G R O W Y O U R W I N G S

It's amazing what a good, fresh, hot cup of coffee will do for you in the morning.

The other day I posted here about a fandom (hee Freudian slip!) random set of childhood images that crossed my mind while looking out the window into the sunshine.

Since then I've gone back to that post many times because the images just cheer me up. So I was thinking I might try to post an image or two each day based on a random thought. Not sure if I will keep to that schedule.

I feel like I did this yesterday when I posted here wishing mrsr58  a happy birthday.

So late last night I was thinking about what 'random thought' to post images about next. And 'colored pencils' popped into my head. Which is very weird considering where this post will end up--keeping reading. And yes this will all tie back to SUPERNATURAL!

I love colored pencils. I love drawing. I don't do it very often. At random times in my life I've gone into bursts of time periods where I really get into drawing. Several years ago I discovered colored pencils and had about a two-year love affair with them. Despite the fact that I'm not actively drawing right now I still love colored pencils. In fact a few months ago, when I was blue and I was in a craft store picking something up for my son--I walked by a colored pencil display. I picked up a vermilion Prismacolor pencil and just started...um... sniffing it. I ended up buying the pencil just so I could feel, touch, see, and smell it. I know.... weird.

So I have a couple of photos from flickr that show colored pencils. As well as a couple of my own drawings from long, long ago that aren't really very good--but there you go.

Now what's really weird and how it all leads back to Supernatural. I was browsing my flist just now and came across this Crack Impala Friday Art/Vid/Misc post. The first rec was for a colored pencil drawing of Sam by lupe_lei  's LJ. Which led me to this wonderful work-in-process of Dean (mrsr58  check it out!) You should also just check out her recent postings as she shows the progression of these pieces over time. While I really like the Sam piece, I *WANT* the Dean piece. So I'll be commenting on her site about how great these are.

And on to my colored pencil pic-a-day picspam.

So I'm home today because I'm not feeling good. Sleeping a lot. Don't really want to go into too many details.

I was up for a bit, staring out the window at the sunshine. Saw a flowering plum tree out by the street. It's red leaves were rolling with the breeze and were shiny reflections of the sun. It triggered childhood memories of other shiny-ness. Flashes of images from my childhood that brought on feelings of happiness and the simplicity of childhood. It was filled with images of the 60s & 70s during summertime.

So on a random whim I went a-surfing to see if I could find images online to match those in my head.

Please ignore my picspam of nostalgia. But it cheered me up a bit, perhaps it will others.

I had this "thing" as a kid for bright, shiny, plastic, colorful things. Like the bright, mulit-colored plastic flag strings that car dealerships would string all over their car lots to attract attention. I loved seeing the flashes of color reflecting sunlight and hearing the flap, flap, flap of them moving with the breeze. It was hard to find images similar to those I recall. But something like this.



That lead to memories of those wonderful clearish, sparkly balloons that would be at amusement parks, sold by vendors at the beach, strung up everywhere to catch your eye.


Then I remembered shiny, clear, colorful beads.


And those cheap plastic toys that you'd see piled outside of shopfronts.


And! OMG. Marbles! How I loved marbles. I could just stare at them for hours.




And then those clear plastic drink cups that would collect beads of condensation in the summer sun. I can remember setting them in the sand at the beach (on the East Coast where the beach was warm and sunny!). Seeing the sunlight catch in the little clear drops of water.


And FINALLY. Nirvana to me. Raspberries. Man I love, love, love raspberries. They have to be fresh and ripe. So they are truly only available for 3-4 weeks mid-summer. And I go nuts buying them and eating them right out of the flats.


What's your favorite "snapshots" of childhood summers?