stripes without a tiger

The other morning I woke up with an urge to draw a tiger in bright blue ink.   It had to be a tiger and it had to be in blue. 

So I printed out some tiger images from the internet and start drawing.  The first attempt was rather cartoony – it lacked soul, depth and character.  So I asked myself, “What do I really want to concentrate on here?”  The answer came in a flash: the stripes! 

I gradually shifted the emphasis from trying to draw a tiger to just experiencing the stripes: the wildness of them, their random playfulness, the way they weave in and out of one another in strange and curious patterns.  I tried to forget about the body altogether.   It was heaven.

Eventually, my hand started to fill in the rest of the tiger and suddenly, a wonderful face appeared in the middle of some scribbles.  It was a tiger that had Life in it; much more authentic than the cartoony versions I had produced at first. 

Sometimes artistic inspiration may seem weird or unacceptable and yet we need to accept them in whatever form they come in.