A Bit of Creative Play

Hello again!

I took a break this week from scrapping family and kids, and instead pulled out my own scrapbook/art journal/miscellaneous dumping ground album and started playing. The first page I’d actually begun a couple of weeks ago, but had put aside, what with the busyness of school beginning + Mike’s birthday + starting part-time work. (I’d forgotten the sheer bliss of pulling on tracky pants after a day of work :) ) But a child-free day or two gave me the chance to get down and play. Here ‘tis:

This page came about after reading “The Voice of Hope”, by Aung San Suu Kyi, the Burmese pro-democracy leader and Nobel Prize winner. (Sorry, I still don’t know how to do links. Google her - she’s astonishing and will make you proud to be female. Or wish you were ;) ) I was so struck by her passion, intelligence, gentleness, humour and wisdom, that I felt prompted to put together a visual reminder for myself of something she wrote that really resonated with me:

            “Fearlessness may be a gift, but perhaps more precious is the courage acquired through endeavour, courage that comes from cultivating the habit of refusing to let fear dictate one’s actions.”

The reason I love this so much is that it makes living fearlessly possible for anyone. It’s easy to look at someone like her and marvel, assuming she’s just somehow got it all together naturally, or that it all comes easily to her. Not a bit! She strips away the mystique – and the excuses – and chalks it up to choice. Fearlessness is a choice, or better yet, a lifestyle of daily choices. As a naturally fairly timid person, I find that inspiring! After all, if she, with the very real threat of arrest, imprisonment, torture and oppression can choose to live fearlessly, so can we all. Heady stuff.

The second page is also related to Aung San Suu Kyi’s book – that, and the book I read prior to it, Friedrich Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil. You’d be hard pressed to find two more different outlooks on life! Interestingly though, they both touched on the theme of ‘greatness’, with (unsurprisingly) very different views. I thought I’d have a go at representing it visually, and came up with this:

I started off trying to show contrast with colour, but it was just too busy – especially with so much text. So I played around for a bit, and found that keeping the format similar for both halves actually emphasised the contrast in theme and pictures; less obviously, perhaps, but I thought more effectively overall. It’s been ages since I tried to sketch anything, so I felt pretty rusty. I did have trouble getting the proportions right, so eventually, when it occurred to me this was meant to be fun, not tear-inducing, I just traced the outer outline. (Note to self: next time use tracing paper, not vellum) I filled in the detail and shading though, so I think it still counts as my work…

This was fun – and a good reminder to make time to play more often!

Have a wonderful week :)