Meditation, Focus, and Image-making - by Doc Nolan

One of the best things about focused drawing and photography is not the product (the image) but the process of doing craftsmanlike work.  It’s like this: Hundreds of images cross your eyes and, therefore, your mind.  They have no impact.  And then you see something and think, “I want to capture that, but not quite as my eyes are showing it to me.”  It might be a real-life stone or bridge you see while taking a walk, or perhaps a virtual rock or a virtual span in Alternate Metaverse – it doesn’t matter.  What matters is stopping and looking at it because it demands attention.  The next step is capturing what you see with a camera or pencil marks on paper.  You become absorbed in focus, composition, and lighting with the camera.  You have the additional form (shape) and contrast challenges with a pencil.  And you swiftly begin to think, “Close, but not quite right.  What is missing?”  Note the mental process: absorption. 

The next step is taking a chance and clicking a shot or putting a pencil to paper, knowing in advance that this first image will (let’s be blunt) suck.   And then, a follow-on process begins.  “This is crap.  Let’s adjust.  This doesn’t seem right.  Why?”  With a camera, you change settings, move the camera around, and zoom in or out.  With a pencil, you erase and redo markings over and over.  Sometimes you put your work to one side, exhausted.  More often, you stubbornly fight and try to fix the image.  (And then take a recess, exhausted!  Ha, ha).  You know that the final product you create will have two characteristics: (1) it will be better than all the unsuccessful efforts that got you that far, and (2) it will be imperfect.  You know this before you start.  You don’t care.

Now, let’s turn to meditation in its best and truest sense.  One definition of Zen is “a state of calm attentiveness in which one’s actions are guided by intuition rather than by conscious effort.”  I think this is an imperfect definition.   Let’s try again.  Here’s another: “an attempt to expand their attentional scope to incorporate the flow of perceptions, thoughts, emotions, and subjective awareness.”  Better, I think.  (You may disagree.  That’s fine.)   But for me, a lot of meditation and “making art” is about one thing: emptying your mind and seeing what’s in front of you clearly.  Easy?  No way!  Try to draw a face, look at the person you were drawing, and then at your image.  They won’t match.  You didn’t notice those frown lines around the mouth, did you?  And did you realize one eye is slightly higher than the other?  No?  So you alter your markings on the paper and – still not right.  You’re involved in the process of successive approximation.  Mistake after mistake.  Creeping closer but never really getting to that point you dream of: the perfect picture.

And don’t let your camera fool you.  Take four photos of the same face a day apart and compare them.  If you look closely, they’re different.  Yes, the images are not identical but look harder, and you’ll realize the face is dissimilar, too.  Which is ‘the true face’?  They all are.  Change is part of life’s flux; you’re aware of that through static representations!  (The changing light drives outdoor oil painters nuts!) You see how a face changes by focusing and paying attention (yes, by disciplined meditation).

And now the final (not the initial!) step: imposing your will on images after you have seen objects as they truly appear.  In photography, this image manipulation is called “post-production.”  In drawing, it’s called “messing around and being imaginative.”  But if you jump right to imposing your will without the meditative process, what happens?  You draw stickmen, and you shoot ‘grip-and-grin’ caricature snapshots.  You haven’t rendered reality at the high level your mind is capable of.  You’ve created the image equivalent of fast food.  Grabbing a burger is not the same as fine dining.  Lazy image-making gives a predictable result: crap that no one wants to see.  Well, almost no one.\

One last word.  Meditation is fun.  Watching yourself in your mind’s eye when you’re doing focused work is fun, too.  Try it, and see.