Grief cards and beauty

 I had made a note to myself to try three new grief card designs out, and so I kept on keeping on. This is a new one, which simply says, healing happens slowly.

I reminds me that it can take very long time to 'recover' to be settled and feeling right again. That the cloak of grief can cover us for a very long time.

I wondered again if I could simply leave the words, with no illustration, but felt that I probably couldn't. Especially as I seem to print the words at the bottom of the page leaving a great big space begging for something!

I tried to think my way through images of time passing slowly. For a non drawer and pretend illustrator I need to keep things really simple. I was a bit taken by the idea of an hour glass and set about working out if I could do an illustration that could work.

My answer to myself was - well not really.

So it was back to dreaming about or thinking about something that might feel right. I wondered about a series of stems with tiny green shoots or leaves gradually getting taller until they became tall and filled with flowers. That kind of represented the slow process of growing and healing but I wasn't sure I could work out how to do it well.

And then I started to get the sense of a bunch of flowers, but also a horizontal flow of green leading to it. I have no better way of explaining it, but in the end, that is what I went with.

Works in progress... I promise I did the stems for the other flowers in the one on the bottom left!

I have one more grief card design to ponder but think I have done enough for now.

In other news, I was taken by the bright beauty of these flowers as I tried out a new setting on my phone's camera.

As I was making my black ink plate into grey by adding white to it and rolling and rolling, I stopped just in time to capture this fabulous abstract art.

And in another moment of serendipity, I managed to capture these magical shadows on the work bench through the week. The sun going this and way and that through and against one of my grief is a stone sculptures - just stunning. I think it is a shadow and a reflection of the shiny metal.