All posts in Illustration Friday

Painted from a polaroid image taken in an abandoned shopping mall.

Returning schizophrenically to a painterly style for this topic. “Stripes” reminded me of learning calligraphy when I was younger and the tedium of making guidelines. That idea morphed into the reality that so few people use handwriting at all these days, let alone learn fine penmanship. But it’s never too late.

In honor of our 15th Anniversary.

Where this came from is anyone’s guess. Could be seeing “The Help” ( a movie I begrudgingly attended but ended up liking a lot…although I wanted to throw my popcorn at the screen during several scenes). Add to that images conjured up when I let the topic roll around in my brain for a while and then try not to overthink what spills out.

Okay so maybe I always think of compulsion when I think of obsession. And maybe I do that uncontrollably. It’s a good thing I can stop whenever I want.

I tried to keep this week’s illo all about nature and flowers and stuff, as befitting the standard definition of perennial, but the events of this week in Norway prompted a more serious response. In fact I’ve been a little depressed all week because of it. So forgive the “loose” interpretation, but sometimes it seems human beings are bound and determined to self destruct—violent extremism rearing its ugly head as reliably as the weeds returning to my backyard every spring.

An animated GIF designed for the Illustration Friday topic “Gesture”. See the piece in action here.

An animated GIF that you can see in all its glory here.