You Never Know When Inspiration Strikes

As in, goes on strike. Goes underground. Disappears.

And I didn't want to talk about it.

Before I knew it, a year passed. And then some.

So, I tried some ICADs recently. If you're not in on what that's all about, go here.

The prompt was "pinball," so I went in search of same. I found a really (horrible) photograph and doctored it in oh, so many ways. Thankfully, ICAD is intended to be "suggestions," so anything goes. It got me going. That's good.

This one was a bit more of a stretch. The prompt was "portrait." I wanted something to do with the quote, "Well-behaved women rarely make history." It's wrongly attributed to Marilyn Monroe instead of Laurel Thatcher Ulrich. This ICAD is composed of a photograph found on WikiCommons that received a duotone treatment and some other photos that put my extraction techniques to the test. The gingham is from a tutorial on the fabric on GQ.com and toned to match the portrait of Monroe. It brings to mind a quote more likely attributable to her, "It's better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring." 

I like that idea. And the idea of an index card to play with. Nothing too serious, you know?

And an Inchie for "Japan," composed of various familiar images that invoke the country along with the characters that translate into, "Land of the Rising Sun." Okay, so that Monday was four weeks ago now, but it got the ideas flowing. I'm a little rusty. I really wanted to go with cherry blossoms, but it was having none of it. I love the vibrant red leaves of Japanese maples in autumn, don't you?

I did Finland, too. I found the instructions (destined for the recyclers, except it blew out of the box in the storm last night! You just never know where inspiration will come from, even right in front of you!) to the headlamp that my son just installed in his VW, written in 10 languages. I didn't even understand what was supposedly written in English, but he did a fine job on the repair.

I just glued some of it into my doodle journal. The first two line are all one word. Isn't that insane?

That'll do it. Hope you have a brilliant day!