bus doodles

[egypturnash]

A little late getting on my way home. A little strange in my doodles.


I think I'm getting a little homesick. I keep on doing these little flourishes that remind me of nothing so much as the ironwork found in the French Quarter, as well as many other parts of New Orleans. This might be a self-portrait without glasses, might not be. And if I do it in AI, I might just add the glasses in.

You can't really see it in the tangle of lines, but there are some lines across the figure that actually suggest where the edge of the cast light in the BG would go across her! A rarity for me nowadays.


Same design as the ethereal snake I drew around me in this self-portrait, but not necessarily the same one. In fact, it's rather definitely not the same one:



I was a little leery of doing this, since the last time I did an internal dialogue on paper, Twin ended up eating Peganthyrus. No, seriously, I've stopped being a dragon now, I'm just... whatever. Some of these drawings of me work, some do not. So, yeah, now there's a giant pink ethereal cobra with bedroom eyes who may or may not be some aspect of myself. Who doesn't talk, and can light herself on fire. And doesn't want to actually talk, just to cuddle. Okay. Sure. I also may or may not have a naked singularity for a spirit guide, so why not?

I worry that I sound crazy when I draw things like this. It's metaphor and play, but there's also some level of truth to it because it just comes from deep under the conscious mind - I draw lines, they turn into something, sometimes something very curiously meaningful to me.

Comments

[slinky-treecat.livejournal.com]

Doesn't sound crazy to me.. more that your creativity is hooking directly into your non-concious areas and bringing them to your attention. I've had that kind of experience myself.. like shortly after I 'killed' Slinky, my fursona, off I drew this (http://www.furnation.com/Murphy-Mee/images/bestof/colour/days_go_by_b.jpg) while listening to 'Days Go By' on a loop. This is sort of where my 'Oncewas' identity came from.. sort of a ghost of Slinky emerging as my muse. But.. I've moved on since then and I'm just me now. Or I am until my muse tells me otherwise anyway. *chuckles*

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

This cobra's been around for... most of a year, it turns out. Since before Twin had any existance, unless I get into stranger metaphorical territory. I may not be a dragon any more but I still seem to be slithery and a little reptillian.

Interesting that this snake refuses to be named, too.

[slinky-treecat.livejournal.com]

The feline in my drawing doesn't have a name either.. I came up with 'Oncewas' as a shortform of 'once was Slinky.' My muse, if that is my muse, doesn't have gender or sex but does have a strong sense of sexuality. *blinkies* Don't ask me.. I've no idea how that works either. *chuckle*

I hope you get to learn more about your inner serpent and that she can teach you about yourself as well. :)

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

She's going to have to do any teaching through mime, it seems. I dunno.

Also, um, yeah, I do understand being genderless and unsexed but still being sexual. Twin's unsexed and very sexual, though (she)'s got a gender.

Sometimes I wonder if I'm becoming my own muse....

[slinky-treecat.livejournal.com]

...also, I love how you're drawing her open hood so that it suggests human hair. That really adds a lot of personality to her, especially in the first drawing. Nice. ^_^

[kiala.livejournal.com]

You have a gift for being able to put your inner self to paper.. PV seems to be able to dive right into the human mind, anylizing things and fixing them, as if she were a programmer.. How I long to be able to explore myself in such ways..

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

Sometimes I wish I didn't<'i> have this weird self-examination going on. I dunno; I think everyone who tells stories has snippets of the characters speaking directly to them, especially visual storytellers.

If I was going through these changes when I was a teen, I'd still be doing some of the work in my sketchbook. It just wouldn't look as good. n.n

[rtdn.livejournal.com]

my inner spirit guide totem animal is a tiger with bad teeth and a steam engine for inner workings.

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

Hey, if it works for you, it works. And that's what matters. Maybe it's just a way to personify and listen to parts of your consciousness that don't normally get to speak, maybe it's something more. Pretty much any reference I make to mystic metaphors of my internal processes is 'ha ha only serious' - on some levels it's humor and exaggeration, but on other levels, it's a truth.

[higginsdragon.livejournal.com]

That's actually rather nifty. I wish I could artistically articulate my subconscious as well as you can. Most of the time I'm not even sure what I'm looking for. Though I suppose that's why this sort of thing is subconscious. More accurately, I guess I'm not even sure what I'm supposed to do to draw it out. :)

[cobaltie.livejournal.com]

I've wondered that too. Been very tempted, but I don't ride home in a bus. That is, there's not a consistent part of the day when I'm not doing anything else. So I distract myself in other ways instead.

Sudden flashes of inspiration I can get, but rambling inner monologues would be very curious.

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

Going through dramatic change and needing to process it helps a lot on drawing it out. This isn't the result of deep-sea fishing in my mind, this is stuff that's come up from its thrice-sealed vaults because the stars are right... me attempting to interrogate this soul-snake is nothing compared to what happened a week ago.

It's mostly a matter of having sufficient skill to draw relatively effortlessly., so that you can have a hope of keeping up with the internal dialogue.

[queenofstripes.livejournal.com]

I can offer absolutely nothing to assist with the homesickness.

[eselgeist.livejournal.com]

to my eyes, you draw her as a constrictor, which i think is charming. as well as the dialogue.

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

Yeah, some kinda cobra/constrictor hybrid. An amalgam snake. Or maybe just a snake of little visual research. Stuff like this... I just draw, I don't worry about it making sense.

apt and yap

[eselgeist.livejournal.com]

re: research, i know how you mean re: research.

my inner geek is all like, "the cobra hood is not a permanent display.. it's only for when the animal is feeling threatened to bluff the target into thinking it's bigger than it actually is."

but then, the inner artist is all like, "nothing says 'cobra' like seeing the flared hood, so shut up"

plus, having a critter that's both constantly cuddly and constantly threatened is intersting, itself. cobras naturally alter their silhouettes, playing with the illusion of shape to evoke an illusory menace of something suddenly larger. which is funny since it's the poison you have to watch out for ^_^

[rainwing.livejournal.com]

Am I seeing the hair done up in the first one into rolls? It's very pretty. Love to see you on costuming binges.

Annnd.. as for the cobra, if she's not vestiges of Kalinda going off in a new direction, then.. I've got this theory about dickgirls and their flaming trousersnakes. ;}

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

The intent for the hair on that first one was accents of longer, loose strands, but I could see it as being rolls, too. I love the fact that my sketches are so open to interpretation sometimes. If I color it I might go with that reading, especially if it turns out to not be a self-portrait.

Kalinda was never really more than a different shape for Peganthyrus. Exact same attitudes, different IC backstory. Um... I'm really glad my trouser snake is not that long. Although there's an image I'll have to hunt up the reference to when I get home...

Ineffably Cute

[acertaindoebear.livejournal.com]

yes indeed, Twin & the Pink snake indeed.

When I see the snake, I am thinking of Dharma for some reason. Or the tiger Hobbes.

Doing those 'drawn conversations', have you tried them before in your life (besides from the one where Twin recapitulated Peggy)? I used to, when bored in College, just draw panels onto some paper and scribble up characters and see what they would say to one another...

I wish I could remember an online comic that I saw, where this guy, as an experiment, wrote like 13 'issues', where he, at the same time as explaining how sequential art works, he created characters, a storyline, self-referentialism, breaking of the 4th wall...using flash too, so I'd get to a point where he'd be talking about time travel and I'd click on a panel and that panel would move up to the beginning and the comic would change...

Yes, how vague I am -:)

Re: Ineffably Cute

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

Dharma? A pink feminine snake makes you think the basic principbles of the universe? I must be missing something here...

I haven't really tried this sort of thing before, no. Not in any even vaguely-significant way - a lot of my sketchbook in high school was taken up by comics I made up on the fly, but they were never about my internal landscape, just silliness. I could never have imagined delving into my internal landscape back then; I kept it pretty much locked up tight because it was full of buried angst and horror over my father's recent unexpected death.

Some people are suggesting I should sit down and ask this snake what she's here for - but I don't think she'd enlighten me. Not in any direct way, at least.