Scrawl

As part of my proposal for the remainder of the semester, I said I would write for at least two hours about my experience being pregnant (so far), in order to document some things I don't want to forget, but also to go a little further in exploring my feelings and thoughts during this unique time of my life.

I did write for 2+ hours, and am so glad I did. The long-ish time period compelled me to dig deep for material. When I slowed down, I found myself exploring some ideas that were more difficult and personal. As a result, I felt that the writing was really too personal and special (almost... sacred) to share on the internet (no offense, comrades). So I created this entry that both presents and obscures what I wrote, by superimposing the ten pages of handwritten text. After considering bringing out some words or phrases that I was willing to share, I decided to allow the whole thing to remain sort of veiled and coded, and to exist as one big, shrouded visual form. That is how I feel about the experience of pregnancy, sometimes -- that it is really too special to explain, document, or translate. But everyone always tries anyway, me included.

For the other two entries, I extracted a couple of phrases that are less intimate, but still significant to me. I made some quick (less than 30 min. each) sketches from those, and that's what the other two entries are about.

Tantrum

This image is blowing my mind right now and I had to share it because it is just so wild. I had an ultrasound this week and the technician captured this image of our baby looking like she is screaming in anguish!! (Fortunately they said she was likely just yawning.) There are also plenty of her looking like the most angelic thing on the face of the earth, but obviously those aren't as haunting.

Family

This is a sketch for a painting I'd like to do. It takes me about two weeks to finish an illustration of this size with acrylic, so I just created the sketch this week. I think the composition is almost there, although I want to play with the framing and the white space on the left, and I'm mostly happy with the characters. Some of the positions of the characters will be tweaked.

The footprints in the snow (on the left) are there to make it clear that they're a family and they came from the same house.

recto/verso

I thought making a thaumatrope to include in my visual journal would be a neat way to address this week's recto/verso prompt. It also uses some superimposing, like we were working with last week. I'd never successfully made a thaumatrope, and I don't know if this one is particularly successful either, but what can I say? That's part of exploring, I guess.

I used a bird-in-egg metaphor to speak to my journal theme. One side of the thaumatrope is the egg, and the other is the baby bird:
































And here's a video of it in action, for what it's worth. I slowed it way the hecks down but it's still really hard to see... if you look closely you can see the bird inside the egg, but it becomes so faint as the thaumatrope gets faster.

Little girls

This week, responding to prompts related to field effect and open/closed forms, I did this black and white illustration of little girls on a playground. In addition to having children and babies on the brain right now, I'm inspired by some related things going on my life -- things like buying a house surrounded by countryside, in a small town full of beautiful parks and playgrounds for kids.

I originally sketched this composition with graphite and then rendered it Illustrator, going for a chalk-on-asphalt look.