Challenge 80: The Eyes Have It!

Theme: The Eyes have it.

Host:  Tobi Hoffman

Due Date:  May 4, 2013

When I was growing up, one friend of the family had a drawing by an artist who specialized in scientific illustration.  The picture was maybe 15 inches wide and 10 or 12 inches in height, and quite accurate in detail; at that size, it was a striking piece of art.  A one-time artist roommate of mine once chose a Time Magazine cover of Martin Luther King Jr. as a subject; she painted one eye first, and then moved out from there for a complete portrait, but that eye was still notably the center.  Many writers and sages have used the eye as a metaphor, praised the beauty of a lover’s eyes, talked about it as the window of the soul.  For this challenge, focus your eyes on the Eye, or Eyes, as the subject.  It may be part of the face, or stand by itself, be realistic or not, be a single eye, a pair of eyes, many eyes or pairs of eyes.  For that matter, it may not be even a human eye, but an animal’s, cat or goat or fish.

As an added piece of the challenge, take one of the following quotes (or find any other that you like) for further inspiration:

The eyes are the mirror of the soul.  Yiddish Proverb

The eye is the jewel of the body. Henry David Thoreau

No eyes that have seen beauty ever lose their sight.  Jean Toomer

When life gives you lemons, squirt someone in the eye.  Cathy Guisewite (“Cathy” comic strip)

There is a road from the eye to heart that does not go through the intellect. G. K. Chesterton

The eyes like sentinel occupy the highest place in the body.  Marcus Tulius Cicero

You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.  Mark Twain

The eye sees a thing more clearly in dreams than the imagination awake. Leonardo da Vinci

You never know how you look through other people's eyes.  Ralph Waldo Emerson

An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind.  Mahatma Gandhi 

Images of the eye:

Cartoon eyes: http://tinyurl.com/FFFC80-1

Human eyes: http://tinyurl.com/FFFC80-2  

Animal eyes:  http://tinyurl.com/FFFC80-3  

Abstract eye art:  http://tinyurl.com/FFFC80-4

And some specific examples of eyes in quilted art:

Rose Rushbrooke:  http://www.roserushbrooke.com/sheeps-eyes.html

Cindy Bettinger (check out the header on her site and her portraits): http://www.cindybettinger.com/gateway/art-quilting/

Maria Elkins: http://mariaelkins.com/index.php/quilts/

And one further note: have fun with this!