It's like coming home ...

P4C-427 Great Room Sketch

Despite there being so much wrong with it, I'm honestly thrilled with this little sketch of mine, because it is recognizably a room I wasn't standing in at the time.  It's part illustration, part "story board" sketch and part getting back into the swing of something that left my life a long, long time ago.  Art. Or I should say something I left behind me that I'm just now welcoming back?

Even more interesting is that this was a huge leap for me, from paper and implements of drawing, to a tablet computer and taking art to a whole new place for me. When last I was near art school, I could "see" in my minds eye, the day when one could just draw directly onto a computer screen like it was paper, and that is exactly what this is.  That day I envisioned more than two decades ago is now as real and present as my keyboard while I type this.  Mind you all those years ago when I "saw" that day in my minds eye?  Folks told me I was crazy.  Whose crazy now I wonder?

For those of whom have never been to this room, while there is everything wrong with this drawing, at the same time it is still recognizably a room, drawn by a human hand. My hand.  It is still clearly a representation of a place, with a sense of space, depth and substance, not just mindless squiggles on paper.  It is clearly something drawn by hand, not painted with a mouse on a screen.

For me, it's new freedom.  For me it's growth, and evolution of a medium without taking away what makes me an artist.  It's just another tool of expression.  That it is all virtual, inside a computer stored as electrons?  That doesn't both me near as much as even I'd have thought, or at all.  In fact, it's a certain amount of additional freedom.  Because I know that should I choose to do so, I could print this onto paper, or velum, or whatever media I can put through a printer.  So I don't need to spend lots of money and room on art supplies I cannot realistically justify right now.

For me, this means despite not having really drawn anything in more than 2 decades, I've not lost the hand or the eye for it.  Sure I'm rusty, but I can still render something I can see in my minds eye into something real, solid, and easy to share with you.  For me, this is a first step back to skills and feelings I'd left so far in my past as to almost having been forgotten.  So this is me, picking up something I'd thought lost to me decades ago.  For me this is exactly like a home coming of sorts.  On more than one level.  This is a room I know well.  A room I've been to many times.  A second home for me, far from the troubles of this tiny little world.

This sketch is of a room I've been to many times.  A safe place, a home, a haven by the sea.  Through the double doors is a balcony and deck that looks out over a sea. Off to the left is a bedroom, my bedroom, with closets and a bathroom, also on the left is a largish open, welcoming kitchen.  To the right, another set of doors out to a larger deck area, and another bedroom and bathroom.  Behind me the front door.  Many an hour I've spent on that deck beyond the doors eating fruit, drinking tea, and watching the sunset into the sea.  This is a place of light, love, warmth and "old world charm" like it might be somewhere on the coast of Italy.

So this is a sketch, drawn by my hand, of a place that feels like, and is, a home.  And being able to once again share with you what my eyes alone have seen?  Well that's a homecoming of a different sort.  I have more than one of my sisters to thank for this post, and the confluence of thought that brings me too it.  But that's for another day me thinks.  For now, this is about home, my home, my heart.  About finding once again something I thought I'd lost.  It's said you can never go home again, but this experience makes me see this is simply not so.  It has been said "home is where the heart is."  My heart in this moment is weaving together different bits of things to share this room you'll probably never stand in, via my ability to freeze moments in time in my minds eye, and then put them on paper.

So it's very much like coming home.  Because despite the fact that the last time I drew anything was more than a dozen years before I'd set foot in the room pictured, I get to share it with you quickly now.  This room?  It's my Polonia, my Bramasole made manifest.  It's a place of my heart.  That I can make it real and share with you is the promise of a light still shining.  It's very now, and very Zen.  It's like coming home ... for me!