"Influence" Illustration Friday Challenge Aug. 19/2011

Inspired by the Illustration Friday Quote:
"In the beginning you must subject yourself to the influence of Nature. You must be able to walk firmly upon the ground before you start walking on a tightrope" - Henri Matisse.

As a child, you can't help but be influenced by Nature if your summer mornings begin with the door closing behind you, the decided click of a hook-and-eye closure snapping into place above your reach and your mom saying " Make sure you can hear me when I call you for lunch". With 500 acres to explore, there were times we didn't hear her...

As the end of summer felt closer and closer, we crammed days full of things we knew we shouldn't be doing - from ooching out of the window of a deserted farmhouse on to a woodshingle roof the day after a rain (I can tell you just how it feels to leave a track as you zoom for the edge of the roof, and the strange feeling of relief knowing a nice, thick tangle of raspberry canes and poison ivy will break your fall) to jumping off the bridge into about 12 feet of rock-strewn water after our mother's car had disappeared around the dusty gravel bend of the road heading to town - I'm amazed now that there were fewer trips to the hospital, and less scolding than we deserved.

"Swell" Illustration Friday Challenge Aug. 12/2011

Inspired by the quote:
"Some days you must learn a great deal. But you should also have days when you allow what is already in you to swell up and touch everything. If you never let that happen, then you just accumulate facts, and they begin to rattle around inside of you." ~ E.L. Konigsburg

Song came to mind first, as something that truly swells up inside of us and touches everything in earshot, but I kept mulling over ideas until I arrived at the expression that a bud swells - flowers do a wonderful job of reaching out and touching everything, with their rich beauty and aroma. I spent part of my summer studying Dutch painting so their masterful reminders of time passing, the still lives with flowers, bugs and various other symbols of the brevity of life suggested what flowers would reach out from the mind of someone taking a day to allow what is already inside to swell up and spill over.

See what's happening on Facebook

Just to round things out, I've created a Facebook page for Aino Anto Illustrations - for all the doodles, paintings, past illustrations and general creative overflow that doesn't belong here or on my website.

Check out what's new on Facebook today, tomorrow, next week ... there will always be something. Facebook: Aino Anto Illustration Thanks for visiting!

Imperfect - Illustration Friday August 5/2011

Inspired by the Illustration Friday quote:
"Imperfection is beauty, madness is genius, and it is better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring". - Marilyn Monroe

I read the quote over and over, an idea tickling the back of my mind like a sneeze that hasn't quite arrived - until today, when it occurred to me that jesters embodied the entire quote.

Often different physically, they dressed to stand out even more; the butt of jokes and the confidants of the powerful; japesters, jokesters, philosophers, mountebanks and scapegoats, they made an art of the ridiculous, found beauty in imperfection and split madness until within they found wisdom. I wonder if Marilyn ever saw herself this way...

Obsession - Illustration Friday July 28/2011

From the Illustration Friday quote:
"Colour is my day-long obsession, joy and torment." - Claude Monet.

Looking at Monet's paintings side-by-side with countless copies, the originals stand out - the subtleties of colour which swallowed Monet whole, that he revelled in, chased, and tried endlessly to commit to canvas, those subtleties are lost in copies.

Instead of copying his paintings, to lose oneself in observation as he did, let us imitate that. Perhaps not to the point of obsession and torment - but how else to grasp at the joy he found in it?