Friday, June 24, 2011

A Love Story- a playful tale


Everyone loves a love story, especially when it's an unlikely match, like the one between Banana and Pear.
But who could resist his appeal? And even though she was a Bartlett and he was from south of the border, they became an inseparable pair.
That is until that fateful night when the paring knife stepped in. She was pickled when he lost his skin!
If this tale leaves you with a bad taste in your mouth, read on to be shaken even more.
After much turbulence, Banana and Pear were smoothly blended, but left behind a little Ginger.
(Any resemblance to a true incidence is purely coincidental.)
After doing a 20 minute pencil sketch of the two lovers, this story appeared in my mind. It should be read by candlelight to set the proper mood.


Monday, June 20, 2011

What do you see when you look at a pear?


What do you see when you look at a pear?
The pear for this sketch came from Argentina. Before I drew it, I held it in my hands, closed my eyes and sat quietly running my finger tips around the shape; feeling the smooth skin, the curves that dipped and bulged, the woody stem at the narrow end of the pear.
Than with eyes still closed, I held the pear to my heart and transferred the image that I experienced by touching the pear, into an image that I "saw" in my heart. I saw within the pear the seed that I knew to be in its center, and the fleshy fruit surrounding the seed. Than in my imagination, I took the pear back to the tree in Argentina where it had grown. A vast pear grove spread out before me on a sunny hill in the foothills of some mountains in Argentina. There was a breeze rustling the leaves of the tree as the pickers were gathering the fruit from the trees and placing them gently into baskets. Than going back in time I saw the pear as a blossom on the tree before it grew from its seed into a fruit. Going back further still I reversed time as the tree transformed in stages from a mature tree into a young sapling, and finally into a seed that was planted into a pot of soil by a pear farmer, whose vision it was to grow an orchard of pear trees brimming with fruit for the picking.
After 5 minutes of this visualization, I was ready to pick up my pencil and sketch my pear in front of me. The first thing that I drew were the seeds that I couldn't see, and from there I "fleshed" out the pear shape, the shadow and the negative space around it. For 10 minutes I sketched this traveler from Argentina which had transformed through many processes and been touched by many hands before it came to my hands. It's odd shape among the pile of pears in the grocery store caught my eye. Before I saw it, there was already a pear in my mind waiting to be discovered-so now it has come to fruition.
What do you see when you look at a pear?

Thursday, June 16, 2011

Zoe Meets Confucius


See a collection of my original art, along with inspirational quotes in my newly published book. Preview selected pages from my 38 page book, and feel free to leave a comment. I love feedback.
I hope that these pages will be a delightful experience, and that you'll come back again.