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Friday, June 3, 2011

shadows


Oooh, I'm liking this summer break thing. An Illustration Friday on an actual Friday! (Yeah, I'm pretty easy to please).

This week's prompt is "shadows". When I saw that I almost cringed. A little background:

We are about to head out on another epic summer road trip. Now, one thing Mag and I decided long ago is that we would not provide our deprived children with electronic stimulation for these road trips. We would leave them to their own devices to use that captive environment to quietly ponder and/or let their imaginations blossom and/or foster their brotherly bonds, etc... Sounds good in theory right?

I will admit that I have sometimes wholly longed for a DVD player or two in the road trip van, but I've managed to not break down so far. It's very much similar to my conviction made long ago to forego the birthing-time epidural. There've been moments when I just wanted to shout, "SCREW THIS!!"

BUT I digress.

The thing is, we often fill the road trip voids with marathon games of 20-questions. They can get quite raucous and testosteral, but one round I remember in particular was several years ago when Wolfgang's subject was "shadow", and we were all failing miserably at figuring that out.

Think about it. Shadow? Not too many "yesses" or "nos" for that one, but a whole lotta "sometimeses". Oh, the frustration. Oh, can we just pull over. Oh, can we NOT play any more 20-questions for the next 100 miles or so?!? And the whole "shadow" thing has had negative connotations ever since.

Until now.

I mentioned that I did another house drawing last weekend. The original photo was taken on a sunny day, so I had some wonderful shadows to play with. I look at them differently now.
.

10 comments:

Judy said...

LOOOOOVE me a good game of 20 questions - shadow. That's a great one!

Abby said...

Don't do it Judy! If you love your family, don't do it!

brandy101 said...

It's funny - we do have the dvd in the van but kiddo usually ends up reading books or magazines, anyway!

Linda Hensley said...

Nice painting! It's fun to read about your adventures and your last post too :)

michele said...

Nice house and shadows!
I had a good laugh with this story- Imagine road trips when the only hand held electronic device was a transistor radio, if you were lucky to have fresh batteries! Two parents, five kids and a dog, driving halfway across the U.S. No such thing as a dvd player back then, but still much entertainment and fond memories! :o)

Scott said...

To be honest--I've never played 20 questions, I don't even know how.

Indigene said...

I love road trips, especially, if I'm not driving! :) Wonderful home illustration.

Coreopsis said...

Excellent drawing! I'm really impressed (I have a hard time with things with hard edges and straight lines). THis is beautiful!

Jenn said...

Beautiful drawing! Love the shadows and the atmosphere.

And a game of 20-questions with "shadow" sounds painful just thinking about it...

Anonymous said...

I like the dark shadows the eaves throw over the front of the house. Wonderful illustration.