Form & Content
January 30, 2008
Form & Content
There was a young lady whose bonnet
Came untied when the birds sat upon it
But she said, “I don’t care! All the birds in the air
Are welcome to sit on my bonnet!”
Illustrating in Form & Content was really interesting and a lot of fun! One of our assignments was to illustrate a limerick. Just like other limericks are funny and quirky, the one I illustrated was too. Illustrating does not in any way limit ones imagination. It makes one think laterally and draw the wildest illustrations, but illustrations that somehow complement the text, nevertheless.
As I started on my illustration, I remembered how when I was young, my dad would read me the funniest limericks from a limerick book we had. I thoroughly enjoyed listening to them as they never ceased to make me laugh, as their content came to life in my mind. So when I was faced with the task of actually visualizing one, I drew from my imagination.
I drew distorted shapes just to see whether they would resemble any of the forms in my limerick. Sometimes my illustrations became too stereotypical and I resorted to listening to music at top volume to clear my head. When that didn’t work, I went for a long walk to imagine the limerick in different ways. I read other limericks on the web. This made me remember how much I used to enjoy listening to limericks. I think that my final illustration was born out of a need to recreate in an illustration where my imagination used to take me as I listened to my dad reading them out.
