Illustration Friday May 10 "future"

Inspired by this week's challenge word: Future

I thought immediately back to primary school and the inevitable tradition of planting a bean, watching it hopefully for evidence of change.

These days the sprouts come home in coffee cups, but what I remember is a bean in a glass jar, held in place against the glass by damp paper towel.  It was our job to wet the paper every day, and impatiently check for any change.

The future is not some grand, distant scenario into which we step; it is the seed, the wet paper towel, and it inches toward us with every small action we take to make it grow.

Farewell - Illustration Friday April 26 2013

Farewell, fly far, find sunshine, dance with flowers.

Farewell, empty jar, empty hands, throat tight.

Farewell, changed my mind, too late, too late.

Farewell, bright speck, sun-bright joy.

Farewell.

Flow

Progress

Winter weather making its way into this image, which suits my mood and the tone of the image.  Time to rest the image for a bit. 

Story Line.

As we send the pen across our paper, we make stories visible, even if at times they are unintelligible. 

We walk our own story line.  The inner selves with which we meet outer events becomes etched on our own faces, in our bodies, via the posture with which we carry our selves through the day to meet circumstances, and our habitual expressions.

My grandmother had a wonderful collection of lines, and I loved watching them, mobile as her face played and replayed the emotions that belonged to the story she was telling me at the time.  She used to shrug at all the creams and lotions advertised to minimize wrinkles.  Yes, but then how do folks know what kind of person you are?  It's not having a line-free face that is desirable, after all.  Just the right kinds of lines.

We read the characters here by their postures, what their faces tell us, and as they are depicted in the same space, we join them with invisible, imagined lines of story. 

New Moleskine

My larger format sketchbooks haven't exerted the same pull for me recently as they did in the past and for a while now I have wondered how a new format, a new size would feel to work with, what sorts of images, line, designs a new format might call for.  

Bought one today, so we shall see.

Why a squirrel monkey?  Oddly enough there was a large monkey cage and a monkey in it at my school when I was in elementary school.  A year or so later it was decided that keeping a monkey was not in the school mandate, so the monkey and cage were sent elsewhere.  I remember spending a lot of time in and around the monkey cage.  Something about the structure and restraint of that environment brings to mind the edge of the page.

Whiskers - Night Wind - I.F. Nov 23, 2012

Inspired by the Illustration Friday challenge word: Whiskers

...which meant I've had whiskers on my mind all week.

I keep thinking of the porous border between sleeping and waking, the way the mind scatters when we give it permission to break into its sensory particles and float off to absorb impressions from all over the universe past and present.

Dream Cat whiskers tickle night into dark, shimmery giggles that jiggle apart and appear one thing while mindslivers slip between them creating new layers, impressions, thoughts.  Stitching these impressions together we dream we are one entity while the mind itself relates as messages between disparate parts scattered who knows where as we sleep.