Illustration Friday: Immovable

The more I thought about explaining this image, the more tangled my thoughts became. I thought about how these old trees seem immovable, and in someways they are. But this image comes from what is called a "fairy ring." The mother tree was felled and shipped up to help build San Francisco in the 1800's. Daughter trees then grew up around the stump. So while the tree itself was moved, the spirit of the forest remained immovable. For now.

So then I thought about how art is immovable, in that it is a captured moment in time. But as I worked on this image I moved it around (it is 18 x 24) to get to the edges. And I realised that while the image itself may be immovable, our perspective and point of view aren't static. This drawing looks just fine rotated 90 degrees.

Is the world then in constant flux? Was Einstein right--it is all relative?

Illustration Friday: Atmosphere

I'm trying to get back to drawing--but it has been hard. Many many changes. The most recent is that I will be homeschooling my son this year using a Virtual Academy. So I've joined a homeschooling group that has regular park days as a way to deal with the big "socialization" question. One of things I've noticed is that the atmosphere in a homeschooling group is very different. We meet in a park with a stream running through it. The kids usually spend some time on the play ground just getting oriented, but then they head off into the woods to explore the world around them. Getting wet and dirty is just part of the learning process.