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Yin Yang, so what is it?

Yin Yang, so what is it?

Balance or harmony, call it what you might but to me Yin Yang means black vs. white, day vs. night, good vs. evil and so on…... I have a tattoo that includes it because I see it as an essential part of my life to have that necessary balance between the two forces and I designed my tattoo to speak of things that are important to me.

 So what is Yin Yang? It comes from Chinese culture and represents the two opposite principles in nature. Yin (The white section.) characterises the feminine or negative nature of things and yang (The black portion.) stands for the masculine or positive side. Yin and yang are in pairs, such as the moon and the sun, female and male, dark and bright, cold and hot, passive and active, etc. The opposing dots of colour, or eyes as some see them as are the balancing force in that in all good or bad things there is a little of the opposite to make things less perfect.

Yin and yang are considered opposite in nature, but they are also part of nature, they rely on each other, and they can't exist without each other. The balance of yin and yang is important. If yin is stronger, yang will be weaker, and vice versa. Yin and yang can interchange under certain conditions so they are usually not yin and yang alone. In other words, yin can contain certain part of yang and yang can have some component of yin. It is believed that yin-yang exists in everything.

For an artist it is important to get a good balance in their lives as well as their art, it can be easy to become lazy in your art and also to procrastinate over things, especially if you are not in the right frame of mind or mood to create. Non creative types think that its an easy task to just pick up your brush and paint 8 hours a day 5 days a week, just like so called normal jobs, but we all know that isn’t the case. What it boils down to is being more organised and professional and putting systems in place to make sure you utilise your time well. If you’re not in the mood to paint, then gesso some canvas’s, or take a field trip to photograph new subjects for some artwork. There’s things like book-keeping that may need to be done or tidy your studio. Often when doing these things it makes you inspired to do some artwork so it’s a win win situation.

Posted: Sunday 14 March 2010

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