I was very excited to see this week’s Steemit Vision Quest theme, both because I’ve been itching to do some art, and because it fell in line with a lot of things I’ve been feeling for a while.
Artistically, I started with a basic sketch done in fountain pen and began layering on inks with my brush pens. I use Canson Watercolor paper because of the liquidity of the ink plus the water brushes I use for blending, it is thick enough to avoid bleeds.
After layering the blues, I began to work in some black ink to darken it up and work more with my fountain pen for details.
To finish, after the inks had dried, I began to dot in some stars with a white charcoal pencil.
I chose a standing stone, in homage to the Celtic people, who created structures like Stonehenge and the circles at Avebury. Those stones have been marking time and the passage of seasons accurately for thousands of years now, and between the neolithic stature, and the rotations of the skies above us, we get a sense of our place in the universe, a larger perspective — something I feel many today are in desperate need of. So many times we get wrapped up in the bills, the lists, the drudgery of work, the anxiety of being “just so” around others, the distraction of our tablets (and I am no exception to this), and we forget we were made by a divine, Great Creator for more than what we’ve alotted ourselves. We were made to love, to connect, to breathe, to feel, to LIVE joyously, triumphantly, humbly in this present moment.
What are we building, with our phones and bills and “dating-but-not-dating” sort of connections? Is our love and legacy going to stand eons from now like these rocks that remain a testament to the awe-inspired ancestors who looked up and saw God’s fingerprints among the stars?
Look up.
Look. Up.
“Come see the world the Creator has made!” (Pima Indian prayer)