Art Every Day: Q is for Quiet

Day 17

I am a writer. I make my living with my words. I play word games, solve word puzzles, read read and read, and I talk. What this means is that there is usually a lot of noise and conversation in my head. Grabber headlines, witty closings, captions, rhyme schemes, paragraphs and voices wake me up at night.

Not when I am drawing. One of the things I noticed, almost from the beginning is how quiet my inner world becomes when the colors come out. All I get are some occasional (and very polite) directions - a little darker here, the edge is a beautiful curve, more blue under the red. This is a place I want to be more and more often.

I have really been enjoying looking at the work of other artists in this challenge. I have noticed that some people are creating mandalas. I have done a few in the past, as part of lessons I teach combining art and math and technology. I think that a mandala is a fine reflection of the idea of a quiet space.

I found this orchid image I drew from a lesson in a colored pencil book years ago. I brought this into Photoshop and turned it (literally) into a mandala.