Breath is life

Today's inspiration was a photograph of a masked and gowned medical worker—maybe a doctor, maybe a nurse, maybe an aide—from the 1918 Spanish influenza pandemic. She was featured in an advertisement on how to avoid catching the flu (yes, stay home was one of the bullet points), and I was arrested by the first line in the ad: "Do not take any person's breath."

It was such a weird phraseology—I'm sure they meant you should stand far enough away that you weren't breathing in what someone else was breathing out—but it sounds more like an admonition to be careful about being too desirable, which ties in to the masked-and-gowned look here. It gives the 1986 Berlin song, "Take My Breath Away," a whole new meaning, since Covid-19 almost literally takes the breath as its most serious symptom.

I painted her without any skin tones because I wanted the emphasis on the eyes and how tired and wise they look above the anonymity of her mask. So I used my favorite Daniel Smith color, Shadow Violet, to capture any nuance in the painting.

This was done with a Uniball black pen, Jackson watercolors (except for the Shadow Violet), in my Bee sketchbook.

But, let us turn to more pleasant things, such as how hot Tom Cruise and Val Kilmer were in 1986 in Top Gun, for which this song was written!