The Path

Nine o'clock and darkness:
Short-cutting through pasture
To avoid the ice of early snow.
Knife-edge air slices skin
And shatters with a dead grass hiss
As I pass in shadow.
It would be easy to look down,
Leery of a fall reflected
In distant lamps
And headlights;
But I've decided to have stars in my world...
And, eyes uplifted,
Put faith only in the sky
To guide me home.

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In real life this would be a good way to sprain an ankle.

In a poem?

Well, I think I'll just say you should judge for yourself where I was headed with this.

Sometimes you find them in the oddest places

This week's Illustration Friday topic is Island. Here's my little island of life in a concrete city.

Islands are interesting things. My first thought was to draw an isolated green space in a city neighbourhood. That kind of depressed me, however, because I was headed for the idea of Island Effect, and in population ecology that's not a happy thing. An isolated population isn't a healthy one. I'd elaborate, but that sounds a bit too much like what I do at work. You can google it yourself if you're curious.

The more I thought about city islands, though, the more my brain kept going back to the amazing effect that a simple plant can have on our so-called permanent structures. Life is tough and life is tenacious, and man-made things just can't stand up to that in the end.

Cool.

Oh, and a note about the photo: I'm lacking a scanner again today, so my apologies for the flash-effect on the heavier graphite shading.

Something kind of weird

Ok, honestly? I have no flipping clue what was going on here. I started out with the intention of making something for Illustration Friday since I missed last week. This week's word is clutter.

I had trouble with clutter, apparently.

Well, I know I have trouble with clutter in real life, but in this instance my own brain clutter caused me to just doodle (really doodle as opposed to sketch doodle), come up with half an idea, get tired of that, and COVER THE WHOLE THING WITH VINES???

I... dunno.

The only thing here that actually was done on purpose was the muddying of the colours when I added the wash. Yeah, I meant to do that. And... yes, the "flowers" hanging from the vines (as opposed to the pseudosunflower behind the vine) are words. A word. I decided to muddy it too.

Ah well. I guess today the five-year-old with the short attention span came out in full force so that's what we'll go with.

No scanner access today, so excuse the cropped photo. It works. For what it is.

A doodle.

And I have no idea what the spider web is doing there. Just so you know.

Wild raspberry in pigment pen

A couple of years ago I started a berry bush display for work. I managed a half-dozen or so doodles (they're uploaded here, if you're curious and want to search around a bit) and then got busy with other things. Last year I didn't get back to it at all.

Behold! The return of the berry display!

Erm, more or less.

These are all meant to be scanned and added to interpretive panels (sometime in the next century, at the rate I'm going), so they're pretty much just bare line illustration with a minimum of shading. Or none, as today's effort seems to indicate.

One problem, and I'll have to see how it matches up: I did the first set with a dip pen, but I so much didn't want to fiddle with a dip pen today that I just used my nylon-tip instead. Less variety in the line, I suppose, but I hope it won't be too noticeable.

The Stuff in graphite

This is my go at Routine for Illustration Friday. Done very quickly on my lunch hour.

As usual.

One of these days I'll actually sit down and do this properly, you know. And then we'll all die of shock.

I had intended to do something completely different, but when I sat down with The Stuff and started sharpening pencils (a bit of a compulsive thing with me)... well, obviously it's the usual drawing routine that had to become the subject. The pencils, sharpener, polymer eraser (plus a couple of cut-off bits for detail work), the amorphous kneaded eraser for... to be honest, generally for cleaning my hands as I go if I'm doing smudgey things. Oh, and a backdrop of my pencil case, which apparently needs some dental work.

I did mention this was a lunch-hour jobbie, right?

Yeah.

Quick question

It should be obvious from my various snarky comments when I post things that I don't consider myself more than a doodler and wouldn't ever actually pursue displaying my... for lack of a better word, work.

However.

We have a staff exhibit coming up at real work, and I'm wondering what I should do about it. We're allowed to submit up to five pieces. I have a couple of photographs that might be suitable and there's still time before the deadline to force myself to sit down and do something that's more finished than a five-minute scribble... but are there things already posted here that I should consider having mounted?

I'm open to suggestions, I guess is what I'm saying. If you're willing to give me a few choice words, have a look at the blog's album here and tell me if you see anything that looks ok. If not, tell me that too. I'm a big girl. I can take it.

I can give it back, as well, but that's a whole 'nother topic.

Wild sunflower in pigment pen

Detach for Illustration Friday. The petals are detached from the flower, the flower's detached from the stem... pretty sad all around, really.

This was a very quick sketch on my lunch break. I would have done more with it, but since I'm not likely to do much doodling in my apartment until it's a) much cleaner and b) much cooler, you take the time you can get. I wouldn't mind exploring the theme a bit -- in pastels, maybe, so that a person could actually see the yellow petals contrasting with the dark centre -- but at least this gives the idea.