Tag / smiles

by Janet

The Funny Side

Does Anybody Remember Laughter? Robert Plant

I signed up for a fabric designing tutorial recently and the woman who authors the website and videos (Bonnie Christine) offered her readers a free gift – a printable pdf of daily art prompts for the entire year. This morning I decided to mull through it and I thought it would be fun to combine a few of the prompts to create something fun.

In the meantime, I realized that today’s #bloganuary prompt fit in well with my humorous theme: What brings you joy in life?

There are many things that bring me joy, but laughter wins the prize because it’s like a secret weapon. When I was struggling – feeling down and out and completely lost – my friend Gil would always be there, ready to respond to my text messages, and somehow he always managed to make me smile and laugh.

It wasn’t that the laughter removed any hardships that I was experiencing, and it wasn’t like I was trying to pretend that the difficulties weren’t real, it was more about the valuable lesson that I was learning… that hard times and laughter can coexist. And that laughter helps us keep plowing through.

Of course, we also need friends like Gil who take the time to be there for us – and actually make us laugh – so I’d have to say that friendship is right up there as well… tied for first place.

So, the art prompts I chose today were Unicorn, Storefront, and Sale Banner. I thought they made for a funny combo. I’ll tell you one thing though, illustrating a unicorn is no walk in the park. And by the look of things… he better skedaddle quickly before someone snatches his horn!

That’s about all for now. Thanks for reading or checking out my illustration!

-Janet

(love you Gil!)

by Janet

Faceless

“You have to look beyond the face,

To see the person true,

Deep down within my inner space,

I am the same as you.”

“I’ve seen compassion from the blind,

Who think with open eyes.

It’s those that judge me quick you’ll find,

Are those that are unwise.”

—Two excerpts from the poem Faceless, by Benjamin Zephaniah

THOUGHTS ON THE WORD FACELESS

I think we all feel faceless at times. Sometimes it’s a good thing—like when our introversion kicks into overdrive and we want to hide from the world—and we choose to converse behind the anonymity of our computer screen as opposed to getting out for some face to face interactions (GUILTY AS CHARGED!).

Getting out is hard to do right now anyway, thanks to the pandemic, which is another story for another day. But even still, we wear those masks when we leave the house so we’re faceless—to a certain degree—even when we go out!

Which brings me to my next thought on the word faceless. Sometimes feeling faceless is not a good thing, which I tried to portray in my image. It’s like being out in the big city or amongst a crowd, and feeling like you are invisible—or faceless. No one looks at you, or talks to you… nor do they care to. It’s as if they don’t even see you.

My favorite thing to do, as far as socializing, is to sit down and have a one on one conversation with someone. It’s almost impossible to feel faceless when there are only two of you and neither one can ignore the other (except for those annoying cellphones!). Even when I was young I felt like that. If there was a third wheel, or a fourth, or a fifth… it was like I started to fade… and eventually, I was not really there. Even my mind would drift away.

Maybe it’s because people can be loud, fast-talking, and aggressive, and I was never really one to talk loud or interrupt (not while I was sober anyway). So, I’d just start to disappear. I thought there was something wrong with me for years. Then I read about introversion and I was like “OHH… THAT’S WHAT I AM!” So now I know. One on one is good—more than that is exhausting and I’ll just end up fading away and being faceless.

On another note, I don’t think that Zephaniah’s poem has anything to do with either one of the things that I mentioned. His words are more about the inner person vs. the outward appearance, which is extremely important and pertinent these days. It applies to all kinds of things including racism, ageism, and plain old shallowness and ignorance.

Nevertheless, faces are pretty important. We lift our faces to the sky and feel the glorious rays of the sun as they hit our skin, and—best of all—we use our faces to offer smiles to our friends, our family, and to strangers in need.

A warm smile is the universal language of kindness.

—William Arthur Wood

I hope you enjoyed the image and my thoughts on the letter “F!” On another note, when I started this series I was going to do alphabet illustrations for every post, like I did for the letter “A,” and I realized last night that I had forgotten all about that. So… we’ll see what happens for the letter G.

Keep smiling!!

Life: From A to Z.