On the shore, a lone woman was seen engaging in an unequal battle with the world ocean. Armed with a shovel, she heroically moved the sargassum two centimeters to the left, apparently to a place designated for them by feng shui. To the left and right to the horizon—nobody.
Category: art
Rust and Ruin: The Door of Desolation | June 23 2025, 20:29
Door in the toilet stall
Faustian Dialogues in Modern Project Management | June 20 2025, 15:00
I think project managers can very well speak to developers in the words of Faust.
Well, here we go again, in the old manner
With you – all is uncertainty, all doubts,
In everything you create difficulties,
And for all, you wish for new rewards!
When will you, without any further talk, —
One, two: look, — and everything is ready soon!
(For context – this is Faust’s reaction to the refusal of the seemingly omnipotent Mephistopheles (Devil) to bring Helen of Troy and Paris from the realm of shadows to the stage for the Emperor’s amusement)
director
Don’t forget anything:
What can be done immediately,
Why put it off till tomorrow?
We must instantly grasp
All that is necessary and possible
(…)
“You have poorly executed it,
And left a gap in the corner”
And the designer might reply:
And you do not see, how vile and shameful
This craft?
Am I not an artist?
To the Manager:
“Fire! Help! Hell! We are all going to burn now!”
Switching to Pencil: Mastering the Art of Drawing with Three and a Half Rules | June 20 2025, 12:53
In the studio, we decided to switch from oil to pencil, which I hadn’t touched for years (and, frankly, never really knew how to use properly). But with practice, I understood just three and a half rules of good drawing.
1. Draw what you see, not what you think you should see if you look at the reference. This is the most difficult part because it involves fighting your own brain, which is convinced it knows what things look like.
2. Judgment of proportions. If something occupies a fifth on the reference, you need to distinguish it from a sixth or a fourth, and of course, see exact halves and thirds clearly. It’s like having a musical ear. If an imaginary line ends at a point on the ear, you need to see this imaginary line. It’s not hard, but requires practice, and it seems you need to practice it all your life. Interestingly, you are initially surprised at how wrong you are about proportions. There are many small optical illusions that one must get used to.
2.5. Angles. A continuation of judging proportions. You need to see the difference between, say, 45 and 40 degrees at least. And see where to turn the wrong line and by how much.
3. Ability to simplify. Any complex shape needs to be simplified in the mind to straight lines and shapes and draw those first, and also to reduce reality to spots of a maximum of a few shades (with white and black at the edges).
That’s all. If you master just these three and a half points, you won’t need anything else for a long time. No knowledge of anatomy, understanding of materials, or laws of perspective (all this is important, but comes later).
Discovering Goethe’s Faust at 47 | June 08 2025, 01:57
At 47, I finally got around to Goethe’s “Faust.” Ordered the book on Ozon, but it will only reach me in a month. So, I decided to start with the audiobook. And what a fabulous production it is! I’ve listened to eight out of sixteen hours, covering all of the first part and a bit of the second. Probably will spend another week chewing through the second part. And when the book arrives – I’ll read it all over again after the audio, which should go really well.
Trukhan’s performance is a masterpiece! The cello, the choice of voice actors, the intonations. I could not imagine a better “Faust” than the one voiced by Chonishvili. Highly recommend. Only occasionally there’s a bit too much with the musical numbers, but I need to check the text, maybe you can’t remove words from a song. The end of the first part in the prison is just fire.
Hi, I'm Rauf Aliev. 