Hearts in sand: Image bank

(from the book Fashion Today)

In art class the other night my instructor introduced the idea of image banks. He proceeded with a slide show of photographs that have inspired works of art (some by him, some by others). Although I've never named my personal collection of saved jpeg. files and magazine clippings an image bank, I have been building this for quite some time. For me, part of the fun in blogging is simply having a forum to share a few of those images or new ones that catch my eye. I wish I could somehow make my binders and boxes of pictures magically digital to share.

Fashion is beautiful in an also functional way, but my inspiring image bank is actually not all dresses and shoes. All of my combined interests are equally part of who I am and when I feel like creating something, the result is ultimately, me. Whether it ends up a thing of beauty or not isn't the point but perhaps the goal to work towards (hence the drawing class. Fundamentals). Everyone's list of things they find intriguing will be different and that uniqueness is where art comes from in the first place. For example, I think the scapula is the most lovely bone in the body and quite mysterious, maybe I'll draw it and hang it on the wall. Or maybe I'll draw some seahorses sitting on a power line as if they were a row of blackbirds because I love seahorses and also think power lines are fascinating. I don't know, probably not but you get the idea. If someone I barely knew showed me a bunch of images that interest her, I'd likely be able to partly figure out who she is. What we are drawn to visually can be far more autobiographical than a list of events or hobbies.