Stosh

I don't see question marks, does that mean we are in agreement? Or are you looking to reconcile another interp by the first, ? OK, assuming you mean that, I say, The 'method of no use' is to try bring about virtue by trying to define it , create just the virtuous affirmative aspect of the polemic. The artists , by being great, make folk art, relatively diminished , so the sum total of virtue , in this case beauty valuation , remains the same, and so it is a method of no use. ( zero sum) Sociologically , if you were to establish many unnecessary rules in your kingdom , you'd end up making all your citizens into criminals and bringing on either headache if you try to enforce it all, or failure if you define these crimes and dont enforce them.

IMO - they adhered to artificial virtues, breaking with the daoist principles , and therefore failed to uphold true virtue.

Its logical, I like its mendacity , is there a question about this passage that needs more explaining?

Subject to creative exploration , the dragon motif currently , is considered associated with water and good luck rather than an embodiment of evil . Heres my versions.

I like that plan, begin where we can agree

I agree Nungali with what you, and Gendao, are saying, yep mine is trying to use common motif. I just cant locate a nice consecutively dated series of early images before appx 1000 BC , which would over time evolve from something identifiable. To me it looks like the fengshan bird ,or pig became stylized apollo fetish embro, and was reborn into the snakey one from there. ... Someone Must ! have collated that somewhere, just like you can trace trends in ceramic design. ......... Which might make the most enduring part ,the frill,or mane, evolved from a birds crest!

Thanks, yes, its mostly just the liquify filter and shoving the pixels of a fish around , I like the way it looks, but its not so much an example of personal vision .. it just worked out like that. Im still trying to produce a more classic dragon.. its tougher than I expected it would be.

That's as good as any choice , and better n some What the hell is wrong with the text , I cant even fix an apostrophe without deleting the following words !

What am I supposed to gather from that or are you going to be like Nungali and just have me guess.

Work is slow today , and so I am googling around to find out what an old dragon used to look like , Im finding apollo fetishes which could be pretty much anything,but found one described as a hog head dragon from Honshan dynasty that had hoofed feet , and its a figure that would morph into those other ones that look like embryos and get called dragons(for lack of any idea what else to call them I suppose ) I think it would be fair to say that nothing that actually looked like a dragon existed much before 1000 BC , they are other creatures morphed into nondescript blobs , which get called dragon to raise sales value. I cant be exact on the date yet , please show me the recognizable dragon that goes back to Hongshan and which looks enough like a crocodile , that one should reasonably say they are related. The point of contention , I am thinking, is that one can see from some proof provided that the early origin of what are known as dragons now , has been and still is what we call crocodiles. My claim that they are chimeras , similarly has an issue in that they have no original form from which the image has descended . It was originally an undifferentiated blob, which has, over time become attributed with body parts of various creatures , various meaning or associations.

LOL Thats IT ! perfect

I dont know that this symbol suggests .. Anything in particular , it could be some kind of bug , catfish, or a kangaroo ,, it just isnt showing clearly any feature clearly associated with a Chinese Dragon. Drawing mine , it strikes me that the attempt starts to be making your dragon , not look much like something else. Mines a little feline. What kind of it ends up being is a chimera ,, whether you intend it to or not. If the dragon is a composite of many water creatures , one of those could be a crocodile , but you gotta see that other traits are mixed in that crocodiles just dont have , like the whiskers Gendao mentioned. I'm wondering though if Old Chinese dragons even breathe fire , or whether they are exhaling clouds ,, spun as smoke n fire in western lore.

The 'fur' is due to using the smudge controls in photoshop with one of the assorted brushes attributable. Other parts were hand-(mouse) painted , layered on from other photos I took. It was time consuming , for various reasons, like , I only had one side view of foot (from a snail kite) and had to reproduce that into the other three.

Wouldnt your megalania qualify as an Aussie dragon?......... Y'all really do seem to have the most dangerous wildlife.

nah

I dont do much magical critter stuff , but this is the griffin I did, which began as a cow.

Problem is delicacy and firing, I had plans years ago to fire this hippo head raised on a plate with an artistic waterhole glaze . They closed the studio an ear broke off and I just havent gotten back into any of that. I might add this wasnt the extent of my projects, most of the students in the class make ashtray sized things . At home I made coil pots which were about a foot tall but had to have them fire in their kiln , they fired all the tiny stuff and postponed mine until they decided to just end. I took my best piece to a school where the instructor was running a kiln and put it in there but when the stuff was collectively fired my piece disappeared since I wasn't there to take it back. I never got to see it finished, other things I just took some pix of and got rid of them , but that one I think would've been pretty nice , because after drying it to green ware I shaved it down , thin and smooth and gave it a bold off set glaze.

Yessir , you got it right. I did a digital griffin a long time ago, came out pretty good , I was going to apply the same photoshop techniques , for the dragon , ,, it didnt flow this time. Maybe I just need a clearer vision of what I am trying to put forth .. but paper and pencil, would have been a relief, better yet , clay, or the plaster you suggested , so my hands can do the three dimensional work my brain cant handle well.

Yeah, I agree, Im thinking this must indeed be an important message or consideration that one needs to infer in order to be making sense of the work. As I figured it , say you were a grandfather , and you wanted to pass down good stuff to your descendants , for many ages to come,, well you cant just tell everybody the same thing,, some kind of rigid rule that everyone has to follow , it wouldn't be appropriate advice for many. So the advice needs to be somewhat universal , and fit each of them kids for you to have done right by em. The each will have their own soul or te or whatever , and being ' true to thine self ' has always been sound advice, wise in any age.

He He he, yeah , that would be the slick thing. It got me thinking though, back in the old days , if you went bird watching, you took a pair of binoculars , decided what you think you just saw, and that was the end of it , now with digital , I can take a picture home to fuss with, then go to the books to check myself , and still not be sure because the books don't thoroughly cover everything, and then you have to keep in mind that anyone else is going to say your conclusion was wrong because they aren't weighing the info as you did.

My dragon pic needs more time, it isnt coming along , last one looks like a balrog. I want to go back to simpler times ,technology makes me angry.

True, but those arent the ancestors of birds, flight evolved in different lines at several times, feathers pre-date bird wings.... according to more recent conclusions, youre about twenty years behind.

I cant help the fact that people use knowledge for their own purposes, nor that people harbor race issues. I was told that the Nazis used Darwin's work as well, and that Neitzsche was also was suborned as Nazi ideology. To be frank I am not sure Aryan actually was anything real , nor were early Caucasians , both fair haired and blue eyed, I'm thinking the norm was actually dark haired and blue eyed. ( European dragons have bat-like wings , if they have them , bird wings have always been feathered)

Graceful of you to do so.

Ontogeny Recapitulates Phylogeny Whichever this one is, is the one I was meaning - that the thing looks like an embryo , even a human one , since they all look creepy.