Despite years of dancing, a new focus on fitness that includes cardio kickboxing, and a general effort to the contrary, I’m still rather clumsy. My habits of running into inanimate objects and tripping over microscopic bits of dust are not nearly as bothersome as my perpetual case of butterfingers. I try to take care when handling items that are particularly precious and fragile, but I’m not always successful. So I could relate all too well when the Illustration Friday word this week was “clumsy.”
Case in point: I was cleaning up after we had a simple dinner in our den one night last week. It was a nice stew my husband made, and we were using the pair of lovely Japanese bowls his father had given us a long time ago. As I was approaching the steps I stumbled over a bit of lint and the empty bowls slipped from my hands. One landed safely on our plush carpet, but the other must have hit the edge of the step in just the wrong way because it broke apart, the bright white ceramic forming jagged edges against the glossy black glaze. They were our favorite pair of bowls too, the perfect size and kept the food nice and warm. (Sorry, dad! There’s a reason why most of our drinking glasses are plastic tumblers…)
This was a quick drawing from life with a Pitt brush pen on regular bristol paper, 9×12 inches.
