Original Wallpaper: i am never without it

Okay, at long last, my entry for the "Tell Me What You Mean" contest. I could NOT get any inspiration for this. Or rather, I had way too much inspiration, I had no idea which of my inspirations to work on. In the mean time, I moved to California and started grad school. Then, the other night, I was thinking (strangely enough) about my vocal training and remembered really liked the setting some modern composer gave "i carry your heart with me" by E. E. Cummings. So, the whole poem is portrayed in the wall.

According to my fuzzy memory of poetry class, E. E. Cummings banged out his poems on a broken typewriter with no caps, so I used the all lower-case type writer effect on the entire poem. In script are the key phrases: "i carry your heart with me (i carry it in my heart)" and "and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart" for emphasis.

Originally this was going to be a super fast, super simple vector with minimal (if any) shading, and an anatomical heart with the little glowing (carried) heart. At some point today I realized I was multi shading it. I was originally going to have a big blob of block text of the poem with only parts of letters being distinguishable in the negative space, but that didn't work with the non-minimalist version of the idea. So blah. Used my fav art nouveau swirl brush again. There's a manly fabric pattern on his heart, and a paper texture on the bg.

This is actually the cover of a yaoi manga, I knew that was where to look for an open-shirted pic, but it's not a wall related to that series at all. It's more just...cool.

Here's the poem if you'd like to read it:

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)