53. Portraits - 2: Pushkin

I almost forgot that awhile ago I posted the first portion of "Portraits" and had a definite intention to

continue... So this is about time. On random days Victor sent me a few of his drawings of  Aleksandr Pushkin. He said he had many more, and I patiently waited, but finally gave up and decided to publish just these three.

 

 

"A.S.P."

 

 

 

"Dream"

 

 

 

"Sasha and Natasha"

 

 

 



52. He and She.

The drawings that I selected for this post are all made within the last month and sent to me within the last week. This is pretty much the only thing that unifies them. The other - their original titles do not sound right when translated from Russian, so I won't. Well, of course, all of them are about love, but this is too wide to be considered a common theme.

 

 

"Жду Тебя"

 

 

 

"Без названия"

 

 

 



 

"Проволочное Сердце"

 

 

"Линии Одиночества"

 

 

 



51. His Brain, Her Brain.

My daughter just showed me the blog she started with her boyfriend (Http://hisbrainherbrain.blogspot.com). They decided to "document" their different reactions to certain things. As I was reading it, I recalled that this summer Victor did his little artistic investigation of the same topic. I don't remember the exact conversation that caused it. In July I was working in Princeton and lived and traveled for a month in the beautiful surroundings near Delaware River. I had plenty of new experiences and tried to describe all of them to poor Victor who was stuck in dusty and sweaty Kharkov. I was surprised (if not offended) that he wasn't always willing to listen to all my stories in all details.  Here are some of his thoughts.

 

 

"Information"

 

 

"The Two"

 

After these, I guess, Victor decided to investigate the relationships between "Him" and "Her" a little further.

"Arithmetic"

 

 

 



 

"Study of Love"

 

 

50. Portraits - 1

I am afraid, I was too personal in my previous post. To compensate, this is the most neutral topic. There is nothing about me, there is no accompanying story; simply I selected some of the portraits that Victor has sent to me throughout the last few years, without any particular reason. Well, I am sure there was a reason why he drew these particular people within one week, since his choice doesn't seem logical, but he usually doesn't explain...

I hope they are recognizable, but I'll give the names, just in case.

 

George Washington

 

 

Confucius

 

 

 



 

Pythagoras

 

 

 

Lev Tolstoy

 

 

 

Charlie Chaplin

 

 

 

To be continued...

49. Pluses and Minuses of Living Alone.

The size of my household has been changing constantly in the last several years: 4-3-4-3-2-1-2, as my children and step-children were moving in and out. The size of my apartment has been trying to catch up. After my son moved to live in Idaho, I rented out one room for half a year, but a month ago I made another move, and now, for the first time in my life (really!), I live by myself.

It was, and still is, very strange. I am excited that  I don't need to close any doors, that I can wear whatever I want (or nothing at all), that I can eat sour cream or jam from a jar, and so on. Of course, I discussed it with Victor. Actually, as continuation of our "game," I offered him the next theme: "Living single." Well, I have to play with words again. The Russian word  "oдиночество"  ("odinochestvo") can have different connotations, which in English correspond to various words: from simply "being single," to more melancholic "solitude," to more dramatic "loneliness,"and more. Since I don't mean anything sad or dramatic, I'll just use plain "Living alone."

First, of course, we talked about  advantages of living alone. One of them was extra time that you may spend any way you like. For example, doing ceramics. So this was Victor's immediate response (I also used this drawing in the previous post about Women and Vases. It happened to be an intersection of totally different themes!)

 

 

But then, inspired by the richness of the topic, I recalled some of Victor's other works. They kind of continue the investigation of all the shades of "being alone" that I mentioned above. Although the following drawings were made awhile ago and were not meant to illustrate any of these synonyms, but that is how I see them.

 

 

"Solitude."

 

 

 

 

"Loneliness"

 

 

Well, actually the last drawing can hardly be seen as an advantage... Which brings us to the next portion of this post: Disadvantages of living alone. This was the next theme I offered to Victor, and first he e-mailed me that he couldn't see any. But still drew this one on the same day:

 

 

 

 

 

48. Women and Vases

For the title of this post, I've had difficult time translating a very simple word from Russian: "кувшин" ("koovshin"). The closest translations are a  "pitcher" and a "jar," but when I wanted to choose the one that is more appropriate for this post and googled "images" for each, for the most part I saw baseball pitchers and those standard containers used to preserve food. What I was looking for is beauty and elegance, because that's what the post is about. So I chose "vases", although it is definitely not what Victor meant when he named his drawings  "A woman and  a ... (jar???)."

Just this week Victor drew two of them with the same title. Why? We talked about ceramics again, how I wish I would continue doing it. Clearly, even though it has been awhile since I took my ceramics course, the topic is not exhausted. So these are the two new drawings:

 

 

After receiving the two of them, I remembered I'd seen similar ones before. For example, when I just started taking ceramics, Victor sent me this one. I've already published it in one of my ceramics-related posts, and even explained its title (see post 23).

"A Goddess Firing Pots"

"Богиня Обжигающая Горшки"

After seeing all these women with all these jars/pitchers/vases, I asked: Why so many? Victor responded that he loves to draw women with vases, because, number one, their shapes  are very similar, and number two, both are sexy. And then I remembered one more that he drew about a year ago, this one was actually called "A Vase." I guess, he is right in his comparison.

47. All About Moving.

It's been almost a month since I opened this blog... First it was the beginning of the school year, then I suddenly decided to move to a new apartment. Only now I finally settled in my new place and can think about something else.

The topic for this post came naturally: moving, especially since Victor illustrated main steps of my struggle. This was his first response when I just told him that I am moving, because, as I mentioned to him, my collection of shells was the first to be packed.

After the first box with shells, there were many-many other boxes with other things, things that I need and things that I don't really need. I was complaining to him that I have too many things, and that's what he sent to me on the next day. I actually have many, if not all of these objects:

Then I moved. The first thing I did as I walked into my new apartment was trying to turn the light, and... there was no light, although I ordered it for this morning. Of course, it was Saturday, and Con Edison said there is nothing they can do until Monday. We already started making plans how to survive without electricity, and suddenly a guy from Coin Edison showed up (miracles do happen!), and fixed it in a minute! Of course, Victor sent me his version of "Let there be light!"

 

 

 

I was also complaining to Victor that I had to make too many decisions in the process, and I ordered him a theme, exactly this" "Making decisions." This is his response:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Oh, as soon as I posted this picture I realized that the signs here are in Russian. It's a hint to a Russian saying, and translating either the words themselves or the saying won't really help. But the image depicts my state very well.

 

P.S. After I published this post, Victor sent me another drawing. I was so sure he just made it, inspired by my moving endeavors, but he said he had drawn it a long time ago. So once again I had to be amazed how on Earth 10 years ago he knew what would happen to me now???

 

 

 



 

46. One Year Anniversary.

Because of my travel, I missed the exact date, but yes, it was last August when I started this blog. So I decided to choose several best (read: my favorite) drawings from previous pages for the anniversary post. With only one exception: the first one is totally new, drawn a week ago, and it already made it to my "Hall of Fame." Victor said that he just drew what he saw in his dream.

 

The rest is just a brief retrospective, but not of Victor's work, rather of my blog.

"Constellation of the Cow"

"Созвездие Коровы"

 

 

 

 

"Memories of Us"

"Воспоминание о Нас"

 

 

 

 

 

"Moses"

"Моисей"

 

 

 

 

 

"Waves of My Memory"

"По Волне Моей Памяти"

 

 

 

"Chronicler"

"Летописец"

 

 

45. Challenge - 9.

With unavoidable interruptions, especially during summer time, our "Game" has been continuing for almost two years. For this post I selected several of Victor's drawings that responded to pretty serious "assignments." It doesn't necessarily mean that his responses were also serious.

The idea for the first theme is pretty straightforward, but translating it in English is not. Russian word "Ожидание" can be translated as either "expecting" or "expectation," but both of these words have certain specific connotations that don't exactly fit the intended meaning. Another word, "waiting," is actually closer by its content, but it sounds too prosaic. The intended meaning of the word is not as much about the process of waiting, but more about the state, even closer to "hope" or "anticipation." But the drawings (Victor sent me two, I guess he was afraid to look too serious after the first one) are self-explanatory even without the exact title.

The theme for the next drawing, although seems related, came up on a totally different occasion. Here is another simple word that is not easy to translate with the exact tone: "Опоздание." Should I say "Lateness" (this is the first one that comes to a teacher's mind)? "Coming Late"? None of them sounds right. Google Translate gave me "Delay" - even worse. To make things harder, I'd have to translate the whole poem. My Russian-speaking readers probably know a wonderful author of children's poetry, Renata Muha. Victor has illustrated some of her poems, and this is one of them. Unfortunately I couldn't find English translations of her works, so my non-Russian readers will have to read everything from the illustration.

Finally, one drawing that responds to a serious theme is actually serious (well, more or less...). But it is still somewhat difficult to translate accurately. My "assignment" was: "Глаза в Глаза," which literally means "Eyes to Eyes." We talked about limitations of long-distance communication, when you just listen to a person but don't look in his/her eyes. The most surprising thing for me, as often, was that this drawing was made a long time ago, as though Victor had already thought about every tiny aspect of human emotions and relationships.

"Eyes to Eyes"

"Глаза в Глаза" 

To be continued... I am tired of all these translations...

44. Through Eras and Continents: Medieval Times.

Jumping through several centuries, we get into Middle Ages. I am not good in history, and I don't think it's worth to do any research here, so I am placing the remaining few draings in this series in a random order, or rather in the order I got them from Victor, all of them - long time ago. Only the last one was drawn a couple of years ago, when Victor visited Zaporozh'ye, a Ukrainan city on the river Dniepr, which was the center of so called Sich Zaporoska, a cossacks' camp in 16th century (I did look this one up...).

"Cortes"

"Кортес"

"Flanders"

"Фландрия"

"A Musketeer"

"Мушкетер"

 

 "Zaporoska Sich"

"Запорожская Сечь"

 

43. Through Eras and Continents: Unexpected Turn.

Jumping a few centuries ahead... I am not really good in history, so I am not sure my chronology is accurate...

I'll start with this "triple-portrait." I love it for its laconic lines, each of them plays more than one role.
Everyone with Russian (or any Slavic) cultural background will recognized them right away, but for others, these are epic heroes from around 1000 a.d. (yes, I looked it up!). I actually saw that their Russian name, bogatyr, or vityaz, was used in English untranslated.

"Russian Knights"

"Витя-зи"

Change of plans! Originally I just planned to present a mix of Victor's drawings about different countries between ancient time and now, but this will have to wait. When I posted this last drawing, I tried to think of some brief explanation about these guys, so my non-Russian readers knew what I was talking about, and I recalled a famous painting by Victor (!) Vasnetsov from 1898, and then I suddenly remembered one more depiction of bogatyrs that Victor drew when he was 21. So I decided that three images about bogatyrs deserve a separate post.

"Victor Vasnetzov, Bogatyrs"

"Виктор Васнецов, Богатыри"

I actually remember when and how Victor drew his version of this classic painting. At that time he made up images for all his friends and used them to tell stories about their past and current adventures. Victor himself is on the right. He explained that he'd chosen the image of Napoleon for himself because of his height and habits of a "little tyrant."

42. Through Eras and Continents: Ancient Times

For this post, or rather a series of posts (I am planning 2 - does it make it a series?), it may be helpful to provide some background information about the artist.

Victor's first degree was in Geology, since from his early age he was dreaming about traveling the world, exploring new places and digging something out. His favorite books, at least in his youth, as I remember it, were the diaries of Roald Amundsen and Thor Heyerdahl, and his favorite magazine for many years has been "Around the World." Being born in the USSR doesn't exactly help implementing your dreams, especially if they involve freedom to travel (including financial freedom). So for a big part, Victor had to satisfy this passion through his art.

I selected several of his old drawings about different worlds - both in terms of times and places. It makes sense to organize them in chronological order (although I don't guarantee scientific precision...).

"Cenozoi"

"Ксенозой"

The following drawing should, probably, be the last one in the series, but it fits much better right here. Besides, I originally saw these two at the same time, so they seem inseparable to me.

 

"Technozoi"

"Технозой"

I am not sure why the next drawing falls into this topic at all, and what era and what continent it is about. All I can tell it is not about "here and now."

 

"The Dream of a Roman Legionary"

"Сон Легионера"

Below is Victor's take on a Bible's story about Salome, a daughter of Herod Antipas, who requested the head of John the Baptist as an award for her beautiful dance. I am not sure that is how it all happened in the 1st century... Actually, I was also planning to make a post on gastronomical topic and thought that this might be one of the entries, but than decided against it.

"Salome"

"Саломея"

 

 To be continued..