Healing

Okay...there's quite a bit of stuff that went into this one so let's jump straight to it.

I first drew the image on the left in the last few weeks of 2010 and, suffice to say, I wasn't exactly in the best frame of mind during that time. It wasn't until after I had finished sketching that card that I realized that drawing was a manifestation of all these different anxieties, fears, worries and confusion that were about to plague my mind in the time to come.

The drawing on the right came to me after I had wrapped up all the stuff with the last convention I went to. A lot of the unpleasant stuff was beginning to get resolved once and for all but what really set the wheels in motion were the concept of "cover-up" tattoos. The kind of tattoos that covered up any scars, wounds and bruises of past injuries, surgeries and any other traumatic experiences. The idea that you could ink a permanent symbol of a new beginning onto you really inspired something within me so I went straight to work on the more recent drawing.

I've also really been itching to try some more experimental methods with my artwork and thought this would be a good place to start. The border is comprised of colored gift wrap tissue paper with half of it stained with tea. In a perfect world, I would have loved to have used actual flower petals but 1) it's winter and flowers aren't exactly blooming right now and 2) the dried ones would crack and fall apart inside the scanner.

A piece of this nature can only be therapeutic to work on and indeed it was. For the record, I'm feeling a lot better and while there are still little threads to be resolved, it's not causing me any anxiety or reason to panic.

On a technical note, there's a lot of things here that I'm really happy with in terms of coloring and blending.