Sketchbook [6]

I will draw you a picture. Close your eyes. Wait.

Draw, or paint?

Describe.

Alright. I am listening.

It’s two people dancing.

Is it us?

No! NO! For goodness’ sake. Don’t think like that!

Is it so terrible?

YES. Tom. Ugh. Don’t ruin it.

Alright. ALRIGHT. Carry on, your Highness.

Two people dancing, but they’re slow. A little rickety. There are stars above them. Hundreds and thousands of stars, and they are almost floating. Her hair is silver, ethereal…

Ahh. Like Persephone’s hair?

Exactly like that! You know, don’t you!

I like to think I do.

You do! Oh, you do. So she has her ethereal floating hair, and his is white as snow, brushed back tightly, just as he used to brush it in his days of youth. In fact I do not think he has ever stopped or brushing it like that or changed the way he got ready everyday.

You’re saying, they are dancing just like they did when they were twenty?

Ye-ee-eess. That is what I am saying. They are dancing in a window, you see, and the window is tall, with many pretty panes, and it curves at the top. Slopes up and then down. A beautiful rainbow of a curve. And each square pane is a picture of them dancing. In and out. Holding hands. Separating. Coming back together. And each pane is a different painting. There is a meadow full of poppies. An old house, dilapidated. He is young in that one. Muscular. She is so beautiful, and she holds him tightly. And in the next pane the house is freshly painted, and they are dancing close, but not holding each other, because their arms are full.

Full of what?

Little cherubs of children, of course.

Is this a moving picture?

It’s alive, Tom. Brimming with life. It moves and breathes, and there is a climbing rose growing about its edges.

Climbing rose. I like that.

It’s climbing around the edge of the window, and along all the frames which surround all the panes containing the tiny figures of my dancing couple. They are young and old. Near and far. Dear and departed.

Are there any where they are cross with each other?

Yes, a few. There is one where she dances away from him, her nose turned up, eyes closed, and he knits his brows together so that they make a nice long dark scarf. Oh, he is mighty cross.

Do they ever stop dancing? When they’re cross, I mean?

No. Never.

And this rose that surrounds them, is it thorny?

Roses, Tom. ROSES. And why do you ask such a question? I don’t know if it’s thorny. I don’t think of the thorns. I think only of the blooms.

Ah.

What do you think?

It’s beautiful.

I like to think of this painting. Drawing. Picture. Image. I think of it often.

It’s a little magical, I suppose.

Not very adventurous. But I never was, you see. You’re the one who wants to go gadding about the world, doctoring people back to health. I am quite content to stay here in a nice house overlooking the hills, rolling along with the seasons.

Pricking your fingers on the thorny rose bushes…

You’re laughing at me!

I am not!

You are! How cruel! I shan’t talk to you anymore.

Come now, Laura…

YOU may prick your fingers on the thorns. I never do.

You certainly do not.

Humph.

You ought to paint your picture, thorns and all.

I shall, I think. And I shall ignore your comment about thorns.

Image Credit: Ana Gonzalez Esteve

The Bear

There is a bear.

He stands tall on his hind legs like a two-legged creature, his head is turned upwards and to the right. By his side is a little thing. Big ears, elephant-like, but smaller than a mouse. They are walking into the sunset.

I like to think there is an ocean before them, frothing and foaming and if they were to take one step further they would float down into its murky depths. Poor quality imagery, no details, fine lines taken away stroke by stroke, muddy waters brushed over the image until it is as lucid as the ocean in which they should fall.

Sadness is a heavy, dull emotion. You can’t always contain it. It seeps like octopus ink, making marks on everything I touch. Large questioning eyes. Tears when one should be laughing.

Accusation everywhere, deep insecurity, and overwhelmed burnout.

See I don’t know what that bear and elephant-mouse are looking at. I see them everyday in the shower, when I brush my teeth, when I cream my face. Same motions, autopilot, but I always find my eyes drifting to meet that bear, tall, six foot, seven, eight, even. I like to think he is looking off at the answer. And that he might know what it is.

There are several of him, you see. Identical bears, their backs to me, better places, better sights, better feelings.

Each bear is a muddied, marbled grey abstract on a large rectangular wall-tile in my bathroom.

Image Credit

Mr Blue Sky Painted by an AI

The season of life I am in right now is such that it is proving to be a mountainous task to make time to write blogs. This is a sad state of affairs, because I thoroughly enjoy typing out a blog and pairing it with some painting or other that vaguely resembles what I want to say.

Speaking of paintings, there is a lovely thing you can do nowadays. You can ask an AI system to generate paintings for you based on words or phrases.

Somebody on Youtube put the lyrics to a really pretty song (to me anyway) into the generator, and the result was marvellous. Here it is below for you to see:

Watercolour

I used to paint a lot when I was a child. We did not take art lessons at school, there were no art supplies at home. My mother used to give us the equivalent to £1 a week in Emirates currency, and I saved enough to buy myself a set of acrylic paints.

Then, every morning, I would take myself on to the balcony of the flat my father rented for twenty one years, and set myself up on the dark green tiles. It was sunrise, so the coolness of the desert night wafted in on the breeze. When the sun rose, the heat would set in, and I would be forced indoors. But in that pinkish orange glow that heralds a new day, I would sit and paint.

Oh, I fancied myself a real artist. I imagined such masterpieces would flow from my brush.

In truth, it was just exploration. An affinity I had for art which I poked and prodded until my fingers began to feel accustomed to the brush, and shapes began to take form. The passion soon waned. Or else other things took precedence. Like exams, keeping up with peers, outings… an eventual move across the globe to another country…

Anyway. Recently I bought my son a set of kids’ watercolours. A very simple set. You dip your brush into some water, then dip it into a disk of colour, set amongst 20 other disks. Cost me £5. We sit everyday at around 3pm and do some painting. Baby has a nap, and we have ‘quiet time’.

Anyway. I love art. So I enjoy myself thoroughly.

This is what I came up with today! It’s amateurish, but I am proud of my amateur work, and I enjoyed painting it.

Anomalous

I am always looking for odd things within the normal. It is never good enough.

I am waiting for a plane to drop out of the sky. Is that too morbid? Hair made of cloud. Running so fast my feet lift off the ground, and I am leaping through the air. Not flying, no. Powerful through the kinetic force of my leaps and bounds. Why is a sunny day just a sunny day? It can’t be. There must be more to it than that.

What are brains whispering behind the closed doors of faces?

How many universes really exist, through the perspectives of billions of people.

Can the heavens and the earth sense our tread? And if so, are we hurting them?

A piece of heart. I pick up a ‘piece of heart’ with my toes when I am too lazy to bend down. It was a paper, but all the girls made fun of me. They said, ‘Eurgh you have real human hearts lying around your house!’ Cackling in that cruel way six year old girls have. Tears sprang to my eyes. I was only trying to be part of the conversation. I glanced at the boy who was my friend. He looked away.

A pair of knobbly, bright-red feet under a door.

A cluster of girls.

One brown face looking up at me.

‘What do you want?’

Hurt, walking away from the group I always associate with, because one newcomer decided she didn’t like this foreigner.

Or maybe it’s because I was weird.

But none of the other girls stuck up for me. None.

Why?

I feel like an outcast most of the time; but then I slurp some coffee and I am vibrant, energetic; ripples of laughter rippling outwards from my circumference.

Awkward silences. Lots of them. Lack of eye contact. Insecurity. Power. Speeding along country lanes; the sky is a different colour every single day.

If it wasn’t for the clouds, I think our sunsets would be monotonous.

 

But it is never any good. Not good enough.

I want an inspiration to seize my fingers, but I am learning that you have to create your own inspiration.

So this is mine, today. A mixture of memories and daily thoughts.

What inspires you? Do tell me. What makes your brain tick, your fingers itch?

Image Credit

Doodle

 

courtesy of yours truly

This is my messy drawing that I did on the iPad. I did it lying down on the bed, the iPad leaning on my knees. D sent it to my laptop unfinished though, but he really seemed to like it, even though it was just a doodle and a mess. He helped me a little bit, colouring in the detail on the roof on the far right, filling the car in with pencil and creating the rays for the sun.

I am really enjoying creating little doodles on the iPad. If I don’t like how something turns out, I can just erase it, which makes life so much easier.

D said he reckons I should do the illustrations for the posts on my blog. He doesn’t read my blog, because he can’t read to save his life, but he has noticed that I like to choose paintings to go with my words. He is very visual.

Well, he can read, but he just finds it mighty difficult, because he is dyslexic. I sometimes read his letters out to him or read some news articles he finds interesting.

Things aren’t so great, really, today. I have cried a lot, and my eyeballs are stinging. Old ghosts have been resurrected between my mum and I, and I have been very selfish in the past, and she can’t seem to let it go, and remembering all the horrible things is making me very upset and sad and uncomfortable. I think I will take her out on Monday so we can have a decent chat about it all. I am a bad daughter, and am not very good to my family. I need to be better.

Is It Really Necessary?

 

 

Well, is it?

You tell me.

An example. I wanted to buy a funky ornament. It was a motorbike (or motorcycle for you Americans) made out of old watch parts. Damnit. I wish I took a picture! It was stunning, gleaming and so steampunk. Also inventive, artistic and a fantastic way to use an old broken watch.

I could tell lots of care and attention went into making it. How proud the artist must be.

I also thought how artists and creative people gather a lot of clutter.

Before I married Damian and moved in with him my bedroom was like this:

Many tottering stacks of books from all genres in all the available nooks and crannies. Polished and varnished original floorboards with lime green vines painted on in one corner. A yellow wall covered in colourful postcards from around the country (also some from various places in Europe and three from Barbados when Aunty Jo was on holiday there).

These things covering every free surface:

Paintbrushes, pens, canvases, papers, scrapbooks, booklets, notebooks, doodles, folders, glittery pen holders, a ceramic hand draped with necklaces and rings and pretty bracelets, a glass bowl filled with beads, Sir Jiles Darcy (Lulu’s pet rock), pots and potions, purses, a teeny glass vial labelled ‘fairy dust’ and filled with superfine glittery sand (a memoir from childhood plays with friends), a large glass diamond, marbles, old coins, old stamps, lots and lots of keyring, fairy lights, calligraphy pens, mini globes, steampunk ornaments, candles…

I could go on all day. Honestly. I had so much, and always accumulated more. My room was warm and cosy and interesting and colourful and cluttered!

Now my room is clean and tidy, all my books are put neatly away, all my odd little trinkets have vanished, replaced by neat stacks of untouched paints and paintbrushes. The theme is white and grey and brown, compared to the blues and reds and yellows and greens and splashes of everything you could imagine before.

So today, I stood staring wistfully at the pretty watch motorbike, and I thought about all the things I have to pack away in boxes, and all the things I gave away, and the lack of colour in my home, but all the things I have to lug around with me as I move around the country living in many different homes and I said, aloud, “is that really necessary?”

Well, that is arguable.

Maybe it is not necessary in that I don’t need it. But I want it, I want interesting things to adorn my bare surfaces. I want things to look at and contemplate. I want colour and vividly and brightness and things, like thoughts, to crowd my room. It inspires me and gears my brain for creativity!

I think the state of my room now reflects the state of my brain. It feels empty, I am lacking creativity, my thoughts are stagnant and repetitive, I haven’t painted in years, I am not as witty as I used to be. Something needs to be done! I need to bring back some of my clutter! It’s too tidy!

This is my computer background, a delicious, colourful, vibrant mess!

 

So I ask you, dear reader, is it really necessary?