A dark blue background. A soft creamy white pencil.
I capture the outline of her face. A tiny smile, a little upturned nose. Eyes closed. Hair drifting.
At first she wears a dress with her arms stretched behind her. Her feet pointed downward and slightly behind, as if she is floating. But no, that doesn’t work.
Her hands fold lightly over her heart. The dress is replaced by dungarees. She stands straight with her tiny bare feet flat on the ground.
Yes.
The background comes alive with blues and greens and tiny white dust motes.
The music is next. A treble clef and five lines of a stave expand and curl away from her — semibreves and quavers, crotchets and minims — the notes pour forth from her heart.
I begin with pale pink for her face. But again - no. That doesn’t work. She is a lighted soul. I fill her outline with soft white mist.
I draw her hair. It wisps and drifts from my pencil onto the canvas. Pale and glowing layers like shining strands of gossamer. I sketch light onto her skin and dungarees.
Radiance from the stars that are yet to appear lights her face and her little nose. A touch of candyfloss pink luminescence on her cheek.
And here are the stars.
She is creativity, spun from iridescent strands of imagination.
She was with me making mud pies and moss gardens and perfume from rose petals, pressing flowers and crafting homemade cards to send to family and friends.
As I learned to play the clarinet and the flute, the time I built a matchstick model of a vintage bus and when my sister and I recorded episodes of a kids radio show that we called Dogs Tales that no one heard but us, she was there.
She guided my hands as I made little people and animals from polymer clay, stitched clothes for my dolls and myself, as I knitted and crocheted, carved decoy ducks from wood, created intricate marquetry pictures, and drew, and drew and drew.
She has been there from the very first time I discovered the joy of creativity. At my side through every discovery, every experiment, through every success and every failure. She is with me still, when each beautiful creation from another soul touches my heart.
I drew Eirlys in September 2023.
She coalesced from a nebulous collection of half ideas as I searched for a way to tell the story of how creativity makes me feel.
She came from the Wild Place and she has found her way into the story that I am writing.
I have her on my phone and she is available to download from the Creative Adventurer’s1 Gallery.
Eirlys is also available as a print for annual paying Creative Adventurer subscribers, if you’d like her to keep you company too.
With wishes for endless inspiration,
If you would like to support this creative adventure, you can buy a handmade gift from my Etsy Shop, Ink and Oddments, or upgrade to a paying subscription.
For anyone choosing an annual paid subscription I would love to send you an art print from my collection, as a thank you for gifting my creativity another moment of freedom to explore and create, for joy alone.
The illustrations in the Creative Adventurer’s Gallery are for paid subscribers of While I Was Drawing.
