“It is about time” is an ongoing visual project about the human relationship with time in a culture of speed. An illustrated praise for slowing down life’s pace and an invitation to practice meditation.
Now, for the few humans out there that still have the time and patience to read, a deeper explanation follows:
This visual project is inspired by personal meditation experiences. And the thing is, when you try to explain these with words, you can’t. You can’t simply because many of the insights that naturally arise from them occur at the level of direct experience, often in a state of “no mind”. So useless can words be that Zen teaching uses Koans (short questions without solution that purposely confuse the rational mind) to briefly stop our thought process and allow insight into the deeper nature of the mind.
One day, shortly after a 10-day Meditation course, the sand clock character popped into my head. And for a visual metaphor, it seemed a fairly good way to translate certain things I had experienced. I wondered then if images could be better than words to inspire the practice of Meditation, given they do not rely so much on rational thinking. After all, even the best book about Meditation can end up filling your mind with more words and thoughts. Ouch!
As the project evolved, the characters were used to reflect on the increasing speed and conflict of the human world: I believe this speed gives evidence of the anxiety and restlessness of all our minds combined. And the ongoing conflicts and irrational polarization of human societies are direct psychological projections of our inner collective confusion.
As it happens with words, probably the best an image can do is point at something. Maybe the care and attention that goes into the making of these artworks whispers something to you about the truths they are inspired by, and you consider giving Meditation a try.
Above all, I can say that I've made this project slowly, without stress, with honesty and good intention, to the best of my capacity.
May all beings be present.
The visual world of “It is about time” makes use of the widely known sand clock to question our perception of time at the level of the mind. The sand in the head represents our thoughts about the future. The sand in the body represents our thoughts about the past. And the falling distance of sand between them represents the fleeting present moment, as it happens. When the mind’s attention is constantly occupied with interpretations of the past and projections of the future, we can’t be fully present. Therefore the sand falls restless and unorganized. The attention focused on the present moment is represented by the wave-spectrum colored sand.
The sustained attention on the present leads the mind to slowly emptying itself of thoughts: transparency, clarity of mind. From this emptiness, the peaceful nature of the mind effortlessly arises, and the capacity to observe the flow of present sensations simply occurs.
The top and bottom caps come to represent our preconception about the ultimate beginning and end of things, including the clear delimitations of the self. In deep meditation states, the direct experience of the changing nature of phenomena in the framework of the body can challenge these preconceptions: We can awaken a deep sense of interconnection and involvement with all that surrounds us, that becomes indivisible from a deep sense of love and kindness that tunes in from within. This insight is represented visually in the characters without top and bottom caps, open, free flowing in the present moment, connected with the outside.
The flower represents a natural “object” to focus the mind’s attention upon. In Meditation, “objects” are tools to train and sharpen our attention. These “objects” can potentially be anything, internal or external. But of them all, breathing might be the simplest and most elegant one. Both because we carry it with us every moment of our lives, and because its flow, calmed or hastened, gives insight into the state of our minds. The choice of the flower “object” is borrowed from the Zen flower sermon tale, in which Buddha, expected to explain the Technique to an audience, held up a white flower and remained silent. As the tale goes, nobody understood, but one, who smiled.
No Artificial Intelligence has been used whatsoever in the creation of the illustrations. All the artwork vector curves have a very high level of detail and can be scaled up indefinitely. You can see some examples here:
The creation process is as follows: Once an idea arises I start drawing it on paper, looking for the best composition that will make all the layers of its meaning visible. All the artwork is then carefully created in flat 2D vector, based on those drawings. The 3D look is achieved by outlining the front view of a 2D element, to later skew it to a certain angle. Despite aiming for a 3D overall coherence, small exceptions are made to favor 2D composition over what would be perfect geometry.
Once the body proportions of a character feel right, I move into color. The parts are broken down and colored with layers of semi-transparent gradients that combined give a sense of shape and roundness. Lastly, sand is added trying to understand how it would flow within the glass shape, again favoring composition over realism.
All characters and elements, with two minor exceptions, are created in the same dimetric projection of 160°. This angle makes the observer look at this world from above, without detaching too much from it. The common dimetric angle creates a graphic environment in which all the characters can be brought together to acquire different meanings in relation to each other.
Drawing these characters has become a kind of meditation for me and I hope you can feel the time, attention and love that went into making them.
A Failing Beautiful project.
Concept, writing and artwork by Nacho Guijarro.
Typography by Jessica Hische.
It is about time · Failing Beautiful Studio
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