c. Susan Sorrell Hill
The Illustration Friday word of the week is storm.
That tempest in the heart, that storm in the head…have you ever felt it? It’s an agony of indecision, a quandary of impossible choices: should I paint this way or that way, choose this one or that one, spend it here or there, move now or later, do this or that? It’s a pain that starts slow, like a migraine twinge, and builds to a frenzy. Any decision in question seems so very consequential, almost life-threatening.
These words look so calm, so benign here on my screen, like amusing ‘postcards from the edge.’ But the experience is a miserable one, and it always shakes my confidence to the core. It’s an experience that illustrates in living (black and blue?) color that expression, “Down here without a map.” Lost, lost, dreadfully lost. And time is going by! If you’ve been to this particular dreary destination yourself, you know what I’m talking about.
Fortunately, like any storm in Nature, this furious energy eventually reaches its apex and begins to dissipate. Like Dorothy and her tornado in The Wizard of Oz, I am deposited on solid ground once more. The still, small voice is again accessible, and a path, however faint, reappears before my weary feet. I have noticed that Surrender can look a lot like exhaustion.
Next time, I promise myself to remember sooner: Sometimes I just don’t know…can’t know in advance. Realizing that calms the storm.
Above: Storm (watercolor, pen & ink, gouache, colored pencil)
Right: Of Two Minds (watercolor, pen & ink)
c. Susan Sorrell Hill
Nope, can’t relate at all, especially that part with the migraine twinge, or a full blown migraine for that matter. (Which is obvious cynicism for those who missed it.) It seems to me that if we were all more honest about the struggles we have in our lives, the less everyone else would be pretending that this stuff isn’t going on in their lives too. But whatever the internal angst, you still produce beautiful things and say things that speak to me. Thanks for sharing!!
Couldn’t agree more about the need for sharing the relevant bits of our ‘real’ lives. Isn’t that kind of the point of the whole blogging world, anyway? Not just more “Hey, I’m doing f-a-n-t-a-s-t-i-c!! The world already has way too much plastic and impossible-to-achieve models of Perfection…
Hey
Love those feet on that tree, it’s a really emotive piece. the body language, the way the tree is huddled – we can all put ourseleves in that place. see you 
Thanks, Andrew…this was a fun one to imagine and then put down on paper.
oh I hope you get those books out there soon!