Inner Eye, Susan's wonderful drawing challenge

Last week, Ariane announced that Susan had offered "Inner Eye" as this weekend's drawing challenge.I happily jumped at the chance to participate. Inner eye, how hard can that be?Turns out that it was pretty hard for me. I don't mean difficult as in technique, I mean difficult as in feeling satisfied with an image to depict the subject.I think I drove Robert crazy with the constant reevaluating.At first I broke down the inner eye, the third eye, the Sanskrit Ajna, the Shiva Hakini, three petals of the white lotus, moon and sun, my yoga practice...there's too much, you know? In the end I was most satisfied with the white lotus, and that's what I started to draw and then paint.The painting evolved any old way along my favourite "as the cell divides" method. I used pencils and inks and pens and acrylics and watercolours and charcoals.I still have Mucha in my mind and so it took on a somewhat Art Nouveau bend. I still have Klimt in my mind and so some of Klimt's colours and shapes popped in. And, by this morning, I put this painting down and had a big sigh.I'm not satisfied with it.The more I looked at the white lotus on that yellow, golden background, the more I wasn't satisfied with it, the more I came to Poe.The lotus reminded of my favourite Poe story, Silence, a Fable, and the following:"The waters of the river have a saffron and sickly hue --and they flow not onwards to the sea, but palpitate forever and forever beneath the red eye of the sun with a tumultuous and convulsive motion. For many miles on either side of the river's oozy bed is a pale desert of gigantic water-lilies. They sigh one unto the other in that solitude, and stretch towards the heaven their long ghastly necks, and nod to and fro their everlasting heads."And, while I read it, I looked at the amazing art of William Heath Robinson.And this afternoon I picked up a page of Chums; a boy's magazine from 1910.I started to draw the white lotus again, ghastly and ghostly in it's sickly hued morass, sighing, unto the others.This time I'm satisfied. :DCome have a look at Susan's site and our friends' wonderful ideas about this challenge.