7. Glider

Life is either a daring adventure or nothing

-Helen Keller

This sketch was inspired by Nausicaa, the Miyazaki film. I lived in Japan for a while as a kid and was introduced to Miyazaki's films there, and I loved his work. He is probably the most major influence on my drawing style. I also loved and owned the soundtracks to his films, and one day I decided that the best way to learn to draw like him was to copy him, so I sat down with the CD case for the Princess Mononoke soundtrack and copied Ashitaka and San off of it. After that I felt much more confident about faces.

I liked this sketch so much after I did it I later painted a larger version as a poster for my room and put the quote from Helen Keller on it.  I agree that life should be an adventure, but I realize more and more that the improbably epic, small things in life usually end up being the greatest adventure. So it was interesting to me to find the following as I checked the source for the first quote:

"I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish small tasks as if they were great and noble. 

- Attributed to Helen Keller

It surprised me because I would have said Helen accomplished great and noble things in her life, becoming the first deafblind person to earn a bachelors degree is no small feat in my mind. But I think our own lives rarely feel epic to us. How about you? Do you see epic-ness in your own life? Would others?