Illustration Friday - Cake & Inspire Me Thursday - Word Art

It's almost June, and the big wedding season is upon us! Soon the curtain will come up on the glorious pageant that's been months, even years in the planning. The bridezillas have made it through buff bride boot camp and are happily flexing their toned triceps in the mirror. Ah...perfection! This big day is just the beginning of a perfect life where the stakes are always high; but it's well worth it, because she who dies with the most cake wins...

I am doll eyes
Doll mouth
Doll legs
I am doll arms
Big veins
Dog bait
Yea they really want you
They really want you
They really do
Yea they really want you
They really want you
But I do too
I want to be the girl with the most cake
I love him so much he just turns to hate
I fake it so real I am beyond fake
And someday you will ache like I ache
Some day you will ache like I ache
I am doll parts
Bad skin
Doll heart
It stands for knife
For the rest of my life
Yea they really want you
They really want you
They really do
Yea they really want you
They really want you
But I do too
I want to be the girl with the most cake
He only loves those things because he loves to see them break
I fake it so real I am beyond fake
And some day you will ache like I ache
Some day you will ache like I ache...

"Doll Parts" by Courtney Love

(mixed media & photocallage)

Inspire Me Thursday - Abstract Art

Hurray for Misty and Melanie! On top of coming up with all kinds of fun, exciting, and inspiring challenges each week, they've now set up a new and improved site for Inspire Me Thursday.

This week's challenge was to create a piece of abstract art...not easy to do without ending up with a great big mess! I decided to just choose a few colors and go where they took me. I ended up with this Martian garden done in acrylics and gel markers.

Illustration Friday - Sorry

"I'm truly sorry man's dominion
Has broken Nature's social union"

- from "To a Mouse" by Robert Burns

(mixed media - acrylic, collage, crayon on 185lb. cold press watercolor paper)

Illustration Friday - Angels & Devils Revisted

This is the almost completely finished version of the drawing I posted below. I might add some texture and lighten the background a bit, but overall...I'm much happier with this softer version.

(micron pen/watercolor pencils/gel markers/acrylic)

Illustration Friday - Angels & Devils

Jonh Steinbeck wrote in Chapter 34 of East of Eden, " I believe that there is one story in the world, and only one, that has frightened and inspired us... Humans are caught – in their lives, in their thoughts, in their hungers and ambitions, in their avarice and cruelty, and in their kindness and generosity too – in a net of good and evil... A man, after he has brushed off the dust and chips of his life, will have left only the hard, clean questions: Was it good or was it evil? Have I done well – or ill?"

The battle between good and evil within one's soul (psychomachia) was the main concern of medieval allegories, a tradition that originated with the Bible commentators of the early Christian era and continued on through the High and Late Middle Ages. Although these allegories appeared in diverse forms, such as the poem "Psychomachia" written by the Latin poet Aurelius Clemens Prudentius in about 400 A.D., the morality play Everyman, and Dante's The Divine Comedy, written between 1308 and 1321, all were ulitmately concerned with ars morendi, or "dying well." The moral lessons upon which these stories were built were intended to help their audiences lead a good Christian life so they might die in a state of grace. Although taking on many forms and appearances, the battle for one's soul and the desire to die with an unblemished record, continued through the centuries as a prominent element in literature and the arts.

Even in our modern world that has become increasingly secular, the concept of psychomachia continues to be a pervasive theme, most certainly because it is such a basic and compelling topic for human consideration. Many of us might say we've moved beyond good and evil, but still find ourselves playing referee between the angel on the right shoulder and the devil on the left shoulder. Steinbeck concludes chapter 34 with his apt explanation: "[In] the never-ending contest in ourselves of good and evil... evil must constantly respawn, while good, while virtue is immortal. Vice always has a fresh young face, while virtue is venerable as nothing else in the world is."

(micron pen/ background done in photoshop)
5/18 edit - the finished version is posted above

Illustration Friday - Fat

Think back on your school days...the friends, the foes, the laughter, the tears (and so on...play your Senior Prom theme song in your mind; it'll help get you in the mood). Think about all those kids you made fun of, or the kids who made fun of you. We were pretty quick to put others into categories, weren't we? And...if you've been to a high school reunion or two or three, it's always interesting to see how everyone has turned out.

Below is a return post from last August that I think is fitting for this week's topic. It's written from the point of view of one of those mean girls from high school who hasn't changed a bit, and when you get to the bottom, you'll see how it fits this week's topic.

Renion Tour 2005

Dear Lulu,

Wow...it's been a long time since I've written, but you know how it goes. I've been so swamped...between work and the kids and my book club and my Master Gardener classes (to name just a few things)... well, time just seems to fly by. I hope you and Humphrey and the kids are all doing well. Give them my love and some big hugs and kisses!

So, you're never going to believe the weird things that have happened over the past few months! Justin and I have gone to a few "nostalgia" rock shows...they're so much fun...and at each show I've managed to run into someone you and I knew from good old Waring High School, home of the "Smoothies." I was pretty floored the first time, but it actually happened four times. Too bizarre!


Remember Wren? You know, that skinny vegetarian hippie chick who used to always say, "You're lucky you're organic" every time someone missed the trash can? I saw her last winter at a Tom Jones concert! Okay, before you start laughing, I'm just going to tell you that we only went for the laughs. Really. But you know, he was good! And he had an excellent band. Anyway, I practically sat on her lap trying to get into my seat. Yep...she was sitting in an aisle seat in the same row as us. She's divorced and teaching yoga at a health club, still doing the vegetarian thing, and way into all this crunchy stuff like meditation and aromatherapy. But check this out...she was dressed in this tiny black pleather miniskirt with fishnets and stretch pleather boots, and she was wearing a dog collar! I kid you not. She made a point of telling me that the skirt and boots were vegan, but the dog collar? Do they even make vegan dog collars? So, Tom played all his old favorites like "Never Fall In Love Again" and "Deliah," and when he began "What's New Pussycat," Wren jumped out of her seat and started bumping and grinding her way down to the stage, twirling a pleather thong over her head! I'm assuming it was pleather, because I didn't see her for the rest of the evening to ask. What a scene! Along with the usual women hurling sexy lingerie at Tom, there were grandmas throwing industrial strength bras and girdles, and even some guys throwing their underwear. Whoa! Well, I did exchange numbers with Wren, but I haven't heard from her.


The next concert we went to was Judas Priest. They're back together with Rob Halford for their Angel of Retribution tour, so we just had to see them! You know us...we're into "Breakin' the Law," ha ha... Anyway, we were getting into the parking garage elevator, and this woman who looked like a groupie was running towards us, dragging some guy with a mullet and a beer belly, yelling, "Hold the door! Hold the door!" I was thinking (to myself, of course) "WTF?" until I realized who it was... you guessed it! Roxanne! How many times did we run into her in the girls' bathroom while she was sobbing hysterically about how she was going to break up with Billy and rip the hair out of some girl he talked to in the cafeteria? I always wondered how she could cry like that and smoke cigarettes at the same time... Well, she didn't break up with him - she married him! And they have two sons who are also married, and one of them just had his first baby, a little girl. Guess that's what happens when you get married right out of high school, huh? She's hasn't changed a bit either, unless you count the boob job, the tattoo (butterfly on the right breast...I wonder if she got that before or after the boob job...wouldn't the needle puncture the implant?), and the hair extensions. She's been making goth jewelry and selling it at the tanning salon where she works.


I know you're probably thinking this is pretty outrageous, seeing both Wren and Roxanne within the space of a few months, so you probably won't believe that I also saw Rhonda at a Beach Boys' concert. The Beach Boys' show was really fun! It was held on an outdoor stage on a warm summer night...just the perfect setting. We brought our wine and picnic dinner (there's this awesome gourmet place near us that makes special take-out dinners for the outdoor shows) and were having the nicest time until I heard someone behind us hissing at her husband. She was saying something like, "Just don't make a fool of yourself! It's fine if you want to dance, but don't wave your hands around! I don't want anyone to think you're drinking too much." You know me, I had to check that out! To tell you the truth, I wasn't really that surprised to see good old "Soccer Rhonda." Remember how we used to joke about how well she protected her "goal"? What a priss! And there she was in all her glory: pink polo shirt with a little embroidered frog, madras bermuda shorts with a whale belt, pearls, a perfect french manicure, and that hairdo. Why doesn't her hair ever move? She looked really embarrassed at first, but then introduced us to her husband, Tripper. He's some big executive at an insurance company or something. Funny, but by the end of the evening, he was dozing in his seat while Rhonda was tastefully doing the twist in the aisle. Some things never change, right?


Then last weekend we went to see Eric Burdon and The Animals, which was probably the strangest of all the nostalgia concerts we've been to. The Animals might have been playing, but the audience was more like The Zombies...weird looking creatures who looked like they rose from the dead, raided a thrift shop, and decided to have a night on the town. I really wish I had a camera, because you'd never even be able to imagine some of the outfits. Just to give you an idea...there was this girl (who looked kind of like a man) wearing a leather vest that lit up across the back and blinked the words "Atomic Pam" walking around with another girl who looked like a roly-poly Tonya Harding wearing what appeared to be a pink and white ruffled skating costume. I was having a great time looking at everyone, and then I spotted a short, round woman who was wearing a skin-tight leopard print one-shoulder dress with fringe and clearly without underwear. Yikes! I kept looking at her, because I just couldn't figure out what she had been thinking to wear something like that, and also because she looked very familiar. OMG! It hit me...it was Maude, you know that really shy girl we used to call "Tarzana" because she reminded us of an ape with her long arms and short body? Lulu, I think we damaged her for life! Now she's dressing the part! I'll be honest...I just didn't have the heart to say hello to her. I still feel bad for all the teasing we did. And I'm still waiting for that lightning bolt... Not!

So there you have it. Pretty incredible, isn't it? Have you run into anybody lately? Write to me soon and tell me what's going on in your life.

Love,

Sandy

(micron pen and pencil)