Sketch Your Soul

[grainnerhuad]

Soul Pancake has invited one and all to sketch their souls and post them. Their link was to odosketch which is actually kinda fun to play around with. If you don't want to post your soul-sketchery on Soul Pancake, maybe you want to bear your soul here...or maybe you just want to play with crayons...anyway, if you do end up sketching out your demons, come back and share them.
www.soulpancake.com/view_post/508067/sketchify-your-soul.html
sketch.odopod.com/

[sapphiresavvy]

I couldn't get the soulpancake one to open up.

[grainnerhuad]

weird, it opened fine for me but try this one
tinyurl.com/q6fgak

[karlsie]

I was able to access the site easily, but i need to update my flash player in order to sketch my soul, which i've felt pretty slack about doing. Plus, i felt very shy about drawing my soul. I'm not sure it has a physical dimension, or if it does, a simple sketch will define it.

A fore-runner of my soul is in one of the two ladies in this photo:



Can you guess which one it is?

[grainnerhuad]

the one with the baker's cap?

[The Late Mitchell Warren]

I love that photo

[karlsie]

Mitch, hon, i love that photo too. My grandmother was definitely one of the first Karlsie's. Rebellious, refusing to follow the standards of decorum and modest attire.

Grainne, i'm sure your answer was tongue in cheek. How could you possibly believe a Karlsie would wear a baker's cap or even was blonde?

[grainnerhuad]

It actually wasn't, i figured a Karlsie would be a satirist through and through, thus baking at the beach.....Oh well.

[karlsie]

Aw, Grainne, you forgot to consider the time period; 1920-30's. The "baker" hat was politically correct propriety for the young lady at the beach. It was a bathing cap, as necessary an adornment as the rubber caps swimmers used in the 1950's. My grandmother lets her hair blow free and does nothing to try to tame it. Also, the other lady covers her legs with a shawl. Grandma does not, and in fact she wears a sporty cape, another sign of a lady who declines to follow the mainstream guidelines, but marches along to her own tune. She was a scamp.

I never thought about how a modern view could change the perception of a photo. I've always been fascinated with the turn of the twentieth century to the end of World War II. As a child, i would spent hours going through my parents' old photos. Some of them dated to the late eighteen hundred's. I'd also watch their favorite movies, listen to their music, even read their books and magazines. That era would come alive for me. I heard the pantomime of their daily lives, felt the lumbering dynamics of their backgrounds, heard the whispers, the flirtations, the bravado and the cries at night. It still does. The time period is as alive to me as if i had been there.

There are a couple of pics of my other grandmother on some slides. My brother has them and i've been trying to get them to give them to me so i can make some photos. She was completely opposite of this one; a woman who would never go to the beach and expose any part of her carefully covered body. She was a big Irish woman who wore peasant blouses, flowing skirts and long, intricately designed crocheted aprons. For some reason, however, she doesn't speak to me in the same manner. She was staunch, hard working, backbone America, the daughter of a farmer, the wife of an early union leader who got blacklisted out of construction work and resorted to picking fruit. I'm sure she does comprise a part of my soul, but i think i got my out-spoken ways from my other grandmother and my blue collar worker sensibility from my union strike grandfather. Hmmm. I think it's more fun to talk about what comprises our souls instead of trying to draw them.

[grainnerhuad]

Now you have me thinking I should go pull out some olde pictures. I haven't put any of them on computer yet and I have some great ones of my great grandmother Nellie Mac smoking cigars and pipes in public. Not done at all. She was a character too, but of course how would we be who we are without these strong women in our lives?

[sapphiresavvy]

Aug 12, 2009 12:00:20 GMT -5 grainnerhuad said:

weird, it opened fine for me but try this one
tinyurl.com/q6fgak

Now it doesn't like my Internet browser. Poop.

[grainnerhuad]

Your browser obviously dislikes rebellion and soul searching...take the kid locks off.

[karlsie]

We can't deny that we are the result of our ancestors' influence. Our DNA structure carries certain personality codes that crop up as dominant or fall away as recessive. Certainly if we have souls, their traits would be part of the composition as well as our own influences on its development.

Looking at the old photos and reading the letters of our ancestors while placing them in their appropriate era, does help us to see how, progressive, liberated or transfixed their viewpoint was. The maternal side of my mother is steeped in tradition and Irish folklore. Even though she married a man from the Sasquehannah nation, because he was half white and educated, she did not consider him part Native American, and constantly expressed her opinions about "barbaric Indians".

The maternal side of my father is notorious for breaking with customs and social decorum. I read a letter written by one of my many great aunts from the late eighteen hundreds that meticulously explained that having inherited a piece of Oregon property from her father, she felt every right to live there and develop it without intervention from the family legal advisers. She also made it clear to inquisitive family members that she had no interest in marrying and that she was perfectly happy living alone. This apparent breach of etiquette caused enough scandal to continue a twenty year correspondence of legal advice, questions as to her sanity, concern for her solitary state, and finally resignation that this woman simply wasn't going to change her mind. I think the first Karlsie is located somewhere in that line.

[GoblinQueen]

Oohhh that program is fun to play with! thanks for sharing. I'm in the laptop though, so the sketches aren't coming out so good right now. I'll have to mess with it when I'm on my own computer