New Moleskine

My larger format sketchbooks haven't exerted the same pull for me recently as they did in the past and for a while now I have wondered how a new format, a new size would feel to work with, what sorts of images, line, designs a new format might call for.  

Bought one today, so we shall see.

Why a squirrel monkey?  Oddly enough there was a large monkey cage and a monkey in it at my school when I was in elementary school.  A year or so later it was decided that keeping a monkey was not in the school mandate, so the monkey and cage were sent elsewhere.  I remember spending a lot of time in and around the monkey cage.  Something about the structure and restraint of that environment brings to mind the edge of the page.

Whiskers - Night Wind - I.F. Nov 23, 2012

Inspired by the Illustration Friday challenge word: Whiskers

...which meant I've had whiskers on my mind all week.

I keep thinking of the porous border between sleeping and waking, the way the mind scatters when we give it permission to break into its sensory particles and float off to absorb impressions from all over the universe past and present.

Dream Cat whiskers tickle night into dark, shimmery giggles that jiggle apart and appear one thing while mindslivers slip between them creating new layers, impressions, thoughts.  Stitching these impressions together we dream we are one entity while the mind itself relates as messages between disparate parts scattered who knows where as we sleep.

Emerging from the trees, memories

I missed this week's Illustration Friday deadline, hadn't finished my mental wanderings for the prompt word: Tree, and this week's quote:  "My sorrow, when she's here with me, finds these dark days of autumn rain as beautiful as days can be.  She loves the bare and withered tree, she walks the sodden pasture lane".  - Robert Frost  (Did I get that right?  Couldn't find the card on which I noted it down, though I read it often enough this past week)

Frost has been a favourite of mine since high school for how he selects words and invites the reader to follow into a landscape of carefully noted vistas and wonderfully implied senses.

The quote sent me hunting for my copy of Thoreau's Wild Fruit.  No idea why, beyond the shared intensity of appreciation for whatever is in view. 

And while mulling over ideas I was turning over papers.  Felt my thoughts skip when I came across this one.  Drawn as an exploration of themes while writing a retelling of a folktale from my childhood.  I can still hear my father's voice repeating a refrain from the story, and haven't given up hope of finding the reel-to-reel tape on to which he recorded this, my favourite tale - three times in a row.  He also taught me to rewind and play the tape when I was four or so, to avoid my importuning him at all hours.  Story within story, memory encapsulating memory, and I have yet to find the inner kernel. 

Haunt - Illustration Friday Oct.26/2012

Inspired by the Illustration Friday word: Haunt

This time of year, haunt evokes stories of chills and fright, childhood anticipation of Halloween and all its promises of a night where rules were set aside and we could put on a getup in which we would not be recognized and traipse about dark neighbourhoods with our friends knocking on strangers' doors and demanding candy. 

But aside from this seasonal connection, what haunts us? 

For me, what can truly haunt are the breezes created by unspoken words.  Separated from the landscape where they could have been spoken, they hang in the mind, frozen constellations of thought, of connection and communication.  Perhaps at the right time they might have guided us elsewhere as constellations could.  Choked back they shed a cold light and stir up trailing shadows of unheard responses. 

Air - Good Intentions

Connecting with Air.  Surrounded by it.  Supporting life, it will yet not support our weight, so we must find another way to move our intentions beyond our current reach.

this inventive fellow with detachable hands has his good intentions all ready to go, if somewhat hampered by his inexpert handling and clumsiness - some of which might be attributed to his working against himself, having inadvertently reversed his hands after their last maintenance check.  Oh the things that appear in images and all they infer, when I am not paying attention, just drawing, drawing, drawing.  Best thing about the sketchbook.

More thoughts about this image and others on my sketchbook page:  http://www.antostudio.com/sketchbook.html

SCBWI Canada East Ottawa Conference - Getting It Together

In the last days before a conference, just as I'm mulling over what to add or move from my portfolio it happens.  Never enough to take along new things I've done over the past year or so, perhaps some overlooked images that now seem just right to take along, as the time to depart draws near, I am gradually overwhelmed by the mad urge to make something new.  This time is no different.  Suddenly dissatisfied I just KNOW that if I take the time and focus... a new image will be the result.  Definitely worth putting in the portfolio.

Summer, as always, melted away into small cracks of time between the bright mosaic of family time, new vistas and activities away from the drawing board.  Plans to work steadily at new images seeped into these same cracks.  I tell myself they morphed into rich ideas, fertilized by all the new sights and sounds.  I hope so.

A little wiser this time around, I opted to work (mostly) with images I already felt strongly about, seeing if I could make them sing - in colour.

If you'll be at the conference, do wave across the room.  And when you bump into me with my portfolio under my arm, it will be fine if you ask: so what's new?

This week's Illustration Friday challenge word was water  with an accompanying quote by Rabindranath Tagore (not in front of me, so I'll paraphrase to the extent memory allows) to the effect that you cannot cross the ocean by standing and looking at the water.

A desire to be elsewhere, to expand one's horizons, to adventure - so many reasons for stepping in to the water and then figuring out HOW to journey in it, through it, and perhaps finding ease in just being IN the water .

Parenthood is such an adventure - there's no way of knowing what being a parent means until you ARE one.  And even then, you discover more every day. 

And the image, as it's setting is watery, seemed doubly appropriate.  A sketchbook image, the colour layers added with mottled acrylic surfaces scanned and manipulated digitally.

"Burst" Illustration Friday Sept. 14/2012

Inspired by the Illustration Friday word:  "burst" and the quote:
" I was not out to paint beautiful pictures; even painting good pictures was not important to me.  I wanted only to help the truth burst forth"  - Alice Miller

It's been a good while since I was able to make the time to sit with a word and a quote long enough to respond to them properly.  Luckily, this was the week. 

Creating, exploring, how often we feel the blank page blocks us - and yet, even more, having an end in mind when reaching for that paper and pencil will limit what we end up with so much more.

A true idea escapes us, finds its way out into the world, to inspire - or shock - and when it has left, the breeze finds its way in and stirs up long-held beliefs.