03/17/2020
"Joy is amazing. It is so amazing that it doesn't matter if it's yours or not."
I have been reading books from the Dalaï Lama and other famous buddhist monks recently and I am learning that joy, like covid and laughter, is highly contagious. Did you know? One of them was an audiobook: The Book Of Joy with Desmond Tutu as well. The Dalaï Lama was laughing and making jokes all the time and I just had a big smile on my face for the whole 9 hours. It was a blast and I am ready to listen to it again already!
🌻So let's keep on smiling with bright eyes as much as we can. We might just light up someone's else day, even if it is only on social media for the next few weeks.🌻
I've been into quotes lately. I've been meaning to introduce text with my illustrations to add another layer and play with letter shapes. But find that I am not very good at expressing my emotions with words these days so I will borrow words from others for now.
This quote is from the British TV show After Life. It might be the best TV show I've watched in 2019. Every episodes made me cry AND laugh with profusion (I also did cry because of laughter but that was not as common). Warning though, British humor is, well..., what it is.
About the illustration itself: I am still experiencing the white page syndrome these days so one tactic that I've put in place it to start something either abstract or mindless, but that is still good for me to practice just to improve. So on this one, I started with a stippled color gradient. Once again, during an insomnia, I was like "Eureka! I'll put petals around it and I'll have a flower!" This situation is becoming quite the usual... And so bim-bam-boom: gradient + petal + quote = you get this sunset joy.
The lesson that I am still trying to learn: after over 100 drawings on my Ipad, I can't stop myself from using a high resolution for my files (because you never know!) and so I can zoom a lot... I get lost in details and intricacies. The gradient could have much bigger dots and still look good.
If you want to check out these details I am talking about, you can swipe, I added some zoomed in pictures.
Stay safe out there 🌸 @ Portland, Oregon
