This one. Okay, this is just a very quick watercolor I put in my sketchbook. I was sitting at Starbucks and was trying to put my thoughts together after being bombarded with the horrible news from that morning. When the idea came to me, I only wanted to sketch it out in pencil to see if worked. It didn't. The idea was good, but my pencil sketch wasn't great, so I inked it. That m ade it better, but I knew that I wanted to add color later. I just couldn't wait for later. I went to the counter and got a cup of water and went back to my table where I had my watercolors in my pack. In under two minutes, this had sprung from my brush.
It moved a lot of people. It was shared, it was used as profile pictures, it was what certain people needed to see in order to grieve over the loss of 49 innocent victims. It grew beyond me. I only wanted to create a tribute. It became a statement.
The only thing I wish differently was the number of people who used it without acknowledging where it came from. I saw protest signs with a variation of this, except the Florida tear was rainbow striped, not the eye. I saw a picture of someone's tattoo. The recreated my image extremely well...except they purposely left my signature off. Even friends posting on Facebook used it without mentioning my name. Ups and downs, dear readers, ups and downs.
