“Take nothing but pictures, leave nothing but footprints.” Motto of the Baltimore Grotto, a Maryland caving club founded in 1952
Tread Marks
Toes press macadam
Rabbit tracks weave amongst the flora
EXIT signs illumine dusty footprints on the floor
And Every One of us has left our mark
Defining a path through Darkness
Rest in peace, Harold Price Bowers, Sr.
1 9 3 3 – 1 9 8 3
Inktober prompt: “Sling.” There are many types of Slings. Slings might support a broken arm or enable the hoisting of an air conditioner or, as with David the shepherd, smite and slay an enemy. I found in my research, though, that the sling slung over Michelangelo’s David’s shoulder didn’t look like any of the weaponry slings found in my Internet search.nor does my drawn slingshot much resemble anything being marketed online.
I was tempted to draw the “Sling of David” anti-missile and -drone weaponry created by Raytheon for the State of Israel, but there’s too much deadly force on this page as it is.
Here’s a look at the megapage my subpage is on. If I did it well, there is three-part harmony here.
Peace/Salaam/Shalom be unto you, Friends.
Gearloose
Many team-ups don’t go off ° Maybe cringing maybe scoff
If you are illuminati ° Instinct says: Avoid John Gotti
So it is with gears to shift ° Some we must assign short shrift
ornAMENt
osmiCosmos makes us gleam
ring surrounds a worthy scheme
nest-in-spun-gold regimen
amplifies sweet Sentiment
The prompt for today is Wild, so the drawing style is scribbly and there’s a full moon. Shadowy, stealthy stuff is happening. The artist didn’t stay within the lines. The Beast.
Wild Life
We oft leave Comfort for Thrill
Itch to grow claws & folliculi
Long for Jehovah teed off
Deliver us an Evil Spree
First off, apologies to John Legend. I was sketching you, John, but the unforgiving ink snuck in a generous portion of Steve Harvey. This is a misfire, John. You don’t look like this. I will do a better portrait of you, John, when I go back to pencil.
The three-liner of an acrostic poem includes an inside joke that only one person on Earth will “get.” And we will keep it that way.
Leg/End
Legend: Airy Vivienne
Entered–Gary said amen
Got a Fairy Tale? Hit Send
Long ago, in a century adjacent to our own, I put food on the table of my tiny family by creating, enhancing, and updating Excel spreadsheets for a hospital system known then as Samaritan Health Services. They paid me about three times what I am making now, and in more-potent 20th-century dollars. Nevertheless, I sleep better at night now than I did then. Part of that insomnia was due to Imposter Syndrome, part was Breadwinner’s Burden, and part was the inability to forget about the job in my off-hours. But now I think of that time as vital and productive, and I’m grateful for the insight it gave me into the labyrinthine workings of the financial side of “healthcare.” I did this page with a generous dose of nostalgia.
Spread Sheets
Suspend a disbelief the Moo-cow moos • Present a spirit willing in the flesh • Repeal the laws that make us always lose • Encapsulate a Babe & build a creche • And THEN you’ll pass this arbitrary test • Designed to turn your whole notes into rests
No poem today, Friends, but a few “making of” notes. The prompt is Overgrown, and it made me think of a big baby, and then a baby impossibly big, and then the worst parenting chore made even worse. So I found royalty-free stock images of a seated, diapered baby and a forklift. (A crane would be more useful but less visually feasible.) Drew everything with a ultra-fine tipped pen that was running out of ink. Scanned and realized the midtones needed to be darkened to the fullest extent of the law, but that would destroy the pleasing midgray of the sketchbook surround, so I made a copy of the image and darkened it in MS Office 2010, then went to Paint and manually fixed up the lettering some and then copied the page area only, then while still in Paint opened the original and pasted the page interior, which effectively erased the wishy-washy original drawing but preserved the gentle background.
Simple truth: tobacco destroys healthiness.
If you smoke, you have my sympathy. It is harder to kick the smoking habit than the heroin habit, hands down. But please try. It is a fine gift for your lovers, family, friends, and YOURSELF to stop.
There’s all kinds of help out there, too. You’ll be amazed what shows up when you do a search on “help with quitting.”
Love and good luck, my friend. And if you’re thinking “I will when I’m ready,” news flash: You are ready NOW.
The word “Privet” appears quite early on in the Harry Potter books, and since it was used for the name of a street, I for one never learned exactly what it meant. I looked it up recently and am freshly impressed by Rowling’s delicious slyness:
It seems like that is a perfect name for a street for the Dirsleys to be living on.
My triple acrostic is “Saving Privet Dragon.” The odd net of the words to the poem are a silly attempt at that salvation. Sillier still was an earlier idea, which I’m sure has been done before, of dressing a dragon in a kimono for “Kimono Dragon.”
