5/100: Iris

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Song: Iris

Artist: Goo Goo Dolls

Album: Dizzy Up the Girl

Aaah, the 90's. Angst, romance, needing to belong, but saying F YOU to society. This song was written for a film with Nicholas Cage and Meg Ryan, called City of Angels. He plays an angel who falls in love with her heart surgeon character. All I remember was that it broke my heart like so many of these movies do, and it had a scene involving Bosc pears, and how much he wished he could taste them. 

This lyric refers (I'm guessing) to the angel character, but it could just as easily stand in for the modern everyday social media user. Here we sit, in our pajamas with no makeup on, hiding behind our laptops but screaming for the world to acknowledge our presence. At any rate, it's beautiful, and true, and sung hauntingly by Johnny Rzeznik in that raspy, sexy, mop-headed way that made this song HUGE. Another one that got ruined at the time by overplay but now hits home on a playlist shuffle. 

Materials:

• pencil & paper (sketch)
• Speedball India ink
• Dip pen & nib
• Pentalic paper for pens
• plastic eraser

I use a marked up piece of graph paper as backing to keep lines straight. And pretty poppy washi tape because why not.

I intended this piece to be a quick one - just simple script - how hard could it be? This one was about my third attempt...

I wish I could get a better close up because the India ink is so cool - it actually sits up on top of the paper, rather than getting absorbed into the paper. It's also waterproof - you can use watercolor over it.