IF - Unbalanced

IF - Blur

This week's Illustration Friday prompt is "blur." The world is a blur to me without corrective lenses.

IF - Skinny

This week, the word to illustrate for Illustration Friday was "skinny." I created a tiny gouache painting of a piping plover, an endangered shore bird, that has a plump body and skinny little legs.

Read more about piping plovers and what you can do to protect them here.

Flashback Friday

For Flashback Friday, I decided to post this illustration I did for a class assignment a few years ago. The story, "European Night Journey" was published in The New Yorker. In the story Zdena, who is traveling from Bratislava to Venice for her daughter's wedding, meets a man on the bus whom she has no intention of speaking with. She is annoyed at first when he tries to start a conversation. The man, whose name is Tomas, senses a deep sadness in her. Eventually, they talk and she reveals that her daughter is HIV positive, something she has not shared with her closest friends.

In the second scene, Zdena has woken up to find that the bus has made a stop in Trieste and Tomas has stopped at a bakery. The bus is ready to leave without him, but Zdena convinces the driver to wait for Tomas to return. Tomas runs back with some pastries that he shares with Zdena.

IF - Infinite

The rainy weather, as well as her wait for the bus, seemed infinite.

Character Study - Day 7

Here are my final sketches. It's the last day of the challenge. Oh my. Now what?

Character Study - Day 6 - Welcome

Ink has to be the most unforgiving medium. Once a mark is down, that's it. Oh well. For this piece, I just kept working with whatever mark I made whether it was accidental or not.

I was inspired today by Kathy Weller's post where she talks about training herself to "work WITH [her] mistakes." This week she is drawing very directly and spontaneously with Sharpies, having no preliminary pencil drawings. Some lovely stuff resulted.

Another artist who addresses this is James Surls. At a Decordova Museum lecture, he said that he doesn't consider any marks that he puts on paper "mistakes" or "accidents." Whatever he puts down on paper is valid. For him, there is no erasing.

This is another call to banish that inner critic. Maybe it's not the medium that needs to be forgiving.