Another week; another flimsy excuse. Busy on deadline stuff for brochures and print jobs and such. So... not a lot of time for new creations. This dude to the left was drawn a few years ago, based on someone I saw at a coffee bar earlier in the day.
I was looking for some inspiration for the 'tea' topic and ran across a quote from C.S.Lewis about there being no such thing as a cup of tea too big or a book too long. That reminded me of this guy. I found him, added a little tea string/tab thingie, and there you have it.
I apologize that I haven't gotten around to visiting the blogs of folks I try to check in on weekly. I'm getting to it, albeit slowly.
Peace to everyone. Take it easy on the caffiene intake.
Maybe I wanted to finally be one of the first 100 folks to post for a topic. Maybe it's because I've got to devote this entire weekend to figuring out my taxes. Whatever the reason, I've taken an old photo-illustration I did of my son playing his guitar; when I was checking out various filter/layering/hue-saturation combos.
Anyway, song is very important in this household. Thanks to my wife's musical genes, our son and daughter are extremely talented musically. It's a blessing to be in the room when they're together playing a song. I gotta stop now, before I get all misty-eyed.
Peace to everyone. Put a song in your heart.
A Book of Verses underneath the Bough,
A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread—and Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness—
O, Wilderness were Paradise enow!
Some for the Glories of This World; and some
Sigh for the Prophet's Paradise to come;
Ah, take the Cash, and let the Credit go,
Nor heed the rumble of a distant Drum!
Look to the blowing Rose about us—'Lo,
Laughing,' she says, 'into the world I blow,
At once the silken tassel of my Purse
Tear, and its Treasure on the Garden throw.'
And those who husbanded the Golden grain
And those who flung it to the winds like Rain
Alike to no such aureate Earth are turn'd
As, buried once, Men want dug up again.
-Omar Khayyam (translated by E. Fitzgerald)
Okay, there's my simple Valentine's Day sentiment. Before I went Googling for the exact poem, all I knew was the 'jug of wine, loaf of bread, and thou' business; which I thought was a pretty simple set of needs. I had done most of the work on the illustration already when I looked up the actual words, so I didn't bother to go back and set it 'underneath the Bough,' or amidst 'the blowing Rose.'
You folks more knowledgable than I may have known the whole poem (which goes on quite a ways from where I left off) and the fact that Omar was a Persian poet who lived during the 11th century. Mr. Fitzgerald translated some of his works in the 1800s, and he enjoyed a fair share of posthumous fame. ...Well, maybe you can't actually posthumously enjoy something... but, anyway his poetry was being recited again.
Be nice to your Valentine on Tuesday. If you don't have one, please spread some good will to someone else. Peace to all of you
postscript: Whoa. Just posted to IF, and I see that there are already over 300 entries on the topic... and it's only Sunday morning (in this part of the world). So much art, and so little time to view it all.
Yeah, Blackie the Mutt was more than a little peeved at me for all the coverage the cats got a couple of weeks ago; and nothing more than a mere mention of his doggie door. So a couple of days ago I told him that he would be worked into the next Illustration Friday thing, no matter what the topic was. Silly of me to be promising things to a dog, you think? Especially silly when you realize that he couldn't hear a word I said. He's 12 years old and stone-deaf.
He's been a good pooch all these years. We got him at the SPCA when he was just a few months old. He was a street pup, wandering when they netted him, I guess.
When I read the topic yesterday, I tried to break the news to him... "You're out of luck, unless you can think of an interesting way to include your hairy self in a picture with a chair." He snorted and slumped off to the other room, only to reappear minutes later, bringing my great-grandfather's chair in much the same manner you see here. Well, maybe not exactly... he can't really stand on only one leg... At least not long enough for me to sketch him.
Oh, and the chair... It belonged to my great-grandfather, Claus, who immigrated to the U.S. from Germany in the 1870s, sailing aroung the horn of South America with four brothers. They landed in San Francisco and settled first in Half Moon Bay, where there was a small enclave of German immigrants. They eventually made their way south, to the Salinas Valley and beyond.
I don't think the chair came with Claus from Germany, but it is a cherished possession, nonetheless.
Anyway, I've included photos of the chair, and, of course, of the black and tan dog. Peace to everyone.
