A simple enough piece to create, this is really about poetry and color. I loved summers in Ocean City as a kid. I really loved Gillian’s Wonderland, and take my boys there now. My favorite thing in all of summer was the bumper cars. The very particular aromas of electrocuted copper and steel, the quick and dirty socialization where strangers were able to laugh like old friends, the absurd tragedy of the pile of out of service cars, and the sadness when the electricity stopped flowing through the little curved wires. I loved those things.
Gordon Ramsay as a lion by John LeMasney via 365sketches.org #illustration #Inkscape #creativecommons
Gordon Ramsay as a lion by John LeMasney via 365sketches.org #illustration #Inkscape #creativecommons
Where to start? When I asked for suggestions for this project, my very good friend and ideological brother Tim McGee asked me to illustrate one of his favorite William Butler Yeats poems, The Second Coming, which I’ve included below. He said that it is mindful of summer solstice for him, and I had hoped to have it for him by the solstice, but I had some trouble determining exactly how to illustrate it. The passage of concrete ideas in the last part of the poem speaks a bit about why I’ve used this imagery, but I have no reason other than pure snark for using Gordon Ramsay‘s likeness. I love his shows, a guilty pleasure, and he surely comes off as though he believes he is the second coming. He’s got the look that Yeats talks about, too, I believe. I hope Tim liked it, and as usual, I hope I offended no one.
“TURNING and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? ”
So this is a little note to myself, and to a lot of my friends right now, to keep it up. Keep going. Keep trying to do what you’re doing. I hear you. I know it’s been hard. There’s a lot against you in your effort, but you can do it. Things will be different in the future, if you keep going. Please do.
This is a response to a Flickr group contest called Illustration Friday, and this week’s challenge just happens to be ‘giant’. Here’s my take on the idea, and I hope you liked it!
I’ve always been able to count my many fears. I’m afraid of dying, scared of heights, frightened of losing the people I love, and so on. I’ve never considered fear of the unknown itself to be scary though, strangely. I love the possibilities in what’s yet to come. As long as it’s not death, falling, or funerals, etc. 🙂 Hope you like the sketch.
The saddest part about this, really, is that I have more than one friend/liker/pal who wants this sketch done. I’m not mentioning any names, but I’ll just say that if you are a renter making your landlord miserable, a relative who is taking advantage of an open door, or someone staying past the third cup of tea, you’re not vain — this sketch is about you.
