Yield #3

This is the last one of the three I started for the Illustration Friday topic "yield." These are all people "yielding" to reality. Perhaps it's not a reality that you can see, but it is the spirit of the universe, the currents flowing through them. I hope it's obvious that there is a certain amount of joy there, or at least peace.

Frankly, I am glad to be done with these three. I actually had an IDEA, and figured out a way to express that idea, but I've really missed having reference materials. My "out of my head" faces just aren't as "real" as the ones I draw from either life or photographs. And because these started out basically as the light and dark swirls, bodies fit into those patterns more or less. It WAS fun to work on these--this last one I did most of the work on last night while my partner was repotting all of my cacti and succulents, on HIS birthday, no less--but I am looking forward to working on something more "solid" somehow soon. After I finish grading at least a minimum of the gazillion things I brought home over spring break to grade.

Shades in your Mind

What do you see when you close your eyes? What anxieties and worries are always there, preying on your peace of mind, that you don't notice when you are busy? But when you take a moment and shut your eyes, they clench at your stomach, and twist your mind, and the world seems an impossible and tangled place indeed.

But if I remember to breathe, I can feel the strain dissipating, the shoulders relaxing, the world becoming calmer. When I remember to breathe, I am more aware of the here and now, the place where I am right now, and nowhere else, and this is where I need to be when I open my eyes as well.

Various sketches

So here are a few assorted sketches from the last several weeks, two from the newspaper that I did at school when I was bored (you know, when the kids were all working and didn't want me looking over their shoulders, and I didn't feel like grading), and the other from an 8 hour car ride when I was bored. I imagine it's pretty obvious which is which.

Illustration Friday: Yield

Okay, so I didn't make it before the next week's topic was posted, but I STARTED it during the proper week. Parent-teacher conferences just took too much of my time.

But "yield"--I think of all the times in one's life when one has to just stop fighting and go with the flow. Childbirth is one of them, but there are a whole lot more where resistance will get you no where. You have to just let go. That's what these two people are doing. They are flowing with the universe. It enters them, and they channel it through their own uniqueness, but they're not controlling it at all.

I seek to be more like that. More here in the "now" and going with the flow of the moment. Resistance causes stress. Stomach-aches and head-aches. And it's pointless, because the rest of the world will just go on the way it was going in the first place. Of course I believe that what I do makes a difference, that the world is a better place because I am here, but I am aware of my sphere of influence....

But is this better as a vertical or a horizontal?

Old Nordic-fest guy

So...it is my INTENTION to make art. Please please please let me make time to make art. I WILL.

And here's another portrait to add to my collection of portraits that don't look like the people who are being portrayed, and another picture to add to my collection of pictures I don't like very much. My son and I were just talking about it, and how you have to make the pictures you DON'T like in order to get to the pictures you DO like. I suppose, though, that if one were self-reflective about the ones that one doesn't like that one might move to the ones one does like faster.

But anyway. It is what it is. I never did find my jug of India ink. I think it was a quart jug, and there just aren't that many places a quart jug of ink can hide. So I ordered another one, and it came, and I must say that it pleases me no end to use real pens again, ones that you dip in the ink and that have flexible nibs so that one can vary one's lines, and also make long lines.