets of random moments. I’m not a writer per se, but I like to write, so this will now become part of my creative output – albeit at a much slower rate than my visual art. 

Friday: The universe continues to bless me with cool and cloudy weather. Praise. Today I’m looking forward to continuing all the preliminary work for my upcoming projects. One of the main factors that will differentiate this new work from things I’ve done in the past is that many of these new pieces will be substantially larger than previous work. This obviously means that it will take an even greater amount of time to complete most of the work I have planned. The most exciting thing about these new pieces is that I’ve been keeping a list of “Projects I Will Someday Have the Skill to Complete” for the past 35 years and I finally feel technically ready to undertake the work required to bring these ideas to fruition.

The week is ending on a good note. I ‘m feeling more productive than I have in quite some time. Work on all my projects is moving ahead, and I’ve got everything I need in order to move forward with everything that I want to do over the coming months. Onward, ever onward.