Wednesday, December 22, 2010

Illustration Friday: Mail


Okay....so this one requires some explanation. Well, maybe not "requires" but I'm going to give it anyway. For the topic of "mail," I thought of angels sending messages down to earth, only people have to be open to receiving them, and so I started sketching what that might look like. And once I started sketching (in pen, because that's what I do--I was in the back seat of the car driving to Kansas City to shop for a coat for my son, who was driving), I immediately thought of my all-time favorite poem, "God's Grandeur" by Gerard Manley Hopkins, and an image from the end about how the holy ghost is bent over the world with "warm breast, and ah! bright wings." So this is it. It's a doodle, done almost entirely in the car, and it is what it is.

Here's the whole poem:

THE WORLD is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

6 comments:

  1. WoW,
    Theresa,
    your comment lead me to your excellnet work.
    I love your line work.
    I'll follow this blog!
    Thx for sharing ;)

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  2. Hello Theresa. is beautiful what you tell us, and your illustration is beautiful!!
    I came to thank you for your visits to my blog and your comments.
    I hope you have happy holiday.
    and 2011, fill your head with good creative ideas like all I've seen this year on your blog!

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  3. This is awesome! I can't believe this was done in a moving vehicle. Have a great holiday with your family!

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  4. A excellent line drawing done in a car moving as well. Well done

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  5. Hello well Geralf Manley Hopkins is a lucious alliterater eh (can't find that in the dictionary). A bit of a visionary - and that's how your image effects me. A vision - interestingly I see it as ominous as well as a 'good' angel.

    It's a wonderful composition - very classical - and you've maintained the beauty of the central area magnificently.

    Merry Christmas :)
    Happy joy and peace eh?

    see you !

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  6. Awesome drawing and poem. This is beautiful and powerful, flowing and full of movement, I really, really like this image.

    Have a good Christmas and New Year and, although I'm getting waylaid again, as usual, it is this kind of image that inspires me to do new work :-)

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