Afterword: I continue to struggle to regain my footing, both with drawing and with acrostic poetry composition. The late comic-book writer Denny O’Neil wrote a feature in some comics called “From the Den” and he always ended the column with the fine two-word mantra “Perseverance furthers.” Here’s to that sentiment, and to Mr. O’Neil’s spirit.
My phone’s Camera has photoediting tools and among them is a nifty enhancer called Portrait Blur. It sharpens the focus on the focal point you choose and the further away from the focal point you get the more automatic blurring takes place.
This gave me an idea for an acrostic poem. Since the word Portrait has eight letters, and Blur has four, my acrostic could have four couplets, and the end-rhyme words would have their last letters be the B, L, U and R of Blur. The illustration would be a switcheroo, with the background in shap focus and the face, the Portrait part, all blurry.
Then my thoughts jumped to the notion of adding the word Self, creating a triple acrostic with Portrait in the middle and Self and Blur as bookends. I might then create a blurry self-portrait and have in the background a still Life with a few of my ceramic birds (I have made dozens) in sharp focus. This would yield the nice possibility of it becoming a psychological self-portrait, with the quirky birds as my alter egos.
So here we are in the blissful throes of creation, with a firm foundation for a work of art and a long way to go to reach fruition. One of the phrases I will tag this post with is “creative process.”
If you look at the attached photo you’ll see a placeholder drawing of cotton swabs, which I use to blend pencil marks for shading and will be handy for blurring as well, and a layout of the Self Portrait Blur acrostic with subject-to-change end rhyme words drab, lab, quail, derail,lieu, caribou, sector, and nectar. If I am a sufficiently nimble wordsmith the resulting poem will have a consistent meter and a theme related to “Self-Portrait Blur,” and when read out loud will not seam like an acrostic at all. My confidence that I will be able to do this is sky-high, because in the last eighteen years I have done it hundreds of times.
In the commissary where I work, one priority is Speed. The restaurants want their prepared food, and they want it pronto. They will take Pretty Fast over Pretty every time.
This page is like that. I just had to get it done, and polishing it up would have cost me hours. Other pages will demand finesse; this one does not.
Here is a syrupy, sappy, cartoony glimpse at romantic love. Cupid fires a barrage of love-arrows at a couple who is already kissing. Cupid gets undeserved bragging rights because the love was already there. What a devious creep Cupid can be!
true LOVE real
there’s a sleevéd heart to wear
romance comes for two to share
ultra-laved in buttered shea
eh, laissez entrer le Soleil
I don’t know what Shea Butter is, but it must be good stuff, judging from all the advertising, so I laved. Mostly I needed to rhyme a word ending with A and a word ending in L.
The last line roughly translates from the French as “What the Hell, let the sunshine in.” Cheers!
One with Clay, Image and Text 