Illustration Friday - Sea

Seafarer - Archibald MacLeish (1892-1982)

And learn O Voyager to walk
the roll of earth, the pitch and fall
That swings across these trees those stars:
That swings the sunlight up the wall.

And learn upon these narrow beds
To sleep in spite of sea, in spite
Of sound the rushing planet makes:
And learn to sleep against this ground.

Water is a primeval symbol, suggesting formlessness, primordial chaos, the unfathomable, union and transformation. It is also associated with birth, fertility, purification, and refreshment. Portrayed either as the ocean or the sea, water is an integral component of most religions and mythologies, one of the four elements essential to life in traditional western philosophy, and an archetypical symbol in psychological and dream analysis.

In many religions and creation myths, water in the form of the ocean represents the beginning of life on Earth, the place from which land arose and life originated. In Jungian interpretation, water images are part of the collective subconscious in which we remember our origins of life in the oceans. To see the ocean or the sea in a dream often represents the idea of delving into the subconscious to reveal the deepest and most hidden emotions. As a subconscious symbol, the ocean is generally interpreted as a boundless place representing the way in which one can get lost on the mysterious journey through life, whereas the sea with its more defined boundaries can be interpreted as symbolic of a more planned and secure journey across one's life. In astrology, the water signs (Cancer, Scorpio, and Pisces) are people who tend to be flowing, flexible, oriented toward harmony or union, intuitive, and deeply emotional.

The illustration above was done in pen and colored in Photoshop.