More Snow Jobs [via Alex Cord]

Whale Hides Under Boat; Tourists Have No Idea

In a well-timed photo, a southern right whale swims beneath a whale-watching vessel off the coast of the Valdes Peninsula.

Sometimes you watch the whale, and other times, the whale watches you.

Whale-watchers in Argentina recently learned that firsthand when a whale hid under their boat. Fortunately, photographer Justin Hofman was in the water at the time and managed to capture the incredible moment.

Snow Job [via Alex Cord]

The annual Snow Sculpture contest in Breckenridge, Colorado, attracts contestants from all over the world

The Evolutionary Case for Great Fiction [via Phil Argento]

Might reading literature help with species survival? 

 

 

Jennifer Vanderbes  

 

Viktor M. Vasnetsov

 

 Picture this: it’s 45,000 years ago and a small Pleistocene clan is gathered by a campfire. The night is bone cold and black and someone—let’s call him Ernest—begins telling a story.

Lips waxy with boar grease, Ernest boasts of his morning hunt. He details the wind in the grass, the thick clouds overhead, the long plaintive wail of the boar as his spear swiftly entered its heart.
The clan is riveted. 
  
Among them sits a moody, brilliant devotee of campfire stories. Every now and then she pipes up to praise or decimate a tale. Tonight she says, “Excellent work. Unsurpassed.” Ernest breathes a sigh of relief.

Let’s call the girl Michiko.

Why Storytellers Lie

Now, through the forest and beyond the ridge sits another clan, hovering beside another fire. At the center of this group, John relates his recent close call with a water buffalo. His recollection fuzzy, the account falls flat. Still, clan members pat him on the back (“G’night Johnny boy!”) and think nothing of his lackluster tale until the next morning John’s brother is killed by the very same water buffalo.    

But let’s leave this clan behind.  They’re of scant concern because, in the end, they were dead by the Holocene.

The first band, however, thrived. Over thousands of generations, Ernest’s descendants, with the help of Michiko’s critically astute great-great-great-great-grandchildren, evolved, to not only relate but to invent great tales.

What, you ask, does the Pleistocene have to do with storytelling? More importantly, what was the Pleistocene?

Let’s crunch some numbers:  What we generally consider “ancient” time—Jesus of Nazareth and Julius Caesar time—was only about 100 generations ago. Throughout the 1.8 million-year cycle of Ice Ages called the Pleistocene, however, an estimated 85,000 generations of our ancestors lived, loved, lost, and, well, learned to tell tales. (Fossil evidence suggests that the vocal capacity for speech dates back over a million years, and it’s assumed that Cro-Magnons, who emerged 20,000 generations ago, used language of some sort.) These people were our deerskin-wearing, spear-wielding hominid protoselves. And their actions and preferences over thousands of generations, during dramatically unstable climates (a volatility conducive to evolutionary change) helped shape us. Because a variant that produces 1% more offspring than its alternative, it has been posited, can enter 99.9% of the population in just 4000 generations.

So the question is: Can storytelling increase offspring?

Charles Darwin proposed two theories of evolution: natural selection and sexual selection.  To affect species-wide change, a trait essentially has to help you live or get laid.

Let’s look first at survival: Among the many things that set humans apart from other animals is our capacity for counterfactual thinking. At its most basic level, this means we can hypothesize what might happen if we run out of milk; in its most elaborate form—we get War and Peace. Stories, then, are complex counterfactual explorations of possible outcomes: What would happen if I killed my landlady? What would happen if I had an affair with Count Vronsky? How do I avoid a water buffalo? According to Denis Dutton, these “low-cost, low-risk” surrogate experiences build up our knowledge stores and help us adapt to new situations. (“Mirror neuron” research indicates that our brains process lived and read experiences almost identically.)  A good “cautionary tale," for example, might help us avert disaster. Stories can also provide useful historical, scientific, cultural and geographical information. Bruce Chatwin’s Songlines illustrates this on two tiers: In armchair-travel fashion, the book acquaints readers with the Australian Outback, while simultaneously describing how Aboriginals sang stories walking at a specific pace so that geographical markers within the story would guide their journey.

This means our choice of which stories to consume is more crucial than ever. They need to be as useful as lived experience, or more so, or we’re putting ourselves at a disadvantage.

 

In addition to travelogues, stories also offer nuanced thought maps. An imaginative foray into another person’s mind can foster both empathy and self-awareness. This heightened emotional intelligence might, in turn, prove useful when forming friendships, sniffing out duplicity, or partaking in the elaborate psychological dance of courtship ... which brings us back to the second Darwinian evolutionary imperative: Getting laid.

In terms of sexual advantages, a tale well told can undoubtedly up the storyteller’s charm factor.  Tales aren’t bland renderings of narrative events; they are, at their best, colorful, brilliant, and poetically polished.   They get gussied up.  And when storytellers use ornament and plumage to draw attention to their tales they inevitably draw eyes themselves.  (Think: author photos, author profiles, literary performances, awards – or, 45,000 years ago, the rapt gaze of the Pleistocene clan.) Literary peacockery benefits the audience as well. When we read books, we enhance our vocabulary. We glean information about particle physics or virtual reality or Australian Aborigines that make us better conversationalists. We hone our metaphors, refine our wit.  From the elaborate plumage of the story the reader, too, makes off with a few feathers. 

But if storytelling gives us an evolutionary edge, does the quality of the story matter? Is there a greater value, so to speak, in one form of storytelling over another? With visual art, the commodification is clear: Inheriting a Matisse gives you a financial leg up over someone inheriting a comic cat poster.  Setting aside the rare book business, though, books are not objects. They are experiences.

Does having one experience have more value than another?

If it increases your offspring by only 1%—yes.

The soaring popularity of romance novels, spy thrillers, apocalyptic zombie tales, and murder mysteries reflect, in many ways, our Pleistocene narrative appetites; their subjects are sex and survival. But to help you actually have sex and survive, it makes sense that only the the best-written and well-rendered tales would help ensure a long line of descendants.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistic’s American Time Use Survey, the average American spends almost 20% of his or her waking life watching television.  Add to that movies, gaming, books and magazines (reading alone consumed less than 3% of the waking hours of those surveyed), and you can postulate that almost a quarter of our waking lives are spent in imagined worlds.

Evolutionarily, that number is off the charts.  Thanks to Gutenberg and the inventions of film and television, we immerse ourselves in more narratives than our ancestors could have imagined, which means we’re cutting back, along the way, on real-life experience.

This means our choice of which stories to consume is more crucial than ever. They need to be as useful as lived experience, or more so, or we’re putting ourselves at a disadvantage.

Back in the Pleistocene, you might not have had an Ernest in your clan. You might have been at the mercy of whatever dull tale John would tell, or the improbable yarn your sister Kayla would spin.  Today we can pick up the books of the most dazzling, intelligent storytellers in the world.  From all time.  We can tune into the primetime masterpieces of the Golden Age of television. And if we can soak up their wisdom, and make ourselves a little bit smarter, we might just all make it to the next Ice Age.

Reposted from The Atlantic

Change Your Words, Change Your Life [via Tom DeCoursey]

The Changing American Family [via Rosemary Atchity]

American households have never been more diverse, more surprising, more baffling. In this special issue of Science Times, NATALIE ANGIER takes stock of our changing definition of family.

Harini Indrakrishnan, a high school senior, was born in the United States. Her parents, from Sri Lanka, became American citizens a decade ago.David Walter Banks for The New York Times

By NATALIE ANGIER

CHELSEA, MICH. — Kristi and Michael Burns have a lot in common. They love crossword puzzles, football, going to museums and reading five or six books at a time. They describe themselves as mild-mannered introverts who suffer from an array of chronic medical problems. The two share similar marital résumés, too. On their wedding day in 2011, the groom was 43 years old and the bride 39, yet it was marriage No. 3 for both. 

Today, their blended family is a sprawling, sometimes uneasy ensemble of two sharp-eyed sons from her two previous husbands, a daughter and son from his second marriage, ex-spouses of varying degrees of involvement, the partners of ex-spouses, the bemused in-laws and a kitten named Agnes that likes to sleep on computer keyboards. 

If the Burnses seem atypical as an American nuclear family, how about the Schulte-Waysers, a merry band of two married dads, six kids and two dogs? Or the Indrakrishnans, a successful immigrant couple in Atlanta whose teenage daughter divides her time between prosaic homework and the precision footwork of ancient Hindu dance; the Glusacs of Los Angeles, with their two nearly grown children and their litany of middle-class challenges that seem like minor sagas; Ana Perez and Julian Hill of Harlem, unmarried and just getting by, but with Warren Buffett-size dreams for their three young children; and the alarming number of families with incarcerated parents, a sorry byproduct of America’s status as the world’s leading jailer. 

The typical American family, if it ever lived anywhere but on Norman Rockwell’s Thanksgiving canvas, has become as multilayered and full of surprises as a holiday turducken — the all-American seasonal portmanteau of deboned turkey, duck and chicken. 

Researchers who study the structure and evolution of the American family express unsullied astonishment at how rapidly the family has changed in recent years, the transformations often exceeding or capsizing those same experts’ predictions of just a few journal articles ago. 

Kristi and Michael Burns, whose marriage was the third for each, with three of their four children at home in Chelsea, Mich. All are from previous relationships.Fabrizio Costantini for The New York Times

“This churning, this turnover in our intimate partnerships is creating complex families on a scale we’ve not seen before,” said Andrew J. Cherlin, a professor of public policy at Johns Hopkins University. “It’s a mistake to think this is the endpoint of enormous change. We are still very much in the midst of it.” 

Yet for all the restless shape-shifting of the American family, researchers who comb through census, survey and historical data and conduct field studies of ordinary home life have identified a number of key emerging themes. 

Families, they say, are becoming more socially egalitarian over all, even as economic disparities widen. Families are more ethnically, racially, religiously and stylistically diverse than half a generation ago — than even half a year ago. 

In increasing numbers, blacks marry whites, atheists marry Baptists, men marry men and women women, Democrats marry Republicans and start talk shows. Good friends join forces as part of the “voluntary kin” movement, sharing medical directives, wills, even adopting one another legally.

Single people live alone and proudly consider themselves families of one — more generous and civic-minded than so-called “greedy marrieds.” 

“There are really good studies showing that single people are more likely than married couples to be in touch with friends, neighbors, siblings and parents,” said Bella DePaulo, author of “Singled Out” and a visiting professor of psychology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. 

But that doesn’t mean they’ll be single forever. “There are not just more types of families and living arrangements than there used to be,” said Stephanie Coontz, author of the coming book “Intimate Revolutions,” and a social historian at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wash. “Most people will move through several different types over the course of their lives.” 

At the same time, the old-fashioned family plan of stably married parents residing with their children remains a source of considerable power in America — but one that is increasingly seen as out of reach to all but the educated elite. 

“We’re seeing a class divide not only between the haves and the have-nots, but between the I do’s and the I do nots,” Dr. Coontz said. Those who are enjoying the perks of a good marriage “wouldn’t stand for any other kind,” she said, while those who would benefit most from marital stability “are the ones least likely to have the resources to sustain it.” 

Yet across the divide runs a white picket fence, our unshakable star-spangled belief in the value of marriage and family. We marry, divorce and remarry at rates not seen anywhere else in the developed world. We lavish $70 billion a year on weddings, more than we spend on pets, coffee, toothpaste and toilet paper combined. 

We’re sappy family romantics. When an informal sample of 52 Americans of different ages, professions and hometowns were asked the first thought that came to mind on hearing the word “family,” the answers varied hardly at all. Love! Kids! Mom! Dinner! 

“It’s the backbone of how we live,” said David Anderson, 52, an insurance claims adjuster from Chicago. “It means everything,” said Linda McAdam, 28, who is in human resources on Long Island.

Yes, everything, and sometimes too many things. “It’s almost like a weight,” said Rob Fee, 26, a financial analyst in San Francisco, “a heavy weight.” Or as the comedian George Burns said, “Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another city.” 

In charting the differences between today’s families and those of the past, demographers start with the kids — or rather the lack of them. 

The nation’s birthrate today is half what it was in 1960, and last year hit its lowest point ever. At the end of the baby boom, in 1964, 36 percent of all Americans were under 18 years old; last year, children accounted for just 23.5 percent of the population, and the proportion is dropping, to a projected 21 percent by 2050. Fewer women are becoming mothers — about 80 percent of those of childbearing age today versus 90 percent in the 1970s — and those who reproduce do so more sparingly, averaging two children apiece now, compared with three in the 1970s. 

One big reason is the soaring cost of ushering offspring to functional independence. According to the Department of Agriculture, the average middle-class couple will spend $241,080 to raise a child to age 18. Factor in four years of college and maybe graduate school, or a parentally subsidized internship with the local theater company, and say hello to your million-dollar bundle of oh joy.

As steep as the fertility decline has been, the marriage rate has fallen more sharply, particularly among young women, who do most of the nation’s childbearing. As a result, 41 percent of babies are now born out of wedlock, a fourfold increase since 1970. 

The trend is not demographically uniform, instead tracking the nation’s widening gap in income and opportunity. Among women with a bachelor’s degrees or higher, 90 percent adhere to the old playground song and put marriage before a baby carriage. For everybody else, maternity is often decoupled from matrimony: 40 percent of women with some college but no degree, and 57 percent of women with high school diplomas or less, are unmarried when they give birth to their first child.

More than one-quarter of these unwed mothers are living with a partner who may or may not be their child’s biological father. The rise of the cohabiting couple is another striking feature of the evolving American family: From 1996 to 2012, the number jumped almost 170 percent, to 7.8 million from 2.9 million. 

Nor are unmarried mothers typically in their teens; contrary to all the talk of an epidemic of teenage motherhood, the birthrate among adolescent girls has dropped by nearly half since 1991 and last year hit an all-time low, a public health triumph that experts attribute to better sex education and birth-control methods. Most unmarried mothers today, demographers say, are in their 20s and early 30s.

Also démodé is the old debate over whether mothers of dependent children should work outside the home. The facts have voted, the issue is settled, and Paycheck Mommy is now a central organizing principle of the modern American family. 

The share of mothers employed full or part time has quadrupled since the 1950s and today accounts for nearly three-quarters of women with children at home. The number of women who are their families’ sole or primary breadwinner also has soared, to 40 percent today from 11 percent in 1960.

“Yes, I wear the pants in the family,” said Ana Perez, 35, a mother of three and a vice president at a financial services company in New York, who was, indeed, wearing pants. “I can say it brings me joy to know I can take care of my family.” 

Cultural attitudes are adapting accordingly. Sixty-two percent of the public, and 72 percent of adults under 30, view the ideal marriage as one in which husband and wife both work and share child care and household duties; back when Jimmy Carter was president, less than half of the population approved of the dual-income family, and less than half of 1 percent of husbands knew how to operate a sponge mop. 

Mothers are bringing home more of the bacon, and of the mortarboards, too. While most couples are an even match scholastically, 28 percent of married women are better educated than their mates; that is true of just 19 percent of married men. Forty years ago, the asymmetry went the other way.

Some experts argue that the growing legion of mothers with advanced degrees has helped sharpen the already brutal competition for admission to the nation’s elite universities, which stress the importance of extracurricular activities. Nothing predicts the breadth and busyness of a child’s after-school schedule better, it turns out, than the mother’s level of education.

One change that caught many family researchers by surprise was the recent dip in the divorce rate. After many decades of upward march, followed by a long, stubborn stay at the familiar 50 percent mark that made every nuptial feel like a coin flip, the rate began falling in 1996 and is now just above 40 percent for first-time marriages. 

The decline has been even more striking among middle- and upper-middle-income couples with college degrees. For them, fewer than one in three marriages is expected to end in divorce, a degree of stability that allows elite couples to merge their resources with confidence, maximally invest in their children and otherwise widen the gap between themselves and the struggling masses. 

There are exceptions, of course. Among baby boomers, the rate of marriage failure has surged 50 percent in the past 20 years — perhaps out of an irritable nostalgia, researchers said, for the days of free love, better love, anything but this love. Nor do divorce rates appear to have fallen among those who take the old Samuel Johnson quip as a prescription, allowing hope to triumph over experience, and marrying again and again. 

For both Mike and Kristi Burns, now in their 40s, the first marriage came young and left early, and the second stuck around for more than a dozen years. 

Kristi was 19, living in South Carolina, and her Marine boyfriend was about to be shipped to Japan. “I wasn’t attached to him, really,” she said, “but for some reason I felt this might be my only chance at marriage.” 

In Japan, Kristi gave birth to her son Brandon, realized she was lonely and miserable, and left the marriage seven weeks after their first anniversary. Back in the States, Kristi studied to be a travel agent, moved to Michigan and married her second husband at age 23.

He was an electrician. He adopted Brandon, and the couple had a son, Griffin. The marriage lasted 13 years. 

“We were really great friends, but we weren’t a great husband and wife,” Kristi said. “Our parenting styles were too different.” 

Besides, she went on, “he didn’t verbalize a lot, but he was mad a lot, and I was tired of walking around on eggshells.” 

After the divorce, friends persuaded her to try the online dating service match.com, and just as her free trial week was about to expire, she noticed a new profile in the mix. 

“Kristi was one of the first people to ping me,” said Mike Burns, an engineer for an e-commerce company. “This was at 3 in the morning.” 

They started chatting. Mike told Kristi how he’d married his first wife while he was still in college — “definitely too young,” he said — and divorced her two years later. He met his second wife through mutual friends, they had a big church wedding, started a software publishing company together, sold it and had two children, Brianna and Alec. 

When the marriage started going downhill, Mike ignored signs of trouble, like the comments from neighbors who noticed his wife was never around on weekends.

“I was delusional, I was depressed,” he said. “I still had the attitude that divorce wasn’t something you did.” 

After 15 years of marriage, his wife did it for him, and kicked him out of the house. His divorce papers hadn’t yet been finalized, he told Kristi that first chat night. I’ll help you get through it, she replied. 

Mike and Kristi admit their own three-year-old marriage isn’t perfect. The kids are still adjusting to one another. Sometimes Kristi, a homemaker, feels jealous of how much attention her husband showers on his daughter Brianna, 13. Sometimes Mike retreats into his computer. Yet they are determined to stay together. 

“I know everyone thinks this marriage is a joke and people expect it to fail,” said Kristi . “But that just makes me work harder at it.” 

“I’d say our chances of success are better than average,” her husband added. 

In America, family is at once about home and the next great frontier.

Reposted from The New York Times

More Invitation to Coffee [via Cacciatore]

In the past, Yamamoto has  created latte portraits of his Twitter followers. 









This is Twitter fan Peter Harrison, before his latte transformation.

And Here He is After: (According to Mr. Harrison, the gift was a complete surprise.)

The Philosophy Behind Ephemeral Art

Why bother creating a masterpiece if it's going to disappear down someone's throat? According to design philosopher Leonard Koren, ephemeral art has its roots in traditional Japanese aesthetics. Two Japanese concepts -- wabi-sabi and mono-no-aware -- hold that "many things are beautiful precisely because they are short lived."

YOGA GIVES BACK DECEMBER E-NEWSLETTER

For the cost of one yoga class, you can change a life.

Happy Holidays!!

The Impact of your Donation!!

Highlights of 2013

• "Sister Aid" direct funding program more than doubled its recipients to 240 people, including 109 mothers, 110 daughters, 20 orphaned children, and 1 college student.
• A new initiative "SHE"(Scholarship for Higher Education) was created. Pure International has become YGB's first corporate sponsor to fund 10 teen girls in West Bengal for high school and higher education with 5-year commitment.

Our first "SHE" (Scholarship for Higher Education) recipient Guruprasad sent us this photo, as he studies to become a dentist in Bellary, Karnataka, South India. We first met him in 2007. Read more here.

 

2007

 

2013

 

Read the latest report about Mahashakti Group, one of the nine "Sister Aid" funded groups in West Bengal. YGB partner NISHTHA reports us regularly how 110 mothers and 109 daughters are doing so that we can share with YGB global family. Read more here. 

 

Deenabandu Trust Home sent us 20 Thank You cards with wonderful colorful designs drawn by each child and a message, "I am grateful for your support. Thank you for being there for me. Yours with Love." Read more here and here.

We need more corporate sponsors for "SHE" (Scholarship for Higher Education), which will dramatically impact individual lives, families and society!! Write to us: info@yogagivesback.org

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Exciting News:

3rd Annual Global "Thank You Mother India" Global Campaign continues to happen worldwide till January 31st, 2014!!

Due to popular requests to host events in the New Year, the TYMI campaign will continue until January 31st, 2014!! Pick one day, donate or become a sponsor today. Your event will be promoted in YGB's social media, blog and Home Page feature! Send your event photos to be included in the PR video.
Thank you to these level sponsors!

Platinum ($2500+)
Abacus Partners (Los Angeles), Omkar108 (LA), YogaFit (LA)

Gold ($1000+)
Enlighten Yoga (North Carolina), Mysore San Francisco, The Yoga Place LA, The YogaView (Chicago), Inner Beauty Yoga (Texas), Om Padma (UK), New Hippie (LA)

Silver ($500+)
Maya Yoga (Kansas City), The Yoga Room (New Orleans), Kino MacGregor Workshop at Delight Yoga(Netherlands), Zac&Zoli in Memory of Joseph Dunham (Australia), Julee Yew-Crijns (UK), Ahnu (USA)
We would also like to thank all who have registered events in Australia, Belgium, Canada, Hong Kong, India,Italy, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, Turkey, UK, and many cities in the USA. Check an amazing list of global participants here!!

Check out these amazing upcoming TYMI Events in December!!
 
Thursday Dec 12: Erin Mack (Florida)
Friday Dec 13: Central Coast School of Yoga (Australia), Lorraine Lau (Hong Kong)
Saturday Dec 14: Eddie Teboul & Mariko Hirakawa (NY), Disco Charity Party (Tokyo)
Sunday Dec 15: Joy of Yoga (Netherlands), YogaOm (Australia)
Monday Dec 16: Alexa Nether (Australia)
Friday Dec 20: Body-Motion (Netherlands)
Saturday Dec 21: Yoga One(North Carolina), The Harmony Yoga (Texas)
Dec 28: Chakra with Chama (Tokyo) 

Check details here.

This global campaign generates the majority of YGB's annual funding in India. Your participation enables YGB to support more mothers and children in India in 2014. Thank you!!

New Ambassadors & Representatives 

YGB is thrilled to introduce our newest Ambassadors and Representatives to our growing global family!!

Ambassadors

 

Alexa Nehter,
Forster, Australia
Alexa Nehter

 

 

Nikola Ellis,
Mosman, Australia
Adore Yoga

 

 

Edna Dalton De Jager,
Saudi Arabia
Anahatanada Journey

 

 

Nihan Hantal,
Istanbul, Turkey 

 

Alie McManus,
Chicago, US
Alie McManus

Representatives

 

Donatella Banks,
Los Angeles, CA

 

Leah Coakley,
New York, NY

Holiday Gift Ideas

"IMAGINE…being homeless and still graduating top 10 in your class". "The Imagine Project, Story of Love, Courage and Hope" opens your heart and soul to the ordinary people who surround you every day—neighbors, teachers, co-workers, the clerk behind the deli counter, strangers you pass by on the street, even the homeless.
YGB founder Kayoko Mitsumatsu was featured in this beautiful project. Read more here. Use "Kayoko" as your coupon code when ordering and $10 will be donated to YGB!! 

YGB’s exclusive “Namaste” new collection includes tanks and cool men's T-shirts, 100% of sales are donated by Jala Clothing. Purchase yours here.

Morgan Stanley will now match 100% of employee donation made to YGB! Please spread the word to your friends at Morgan Stanley about YGB.

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Events

Ashtanga Yoga Confluence 2014 choose YGB as Charity Beneficiary!! Register now, space is limited. 

Explore the Ashtanga Yoga tradition based on the teachings of Sri K. Pattabhi Jois. Start your day with a Mysore or Guided class followed by daily panel discussions and afternoon workshops with master Ashtanga Yoga teachers; Richard Freeman, Manju Jois, Dena Kingsberg, Tim Miller and David Swenson. May 8 -11, San Diego Marriott, 2014

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PRESS

"Thank You Mother India" in LA Yoga Magazine by YGB Ambassador Mia Togo.

Mia along with 4 LA teachers just hosted a successful TYMI event.
See event photos here.

Follow our YGB Blog for updated news from India and around the world!!

Thank you for all the past and future events,
which make a real difference one class at a time!!

Yoga Gives Back is a 501(c)(3) Non-Profit Organization.

Question, comment, want to learn more?
Email info@yogagivesback.org.

www.yogagivesback.org

Behind the Person of the Year Time Cover

Artist Jason Seiler on how he captured Pope Francis for this year's issue

By D.W. Pine and Skye Gurney

Photographs courtesy Jason Seiler, Ava Seiler, and Jacqueline Patrice

To capture the essence of Pope Francis, we turned to Chicago-based artist Jason Seiler, a classically trained oil painter who recently taught himself to paint digitally on a 21-inch LCD display.

“This technology allows me to work naturally, intuitively drawing and painting directly on the LCD display,” says Seiler, who studied fine art illustration at the American Academy of Art in Chicago. “My technique when painting digitally is very similar to the way I paint with oils or acrylics. I tend to work from dark to light, focusing mainly on values and color harmony. I never use any form of photo manipulation.”

Seiler spent more than 70 hours creating the Person of the Year artwork, which continues the rich tradition of great portraiture on the cover of TIME. “A lot of times before I start a painting, I see it finished in my head,” he says. “With the Pope, I let it happen organically.”

After an initial sketch, Seiler covered it with a thin layer of raw umber—the same way an under-painting is utilized in traditional painting. “My paintings tend to have a lot of detail, but don’t let that fool you—the details are only the final touches,” says Seiler. “The most important thing is the drawing, and once I have that to my satisfaction I focus on capturing light and establishing strong values. I create a limited palette and use only those colors for the duration of the painting.”

(PERSON OF THE YEAR: Pope Francis, The People’s Pope)

Next, Seiler focused on getting the character, look and feel of the Pope correct. “From there I just painted what I was feeling. I paint by stacking and layering my brushwork similar to sculpting with clay, but building form with values, structure and most importantly capturing light.”

“Many artists can draw a decent likeness of a well-known face, but the challenge is to capture not just the likeness but the character of the person. Capturing this truth, or essence, is, for me, the most important factor in considering a portrait successful or not.”

Seiler, who also worked as a character designer on Tim Burton’s Alice In Wonderland, found painting digitally came naturally. “Mixing color digitally is done basically the same way it is done traditionally, only easier and quicker. I enjoy finding a thumbprint on a painting or seeing loose hairs from a paintbrush entombed forever in the art. I purposely leave brush marks visible, knowing that as long as the lighting and values are correct, the painting will still have a very realistic look and quality alongside its traditional feel.”

And if you look closely at his latest work on this week’s TIME cover, you’ll notice some of those realistic touches.

Read more