Greatness

Artwork Finished Projects
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[SUB]I thought it would be fun to create an image to go along with a poem I wrote a few months ago, and here is the result. The poem is all about how it can be such an easy thing to live for greatness and fame, but realizing that goodness and love is a better thing to live for than greatness. As I thought about it, really the beauty of goodness is that anyone can be good and even such a small thing like giving someone a glass of water on a hot day can mean so much. So I tried to put that into an image; hopefully it conveys that well. If you would like to see more about the poem, you can visit this link: http://artoflight99.deviantart.com/art/Greatness-532543451e[/SUB]
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The image was made with Blender, Gimp, and Krita. If anyone would like to know how I did something, I would be happy to
share.

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Greatness_Final_with words_signed_smaller.jpg2300×1236 601 KB

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And here is the render without the words

Greatness_image_Balanced_signed.jpg2300×1533 425 KB

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NICE!!!

Shaun

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I barely managed to restrain myself when I saw “Singularity” posted here, where a bunch of balls are used as a sad excuse to shove a page of unsollicited religious applesauce down my throat.
And within a day someone else feels the need to express his opinion about the world on this ART-site.
Granted, the blend itself deserves to be seen and with the second post “without words” the message is adequately conveyed.
Good art speaks for itself and can do without a political and moralising text that even manages to badmouth Van Gogh and Dali!
Beneath the thin superficial “beauty of goodness” layer in the intro lies a political message of hate for evil murderous leftist.
You jump from giving a glass of water on a hot day to awful people like Mao and Stalin, but didn’t Hitler do enough to be in your shitlist? Or is the right side the right side?
Che is a hero, no question, no explanation should be needed.
And Napoleon (sure he was also imperialistic) whose defeat was sadly celebrated this year introduced modern legislature with more equality and rights.Separation of church and state, right to divorce, right of ownership (doing away with the feudal right),etc…
Waterloo kept Europe and humanity in the horrible Ancien Regime system. It took another century and lots of struggle and death to gain these rights everyone now takes for granted.
Some of these rights are not popular, even today, in certain religious and right wing circles.Does that maybe earn Naoleon a place in your poem instead of Adolf?

About Marx: Look at the state of the world today (corporatism,ruthless government of banks, stock crisis, housing crisis) and then see what he wrote. He pretty much predicted all this in detail.

All this seems like a pile of “bad leftist people” thrown together in a caricatural simplistic way.

So, that are my remarks on the people you mentioned.

Here’s another cheesy “poetic” line: “Change the world, start with yourself”
You go all over the place from Cuba to Europe to China…
Not one word about the country you live in? Who managed not to be at war for a total of 21 years since 1776?
Strange!
Or are these all wars for “goodness”?

To anyone else venting their opinions here (religious or political): an artists site is probably not the most apropriate place for this.
I will be forced to write an essay in reply, I would prefer not to do this but I just can’t help myself.
These subjects can be debated untill the end of times and this beautiful site will sadly be littered with anything but art comments.

PS: I don’t hate any country, I hate all countries (governments) equally. I also hate all politicians equally (left and right).
I do care a lot about all the people of the world. No matter how they try to divide us with politics or patriotism.

Peace and love to all.

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Talking about forcing worldviews down other people’s throats :rolleyes:

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I come here for blender, if you don’t like critique on misplaced religious ballshit or other totally unrelated crap, too bad.
Try using valid arguments if you have an opinion, if not shut up.

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I’m so sorry you took it as just another rant against leftists; I really didn’t mean it to be that way. They were just the only ones I could think of at the time that people look up to so much, yet did such awful things, and I just thought maybe we shouldn’t be looking up to them anymore. There definitely are many others as well though. And yes, I probably could have included Hitler, but no one ever thinks of him as a great man, or at least no one I’ve ever known.

I added Van Gogh, Dali and people who are famous for things like writing songs, and really acting as well, because people want to be great like they are, but I’m saying why? Just because someone is looked up to as being great doesn’t mean you should want to be like them. Isn’t it better to want to be like people who are good and have love like Martin Luther King, Jr., for instance? I’m sure there are many others as well from around the world, but I don’t know very much of the detailed history from other nations.

And no, I don’t hate them, I really more feel sorry for them for what they became, but it’s why being good to others and loving them is such an important thing because people like Mao and Stalin and Hitler are the fruit of not being good anymore and no one giving a glass of water on a hot day. If Stalin and Mao had loved the people around them, they would not have purposely let a total of 108 million people die while they lived like kings. If Napolean had had love instead of living for his own greatness, he wouldn’t have tried to conquer the world and bring so much pain to so many. If Karl Marx had loved his family, he would have worked hard and done everything he could for them, instead of letting everyone else keep his family from starving to death. And Che, even though he was trying to overthrow a tyrannical government, according to his own writings and this website (http://cubaarchive.org/home/images/stories/che-guevara_interior-pages_en_final.pdf) and I’m sure others as well, I don’t think he actually had that much love either.
This was really the point of the image and why I kept the poem with the image because it’s the story of why giving a glass of water on a hot day matters so much. When people stop loving each other and love themselves more by living for their own greatness, the world gets very evil.

It will probably sound a bit cliche’, but to give a little more back story to the poem, it came about at a time a couple months ago when I literally thought that I was going to die very soon and I started thinking about what have I been living for all these years, just to be remembered for an image I had made? I saw the sacrifice of my family and the things they did for me that even enabled me to do the things I’ve done, which is where that line came from, “the greatest things in my own life have come, not when someone was great, but when someone was good, and chose to love me instead of themselves,” and I decided that I wanted to be good more than I wanted to be great.

Anyway, I’m really sorry that it got misconstrued into some kind of rightest propaganda. I actually have problems with both the right and the left. And even more, thank you! You’ve actually really helped me put into words some things I’ve been thinking about for a while. Next time I’ll have to remember to include people from both the right and the left!

@Speed7 - Thanks! I’m really glad you like it!

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First, I like the render, Just from a point of written expression I would make the poetry shorter that goes with it, No more then a few sentences and make them count.

Blender is a tool, And reading here

I’ve seen scientists use it to express the concepts in their mind in a way more could understand
I’ve seen educators use it as a tool to begin to reach their students
I’ve seen many many people refining their technical skills of artistic expression
And on occasion I’ve seen people begin to tackle composition and cinematography
And on rare occasion I see someone use it to express feeling and moral/pragmatic choices.
But one use of art is it expresses for the world to see some point to bring into public debate.
Popular movies do this, And in my opinion abuse this fairly often,

But as for morals, Whenever you see a conflict it is seldom about right vs wrong. It is normally about right vs right with both sides having their faults, their breaks in empathy and excesses . And if you ever look at a conflict and you can not see how both sides are right, You will have taken the first steps to finding your own biases.

And what makes compassion such a wonderful thing is even though very often it does not cost much, It still costs.
To give a homeless person a drink of water, You run some risks yes, And physical risks are the least of those. After all if you have compassion enough to give them water, Would you give them a room for the night, A meal? A ride down the road? where does it end? Could you say no if they asked for more then you could safely afford? And when you do such an act you extend not only yourself but those to whom your life is interwoven with. And a sad truth in this world is that many people are one missed paycheck away from being homeless anyway.
And I think most people find it easier to avoid this conflict all together, that Don’t make them bad, They are taking care of themselves first. It might make them callous, apathetic, And for those who need to assign blame to another to justify any decision they make it might make them judgmental and vindictive.

After all, If someone disagree’s with you. It feels good to know they are doing that due to some fault in their personalty. And if their at fault well…that justifies anything one may wish to do.

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Hi, thanks for your reply.

About the Cuba pdf: Sources from Washington are probably the most biased you can find on this subject.
It’s hard to find a completely objective source, so you must research a lot of them if it’s a subject you want to write about on a public (art)forum. The source and his prospective are important in political or historical matters.
Since what you write about literally is a matter of life and death for some people it invoques emotional reactions, certainly in my case. Your answer explains your good intentions and I certainly think they are genuine. However using loaded names from history to express the emotion of compassion is a mistake I think.
Thank you for taking the time to reply and not overreacting (the way I did maybe).There’s no need to apologise to me, you explained your thoughts more clearly in your answer and that’s enough for me.
I hope you’re in good health now and receive compassion back the way you give it.
Goodbye and farewell from me.
(since I very much expect to be kicked off BA due to the Singularity thread.)

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All things considered I don’t think you need to worry about that cart (although I could be wrong). But why let loose like that in the first place? Are you looking forward to the result? Or is it just a lose of self control? And yea this might not be the place to ask them, And you by no means owe me an answer, But if your behavior is such that you fear the results. Its time to sit down, ask some sucky questions and do something about it.

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I must completely agree with cart and it is good that there are people with enough courage to speak up.
Karl Marx was very poor indeed, he never had much money. His richness lies in his mind, not in his wallet. So does being poor mean that someone cannot be great or good? If so, the number of bad people are growing rapidly.
I also was very surprised to read van Gogh here as well. Cutting off your ear might not be the smartest thing possible, but it also is no crime against someone else.

On the other hand we have the warmongers of the US regime, who are waging war against other countries for many decades now, their reasons being lies like “Weapons of Mass Destruction” and the likes, who kill people in the millions, build concentration camps like Guantanama and Abu Ghraib and destroy one country after the other. Does having their colonies give them the “Nobel Peace Prize” outweigh their war crimes?
Well, you got the point, your examples are more than surprising for such a message.

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Thank you Estajxo,
this matter is solved to me (and in a rather positive way).
You have the courage not to run with the group.
I hope they give me a cell next to yours in Guantanamo.
Both for the crime of different opinion.

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I feel it’s OK for the author to express his ideas in whatever form unless they are hateful in which case the author still has the right to express his ideas but may be denied said right in places like this forum … gasp lol
In this case I don’t see anything wrong and wouldn’t say it’s a case of shoving stuff down throats. :slight_smile:

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@ArtOfLight - hi mate, i shared this on my twitter account the other day and you’re link has been shared on some guys blog thing called 3d news. just thought i would share the link to you. http://paper.li/worellana/1354223297?edition_id=7edd1390-2fb2-11e5-8972-0cc47a0d1609

Clicking on the word greatness brings you to this thread :slight_smile:

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Phew, this thread sure has been a whole lot longer than I thought it would be

joseph raccoon - Thanks for the critique! It does seem like keeping things simple usually has more of an impact. I think I would actually agree with you quite a bit on some of the other things you said as well. I’ve heard quite a few stories of people that seem to take care for everyone but their family, and the consequences of that are pretty awful as well. I think in a weird sort of way, one actually can love the people around them by taking care of themselves, because it means someone else doesn’t have to take care of you. Also, if I were to give everything I had to someone else, I would have nothing and then someone else would have to give everything they had to me, etc. etc. and it just wouldn’t work. That’s why I tried not to make it about someone who was homeless as much, but more how the love that is in the heart in those small acts of kindness and goodness effect such big things as entire nations. I guess the way I see it is whenever I have done an awful thing to someone, it seems like it usually comes out of a lack of love or compassion for them.
I would also agree that we definitely could all do with more humility, myself very much included. Sometimes I find it’s hard to admit that I was wrong; I’ve no idea why this is but it definitely happens sometimes.

Estajxo - Be sure to read my second post. I didn’t add Van Gogh because of what he did to others, but who he was as a person.

It was not bad that Karl Marx was poor, it was bad that he chose to write and philosophize instead of taking care of his family, when he could have taken care of his family and wrote on the side. Even just cooking and taking care of the house so his wife could work would have made a huge difference. You may like his philosophy, but is that really who you want to model your life after? Imagine if everyone lived that way, the world would be far worse than it is now.

Also, this image wasn’t about nations, but about people, and more about just asking the question of who should we want to become and model our own lives after? Should we look up to people for their greatness and fame or for the goodness they lived their lives with? I just find it to be such an amazing thought that if all the people that I mentioned, as well as all the people I forgot about, had loved instead of hated with the same love it takes to give a glass of water on a hot day, history would have been completely different. And if you think about it, Karl Marx probably would have never even felt the need to write his book if the ones who had money had had love for the ones who didn’t. This is really just my own personal opinion and I don’t expect anyone else to believe it as well, but it seems like love should be looked at as what is truly great, not the things we achieve in life.

cart - Thanks! I am doing a bit better now.

And I actually am sorry now that I did name specific people, it really seems to have detracted a lot from the heart of what the image is about. I guess that’s life though, you learn new things and hope to do better the next time.

With Che, I probably shouldn’t have grouped him with Stalin, Mao, and Napolean and I would agree with you that it’s important to get both sides of the story (hopefully unbiased), but I was actually more going according to his own writings. I’ve just never in my entire life known a loving person who writes things like, "will bathe my weapon in blood and, mad with fury, will slit the throat of any enemy that falls into my hands. …I feel my nostrils dilated, tasting the acrid smell of gunpowder and blood, of dead enemy, " or this, “Here, in the Cuban jungle, alive and thirsting for blood, I write to you these inflamed lines inspired by Martí.” It just seems like he did things more out of hatred for anyone he saw as an oppressor instead of out of love for the ones being oppressed. And please don’t get mad at me for saying this, I’m not at all trying to compare him to Hitler, but once you start hating people instead of loving them, it’s very easy to do the things Hitler, and so many others who hated people, have done. You just kind of become what you hated so much in the first place. I guess it just seems like if we choose to hate people, we don’t really have any grounding for being against others who have hated people because aren’t we just the same in the end? That is really one of the reasons why, I think at least, love is such an important thing to have. He might not have actually said those things, I don’t know the language he wrote them in to read it myself, and granted, they are taken out of context, but at face value at least, it does appear that he did.

Toshiro - Thank you for that, it really wasn’t my intention to appear hateful.

Jamie B - Wow! That’s pretty amazing to me. Thanks for letting me know.

Well, thanks to everyone who posted, I’ve really learned quite a bit from this experience. I guess this post is a whole bigger than I thought it would be too:)

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@ArtOfLight - haha no worries mate. I like the piece of work a lot. And though the message in you’re poem seemed to of struck a sour chord with some people, i for one enjoyed it :smiley:

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Jamie B - Thanks! I’m really glad you enjoyed it. That fossil image you made is really cool. It can be tough to get good details so up close but you really did a good job.

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@ArtOfLight - Thank you :smiley: