Follow Your Heart

I spent all of Wednesday in a hotel visiting with my friend of 27 years and her family, cramming as much as possible into that visit before wishing them a safe journey as they travel on to Cairo for the next 3 years. I paid for it with both my nose and my tail scraping the pavement all day, but it was well worth it and I count myself blessed to have the friends I have. All of them, old and new.

Marcus, pencil sketch - week 1

It wasn’t a completely unproductive day, today, though. I managed to practice a bit of pencil sketching. I’ve been following Jessica “Neon Dragon” Peffer’s instructions from DragonArt Fantasy Characters. The book’s focus is animated characters, rather than real life portraiture, but because she simplifies everything from full body to eyes, ears, and even noses, I find it an easy format to follow.

I’ve also noticed, just in the last few days, that I see the world around me quite differently from before. It’s a little disconcerting, like some mathematical problem that I must deconstruct and work through to solve. My mind breaks complex images down into basic shapes where they begin to make sense, and then it becomes easier to translate them to paper. 3D aspects are still very puzzling, eyes are difficult to duplicate with much precision, and ears remain a total mystery to me. But, hey, yanno, it looks like a human face. Good ’nuff.

For now anyhow.

I’m late for bed, but I wanted to share this: if there’s something you want to do (murder and mayhem most emphatically excluded here), you should go for it. At least try it for a while to learn whether or not it suits you and don’t EVER let anyone — good intentions or bad — try to stop you.

May there be pencil smudges in your dreams tonight.

Ta!