Day 54: Tower.

"...and as the child in her was playing the oldest game in the world, her body, following the course of her imagination, had climbed to the sill of the window where it stood with its back to the room.  For how long she would have stood there had she not been jerked back into a sudden consciousness of the world - by someone knocking upon the door of her room, it is impossible to know, but starting at the sound and finding herself dangerously balanced upon a narrow sill above the deep water, she trembled uncontrollably, and in trying to turn without sufficient thought or care, she slipped and clutching at the face of the wall at her side found nothing to grasp so that she fell, striking her dark head on the sill as she passed, and was already unconscious before the water received her, and drowned her at its ease."

Day 53: Keeping a Secret.

   

One night I cut you open

To see if I could find

The secret you were hiding

But when I looked inside

You were completely hollow

Your secret was just that

And I felt the deepest sorrow

That my boy was just an act.

 

(In hindsight, I realise that I promised this theme to the love of my life.  Many apologise, love of my life.)

Day 52: Deep In Thought.

The creation of this piece was a little bit muddled, in that I originally drew a man witnessing an explosion and just standing there.  I initially wanted to capture the feeling I get a lot of being really immersed in experience, in all the small things around me.  I had this dream once that I saw a mushroom cloud in the distance and that I just stood in awe, completely calm.  Fascinating, huh?  Yawn.  Anyway, so I was drawing that and then I didn't really like it so I changed it a little and turned the mushroom cloud into a tree.

I went ahead and painted it and then when I was nearing finishing it, I realised that it is very similar to a piece I fell in love with a while ago: Wow.  I'd already painted a lot of it and was quite fond so I figured I'd post it anyway alongside encouraging you to go and admire that far better, very beautiful painting.  Lovely.

Oh, and here a couple of colour variations:

Day 51: Sport.

Okay, I've decided to be so productive that I'm going to post several a day so that maybe by the end of the holiday, I'll have made some real progress.  This painting relates to the story of Athena and Arachne.  I'm not terribly into sport or competition so my immediate thought was the story with the race and the golden apples which then made me think of this story which seemed like it would be nicer to paint.

Anyway, enjoy :)

Day 50: Breaking the Rules.

Yeah, that's right.  Two in two days.  And guess what?  There's totally going to be another one tomorrow.

This might not make an awful lot of sense but I read the theme and was a bit eye-rolly.  And then I started searching for those mad laws and stumbled on a Liverpudlian law which states that it is illegal for women to be topless unless they are a clerk in a tropical fish shop.  Or something.  So really, it's up to you to decide whether or not this (slightly deformed) topless woman is breaking the law as she could be a clerk... but she could also just be a fish enthusiast who has popped in.

Enjoy judging her.

Day 49: Stripes.

 

 Tomorrow will mark 2 years since I started this blog.  That feels a little bit embarrassing.  But man, am I going to make a dent in this baby this Christmas.  Yeah, I really talk like that.

Day 48: Childhood.

So, this came out of two places... firstly, the idea that people spend way too much of their time wishing their lives away, rather than enjoying the benefits of where they are at that specific time and the second is a more focussed version of that point: that children wish away their childhood because they want to grow up. Obviously, that's really depressing from this side of the fence. Why would anyone want to give up childhood for responsibility?

I've actually drawn this a few times now and lost it. And uh, just now I painted it in a lonely, weeping rage. So... it's finally done. Enjoy?

Anyway, you can have two versions. The actual painted version and a manipulated one. God knows, I love to be manipulative. But then, that's a perk that I've enjoyed since childhood. It's not an adult perk!