For week twenty-six in our fifty week calligraphy challenge we were asked to use words from the famous humorist Ogden Nash. I was cleaning up and stood in front of this portrait of my paternal grandfather, wearing a classic cow tie. When I sat down to do research on Ogden Nash he wrote a famous few lines about cows, which made my choice of what words to use for this week’s prompt clear. I had fun ringing my grandfather’s tie to life in an entirely new way.
We never know what is going to inspire us. It could be a word, a phrase, a comment by someone or even a tie in a portrait from the 1930s. When it happens, we need to move on the idea. Write it down for later, act on it so it doesn’t dwindle away, or even gather the pieces and put them in a pile for a later date of completion. However it is you move on those inspirational moments in your world, move! Ideas left unattended vanish into a whisper that we are never able to hear as clearly again.
If you had told me at the beginning of the week that I would do something with the word COW, I would have laughed and asked, “Why?” This week’s piece of calligraphy for the group challenge proves that inspiration and execution can turn out some pretty fun stuff. Holy Cow! I say!
Keep your eyes, ears and mind open because you never know when an idea will hit you. And when that idea hits, dare to be bold and give into it. Let it take you places you never thought to go, and give it your all. You just might be surprised and overjoyed by what you are able to do once a strange, wonderful, creative thought hits you.
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