IF: Illuminated Initial

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It's been about two weeks since I've seen any movies. I went to the beach one weekend (ahhh!) and then I've been working on this illuminated initial.

Over on SoulPerSuit, we are taking an artistic look at the story of Esther. Each week we delve into the history of the Jews around 486-465 BC and the roles the characters played, and then create a collage of personal impression about the story. SPS calls this "Playing Your Hand."

At the beginning of each week, SPS has something called "Shuffle the Deck" which is a silly and fun creative exercise to get you kick-started creatively, sort like warm up exercises. One aspect of the story of Esther is about identity so the Shuffle last week was to make an illuminated initial about yourself. I had so much fun with this exercise. Can you tell?

The main trunk of the "R" is a tree that represents my love for books and movies.

The scarf around the trunk represents my love of computers.

The cross in the closed loop of the "R" shows God sealed at my center.

The orb represents MyGeek and our union.

The rose represents art and beauty. Here's where things got a little self-therapeutic. The rose is crying because I am letting the Critic take it away from me. The Critic is not bound to me; his chain is broken but I won't banish him out of the reach of the rose.

This drawing was suppose to serve two purposes. Last weeks Illustration Friday (IF) word was "moon". I would have loved to post this but I didn't get it done on time.