Tooth Sun Dial

Mama Wren made a post about early-morning thoughts, the kind that tug you along when you're only half-awake and you hope they stick around when you become more lucid, but they don't always. Hers did, and the images her blog invoked just got to me.

I immediately saw a sun dial rimmed with teeth in my head, stark - dark and light. And because of the photo of poppies at the top of that post, the sun dial in my head was in a field of 'em. The image, stark and vibrant and strangely creepy as it was, would not leave me alone, begging to be drawn.

No. Painted.

Well, I can't paint at work (much to my dismay). But, I can sketch. And so I did. This is a very basic version of my mind's image, and not quite right in either the lighting or the details. The image in my head has more teeth and a different spoke-thingy (I'm sure there's an actual intelligent term for the spoke-thingy that casts the shadow that tells the time, but I don't know what it is, so spoke-thingy it shall be, so there.) Something less butterfly-wing-ish, more delicate, decorative but simpler somehow, and - somehow - sinsiter looking.

I want to paint this.

I've been wanting to take up painting again for a long time now, but haven't had much motivation. I recently read Stephen King's Duma Key, which is one of his best stories I've read in a very long time - one of his best, ever, IMHO. It is, of course, about a guy who paints, and - of course - these are no ordinary paintings. It got to me, too.

After reading that book, I was itching to paint, and then mere days later Mama Wren posted her Morning Whimsey post and a (sacrificial?) sun dial with teeth started haunting me, and I simply have to paint it. Without a proper set of paints, no easel, and no canvasses, I put a bug in Mom's ear about it and asked her to pass it along to my dad and grandmother, since my birthday is next month. Maybe I'll get a nice colorful birthday present and finally be able to properly illustrate the time-piece that keeps sneaking up on me, and nipping.