So many ways to find inspiration.
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From journaling daily life events to illustrating inspirational quotes, celebrating nature, loving your pets, your family; sharing spirit or faith or recording dreams, there are so many ways to bring art into our everyday lives. One of my favourites is to illustrate a favourite poem and disappear into the lines and words; lose myself in a more eloquent space and find peace.
This was a [kind of stream of consciousness] doodle based on Samuel Taylor Coleridge's 'Kubla Khan'. I've not had time (or will) to paint or draw this week having been alternately rushed off my feet dealing with problem after problem, or too knackered to move. Searching for some sense of solace and feeling of regeneration I took time to look through my older journal/inspiration pages and found this doodly brain ramble.
Tracing the lines with my eyes I took time to breathe and recite the poem - a long time favourite - in my mind. The words work like a spell, conjuring magical images which fire and spark in my brain and before I know it my muse has begun her wild and intricate dance again. I have an urge to read poetry and make marks with colourful things.
Whatever ignites your passion, whatever makes you laugh - or cry - take a moment to record the moment and expand your creative world...there will come a time when you may need to make a withdrawal from your artistic bank account, and every deposit pays out with interest!
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Kubla Khan
By Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Or, a vision in a dream. A Fragment.
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round;
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.
But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced:
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher’s flail:
And mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean;
And ’mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!
The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves;
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!
A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight ’twould win me,
That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.
