Layers, Ripples, Echoes

Layers

We wear layers on a daily basis. We adjust them to every occasion. We mask our desires, we cover our sorrows, sheath our nakedness. Over time we gain more and more layers, they become thicker, difficult to change, sometimes even impossible to remove. Time equips us with a thick skin, builds a shell around us. Experience sometimes makes the thick shell as brittle as a egg shell, fragile and labile as a snowflake, it is dissolving in the blink of an eye and leaving us naked, vulnerable to everything what life brings to us.

Ripples

Everything we do, leaves a mark. Every action we take sets our surroundings in motion, changes them. We leave imprints, traces of ourselves. We change ourselves and we change others.

Echoes

All what we do, comes back to us. Shouting comes back as whispering, whispering comes back as sough . We want to be heard, but our words come back to us, bounces off empty walls. Better this than silence, is it not? Is it?

I have to admit that what I like most about creating is the process itself. I do not like, when the work is finished. It's rarely gives me actual satisfaction, much more often – some kind of relief.
I really like to drag the process along as long as possible. I like to change my mind in the process, to erase, dissolve, re-draw it. I like the sheer dynamism of the work. I often spoil promising drawing
because of this. I just can't help myself!

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I lose myself so much in the process that I stop thinking about basics like: proportion, perspective, golden division or good composition. Can I call this the joy of creation? Or perhaps the mindlessness of creation?

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I devoted yesterday evening and most of today to playing with this drawing. I started without any plan, which is odd to me, I usually have a general idea in my head. No. Not this time!
Today I let myself get carried away by my subconscious.

I started with an 'F' pencil to sketch the general outline of the first figure, then I worked mainly with a black 'toma' pen, in the meantime using solvent and continuing with the pen. To bring the first figure to the foreground I added a darker background and I used a white gel pen to emphasise the light falling on specific parts of the body.

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I changed the concept a few times during the work, but this can be seen quite easily in the pictures. It was only at the end that the words 'layers', 'shadows', 'reflections', 'circles' started to pop into my head.

I wish you a good weekend,
yours
Strega Azure

Drawing & pics are my authorship if not stated otherwise, all rights reserved @strega.azure ©
I used pencil 'F', black superfine pen 'Toma, white gel-pen 'Gelly Roll 08 Sakura, and dissolvent.