Drawing Idea: Life In The Jar

The main idea for this drawing came to my mind while trying to draw a time shift illustration for the short story I had written with the name: Start Over. Basically, as a result of a scientific accident, the time for some people is affected where things started over. But this time everything would have been lived differently because of memories being altered.

Or in a more abstract form; as time passes, the past may not hold the same value that has been intended for the future.

In the basic illustration above very simple object to represent the time is used, which is a sandglass. But it is slightly changed where the bottom is filled with water and the top chamber is filled with usual sand. It was imagined just to express that time can be altered in the context of the short story mentioned before. At the core, the top part of sandglass can represent the future where the bottom part is basically the past. As time passes, usual sands turn into something altered or differently remembered: water.

But then as I was doodling different aspects for this sketch and trying to make a simple animation to show water drops traveling, a totally different idea hit me with the sand glass. To express life in terms of heartbeats. See below for the animation...

So the idea for the new drawing may represent heartbeats in terms of time now. Namely the future, now and past. The future can be thought to be achieved with every single heartbeat filling blood in our body. Then as blood drop does the job, the heartbeat will fade in the past as the shape of an ECG signal. Very simple lines but I believe it is clear.

I hope this exercise may give inspiration to those who seek it.