Good heavens, days are rolling past so quickly and I've had no creative time due to the meditation course I'm taking (which finishes in late June).  My "inner creative natives" are getting extremely restless so I snuck this quick drawing in today in my sketchbook, but now need to go back to studying.

It's from Kelly Barone's new book, Drawing Botanicals.  Her book comes fully illustrated with step-by-step drawings, and each has a link to a video for drawing that particular flower.  There must be 150+ flowers (each linked to it's own short video) in the book. They go from A-Z, from African Daisy to Zinnia.  I am highly recommending it, and you'd be supporting a working artist.   Click on the link above to order a copy.  (And don't go by my quick sketch above--you can do even better, I'm sure!

It's amazing how quickly one's skills can deteriorate when one doesn't use them.  I used to be far better with the colored pencils than I am now--can't wait to be putting in regular practice again later this summer.  Kelly is a watercolor artist extraordinaire--you will really enjoy looking at her full website HERE.  I dream of someday creating the subtle beauty she produces--I love her work.

I paired the sketch above with my favorite springtime poem by Lilja Rogers:  "First a howling blizzard woke us; then the rains came down to soak us.  Now, before the eye can focus--Crocus."  Every year in the spring this poem makes me laugh.  May it have the same effect on you.  I fell in love with it the first time I read it, decades ago.  Reciting it is a spring ritual for me.

Whoops, a little side-step (away from showing the junk-journal-related work I did last Saturday) into the wonderful world of maptangling.  I got distracted by hearing about a new method of preparing the tiles for this, much easier and faster than my old methods, so took time out to do this one.

You can see the original tile after I prepped it but before I drew on it, below.

Every year I try to enroll in the online course called Sketchbook Revival.  So this year it's called Sketchbook Revival 2024.  It's run by Karen Abend and is lots of fun--unless you stress yourself out trying to keep up.  This year I noticed that an amazing Zentangle® teacher named Anica Gabrovec, a CZT from Croatia who goes by the name of ZenLinea online, was teaching.  The moment I saw her name I looked up her class and it was on one of my favorite drawing techniques, Maptangling.  She had a much faster technique than I've seen before for creating the map, and that's what I'll be using from now on.

Here's another page from the junk journal from last Saturday:

Honestly, this page doesn't do much for me.  It's just not that interesting. 

You can see some tissue-paper dyeing at the top edge and peeking out from the bottom; some of it is covered by torn wrapping paper I glued down in the center (and tangled on a bit), and the tangle around the edges is called Scrolz.  My response to this page is "meh." 

And yet, anything that gets me drawing and/or creating is bound to result in some form of serious contentment, even if the result is mediocre.  I'm always amazed at the way time spent on art improves my mood.

A final drawing from Kelly Barone's free 2024 Botanical Drawing course <whimsybykelly.com>, done using graphite, black Micron 01, and General's chalk pencils.

I just watched the scene from the 1937 movie, Stage Door, with Katherine Hepburn (and so many other luminaries!) where Hepburn says the famous line, "The calla lillies are in bloom again..."  While I'm sure I've seen the film, I don't remember it well.  What I do remember is that she says the line many times, rehearsing it for a performance, and most of the time she says it really badly.  A tragedy that befalls one of her friends in the film is the only reason she finally says it with genuine feeling in the actual performance.

I can relate.  As I was drawing this calla lily under the excellent online guidance of watercolor artist Kelly Barone (a remarkable teacher who just wrapped up her annual free 5-day "Botanical Drawing" online offering), I realized that while I'm excited to be drawing again, I'd be making better drawings if I were referring to an actual flower to draw from.  When I watch someone drawing on a blank page, and just follow each line as they draw, I cannot get a sense of how the various lines will come together in relation to each other...until the actual drawing is complete.  Whereas when I am able to draw from an object I can actually see (like a flower), I can see both the whole and the part at the same time--how lines should connect together to create the whole.  My drawing comes together in a more natural way then. 

This is not to denigrate online instruction at all.  In fact, I'd recommend Kelly and other online teachers highly!  It's just to say that there is a difference, and I can see it in my line work. 

But I'm so happy to be drawing again that none of that matters.  The pleasure of actually drawing, whether the "end product" is bad or good, outweighs any reservations.  If you'd like to try your hand at some basic botanical art, head over to whimsybykelly.com and you'll be happy with your choices.

Stars open among the lilies. Are you not blinded by such expressionless sirens? This is the silence of astounded souls.
--Sylvia Plath

Happy with this one, a carnation done quickly.  The darkened lines are definitely overdone, but I still learned a lot.  And...I am still drawing.  Whether it's "good" or not doesn't matter to me.  What matters is that I'm practicing.  Yay!

Earlier today I went to a memorial service for an old and dear friend who died recently.  She was a real pistol, a take-no-prisoners, hilarious, generous, kind woman who lived a spectacularly interesting life.  A larger-than-life life.  She will be dearly missed.

I followed up after the memorial service by taking another short class on drawing flowers (see yesterday's post for how you can join the class if interested) but of course I was already thinking about the role of flowers in our lives because of seeing all the flowers at her service. 

It feels so good to be drawing again!  Today's class was simpler and I mentally dedicated my flower drawing to my old friend.

Nothing at all posted in August.  How did that happen?

Well, I know.  I was finishing up another rug and you know how long that takes.  And then I did something I said I wouldn't do:  signed up for another ten months of meditation teacher training.  I just couldn't resist.  It will teach me one more thing that I've always wanted to learn, a certain specific protocol for coaching students.  It kicked off last week and so far I am loving it.

It seems to be allowing me slightly more time in my days, so I'm trying to start drawing again.  My gosh, it's start over, start over, start over (just like meditation) with drawing as I never get a stretch of time to draw consistently. 

And whose fault is that?  Mine, obviously.

I managed to color the peony later in the day, so here is the colored version (done with Prisma Colored pencils and some light gold gellyroll pen):

In this incredibly troubled world, I was lucky enough to be able to take three days for travel and drawing. 

Nearly every second of that time, I was acutely aware of the many tragedies currently unfolding on our fragile blue planet, and acutely aware of the great privilege to be able to have the peace that drawing can provide.  Over all three days, I carried both worlds with me simultaneously.  I think we all did.  There were about 40 of us in attendance, with Martha Huggins and Molly Hollibaugh from Zentangle® as our teachers.  I'll post a few of the results over the next couple of days.

A "warm-up tile" from the first evening.

It can be nearly impossible to find a way to cope with life at times like this.  So many people I know are exhausted, angry, disillusioned, terrified, and feeling helpless.  I cannot and do not ignore that nor any of the existential threats we face at the moment.  Yet who can function with any measure of wisdom or compassion in such a state?  We must all try to take a moment whenever we can to recognize both the possibilities AND the limitations we face.  And then find a scrap of inner peace and sit with that until we can un-clench.

Any healthy thing that can give us that moment is precious.  Drawing is one thing that does it for me.  Music as well.  Speaking with friends.  Helping someone who needs help. 

In order to be functional, I need to do this in small moments throughout the day so that I won't get lost in discouragement.  We all need some way of doing this--desperately.  I am fortunate enough to be able to occasionally stop and just draw for a while.  I know that others on the planet who are being bombed or shot at do not have that luxury right now. 

I do it both for myself and for the people who don't have that option, in the hope that calming myself will enable me to think and act more clearly to support them in their time of need.

Kaira Jewel Lingo has just written a book called We Were Made for These Times, about how to survive and cope with the turmoil currently gripping the world.  You can listen to her by clicking on the link below, as she's interviewed by former ABC News Anchor Dan Harris.

May we all find shelter and safety
May we all find peace within and without
May we all be kind to ourselves and each other
May we all become whole.

A ten-minute sketch of my smallest waterbrush and my kneadable eraser.
(After which I tossed in some color via watercolor pencils.  Did that help, or hurt?)
Very shaky hands did not help.

Mindful of the passage of time, I have begun the process of sorting and letting go of possessions.  Trust me, this will take years and I don't know if I can offload enough so that what's left when I make my exit won't still burden those left behind (I'm hoping not to make an exit anytime soon but who knows).

In recycling some old journals I found this ten-minute pencil sketch from 1983.  It was fading away.

I've always loved it and the memory it brought back, so I saved it and recycled the rest of the journal.  I traced the graphite with a Micron 005 and here you have it.

Then I decided to take it further and add some shading (below).  Did I ruin it or enhance it?  I'm not sure.  I know I'm glad I thought to take a photo of the original before I did anything else.

This was early on in my drawing career (not that I actually HAVE a drawing career).  Probably shortly after I had read Betty Edwards' wonderful book, Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. 

I remember exactly where I was when I drew this, even the time of day, and the scents and sounds around me.  The iris was a rich, deep purple and was embedded in a fabulously beautiful late spring garden in New York State.  It took ten minutes to draw and during that time my happiness increased a thousand percent.

Such is the power of drawing.

No matter how bad a drawing is, somehow it's always more powerful than a photo.  For me, anyway.

From today's journal.  My notes on the right were cut off but they are telling myself, "Leave more room for the stem between the lavender flowers."

More practice needed.

Another photo from my sketchbook this morning.  This one really made me chuckle--is it an anemone or a padula?

Never heard of a padula?  A padula is a made-up flower.  In other words, not a particular specific, identifiable flower.  It's the type of flower kids often draw, not an accurate rendering.  We use the term in rug hooking to describe those colorful fantasy flowers you often see in old rugs.  It may also be a term used in other arts, but I've never heard of it anywhere else.

This is supposed to be an anemone, but I'm not too certain about how accurate it is.

Doesn't matter to me.  Drawing it was fun and meditative.  That's all I care about.

I'm a bit too busy to do much besides sketch this week (and probably ditto next week) so it will be a few days of hurried contour drawing.  i haven't had time to research what these flowers actually look like--this was done from a video by Kelly Barone (Whimsy by Kelly), a botanical artist. 

Here's a page from my sketchbook showing some practice at drawing flowers.  Kelly Barone of Whimsy by Kelly has a lovely free video series on FB on doing this.  I think she began it last year but I'm just able to focus on it now.  It was fun to try.

Below you can see all the stages, from line drawing to shading to this result directly below.

It's curious, the parallels I often see between meditation and drawing.  In meditation, we might call what happened here, "striving."  That is such a common issue in meditation--the idea that one has to get somewhere and work harder and harder to get there.  It truly doesn't help.  At all.

And here in this drawing I did the equivalent.  I was using a smooth tile and chalk pencils.  The paper, surprisingly, wasn't loving the chalk.  It was the combination of the two, not something I could control.  But I kept thinking if I continued working, or rather, OVERworking (a form of striving), I could make it better. 

Well, uh-uh.  Instead, it just got muddier.  It would have been better if I'd used colored pencils rather than chalk pencils. 

I realized this at the start of the tile but was having too much fun to make the switch.

I like it anyway because it was fun and involved one brand-new tangle and one that I forget to use.  I often say this about the drawings i am not enamored of, right after I finish.  Sometimes when I look at them later, I really do like them.  Often, in fact.  And sometimes I don't.  But the reasons I'm happy anyway are:  1) just the act of drawing brings joy to me; and 2) learning art--and I most certainly am a learner--is all about quantity.  Practice, practice, practice.  As I said in my last post, any practice, even practice that produces something "meh," is bound to build skill. 

Bring it on.

Well that's what I do, anyway. 
What about you?

On days like this I need a comfort drink (it was -10 or -15° Farenheit last night and I heard "frost quaking" for the first time--who even knew that was a thing?  So this morning, in the -5° weather, I treated myself to a good old DD coffee (and added mocha, so hot chocolate). 

Oh, the comfort.

Then I drew it. 

And finally I ran the drawing thru an iPhone app.

Voilà.

Memory is such a tricky business.  At this time of year I like to look backwards as well as forwards.  "Liminal" was the title of my last post, and I am still there, in liminality.  Doorways are the perfect illustration of that--they are transitional places.

I made this drawing 9 years ago today and just saw it again.  I have no memory of what I was thinking when I drew it--it's probably a drawing from a photograph of an actual doorway somewhere. 

Only after I'd pasted it in here did I notice the small question mark at the bottom of the drawing.  What did I mean by that?

“The present changes the past. Looking back you do not find what you left behind.”
― Kiran Desai

Really, I do have plenty of other jewelry than brooches, but there are indeed a lot of those.  So here is the next one.  I'm really enjoying these tiny drawings. 

Having said that, I actually never wore this brooch much--it wasn't a favorite and neither is my drawing of it (which takes liberties and includes the tangle Tipple) but that's ok since it is keeping me doing a little bit of drawing every day, which is the goal.

And here's the sterling silver version from which I did the drawing.

This one brings back deeply transformational memories of travels to the Southwest decades ago with dear friends. 
Continuing the series of quick drawings of old jewelry I own.
Whoops--I nearly forgot to include the actual sterling silver brooch below, next to the start of the drawing:

Not really steel.  Just silver or silver alloy or something.  It's quite oxidized.

Whatever it's made of, it's clearly a heart and is  on some type of tie-tack back, but I think of it as a brooch.  I'm not usually a fan of heart-shaped things but this one charmed me.  Although to be honest, I cannot remember a single occasion on which I wore it.

The real piece is no more than one inch high. You can see the difference between the lighting in which I photographed the actual heart versus the lighting that was on it when I put it in a different place for the drawing.

I'm not sure how far I'll go with this series, but it's a wonderful way to get to drawing again--just focusing on tiny things.

It's been so long since I've done any drawing.  I thought I'd get myself re-started with some simple line drawings of old jewelry.  Things I used to wear often but haven't had out in years.  At some point I'll begin giving them away, but since I loved them at the time I thought it would be great to have a few sketches.  Once I got the linework done, I couldn't resist adding a tad of the original color.  Clearly I took liberties with things--the actual brooch is below.

I used to be able to draw any phase of the Moon easily from memory.  This is the Moon in Waning Crescent mode, as I've positioned it above.  (of course I could flip it around 180° so that the white "horns" point left and then it would represent exactly the opposite, but this is how I drew it--waning).  I haven't been watching the Moon as much during the last couple of years, and sure enough, I'm beginning to forget what's what.  Time to check back in with Her!

In fact, I have a series of tiles prepped as the Moon in Her various phases and I noticed confusion as I tried to put them in order this morning.  Could. Not. Do. It.  Had to resort to googling the Moon's Phases (what DID we do before smartphones?) in order to turn things the right way.  Yes, definitely time to check back in with Her daily changes.

While trying to determine exactly how long those tiles have been sitting around waiting for me to finish them, I re-discovered this (below).  If you asked me, "Have you ever drawn an elephant?"  I would have said with 100% confidence, "Nope."  But here it is.  And I drew it.  Memory is notoriously unreliable!

I based the coloring and the stars on an amazing photo I saw of a man in India riding an elephant for a spiritual celebration of some sort (to Ganesh, perhaps?).  His elephant had been covered with light blue blue dust and he or someone had painted stars all over it.  It pretty much looked like this.  I completely changed the blanket, though, and left off the man, and used a template for the outline of the elephant from Ben Kwok of Ornation Creation (he has tons of animal templates).  So this is not a copy of the photograph, not even close. I rarely tangle anything representational but my friend Julie adores elephants so I framed and gave it to her.  And I drew it exactly 7 years ago today.  A lot has happened in that time--she got married and now has a lovely little boy.  I'm betting the elephant picture is somewhere in her house, maybe even in his room.

Finally, since I've been on a Moon kick, yesterday I had fun with a Zendala I'd prepped with a watercolor wash a long time ago.  Just playing with the tangle Ibex.  I started off like the photo on the left and then somehow ended up like the photo on the right.  Not my best work but oh boy did I have fun playing.

Really, it is the same tile, just taken on 2 different backgrounds under different light conditions and clearly I'd done more drawing in the version on the right.  Still, when you look at the color differences, it's hard to believe it is the same tile.  I think I prefer the one on the left, before I overdid the work on it.  Live and learn.

Ah--I just heard that Queen Elizabeth has died. I know she was still working as recently as the day before yesterday, when she greeted the new PM.  Talk about taking to a role in life with utter dedication--how serious she was about it!  She wasn't perfect, but she was wonderful anyway.  She was born to become an archetype, and perfectly lived the role.  Go in peace, Lady.

This is part of a project I began years ago in a workshop with Martha Huggins and Molly Hollibaugh.  And I do mean years ago.

It always surprises me how much better I feel on a day when I draw.  Whether the piece turns out well or not, the process is mindful and meditative.

Here's a short article on why drawing--bad or good--is loved by so many. (Many of these same points could be describing the practice of meditation.)  Count me in. 

What happened to these people, the Mimbres, who created such dramatic and elegant pottery? 

Emerging from the Mongollon culture, they were a later version of that group which lived around the Mongollan Mountains in Arizona and New Mexico from about AD 200-1450.  If I am correct, the Mimbres peoples lived toward the end of that period (1050-1200 or so). 

Eventually, it appears that they  abandoned their homes and cultural centers for unknown reasons.  Just walked away, probably dispersing into other groups or other areas of the country. 

Who were they and where did they go--and why?  So far, we have no answers to these questions.  They leave us their inspired, graphic, dramatic pottery, from which this tile is drawn.  Here we have the fish, the deer, the turtle, and the caterpillar, all very precious and symbolic to them.  We have the four directions, a stylized sun, some stylized feathers.  While we can say something about what modern generations of Native/Indigenous Peoples would say about these symbols, we can only guess at the full extent of what they mean to people from this era.  It's a definitely a mystery. 

Only their art speaks to us about who they were.

To a Mimbres Woman
by Marty Eberhardt

I see your thousand-year-old thumb print
On the plain brown potsherd.
My own thumb fits perfectly
In the curve you left.
Other more elegant pottery bits
Lie among rocks and junipers
On this hill of dry grasses.
Red-on-white interwoven geometry, 
A tasseled quail,
Designs fine as any
In the art galleries of the town. 
But it is this plain brown piece that draws me.
My thumb seeks the curved place, again.
I see you forming the pot 
From coils of clay,
You look out over fields of corn and beans 
In the valley below.
Then, as now, a red-tailed hawk dips,
A horned lizard scurries under a stone
That forms the village wall.
Beyond the fields
Green cottonwoods mark the river  
Between jagged hills.
The wind shakes their leaves like a gourd rattle.
In the quiet between gusts,
The river rushes below, monsoon-strong.
It is in these wild places,
Where our thumbs
Feel the curve of another’s hand,
Places free from cement, neon, asphalt, smog,
And deadened water,
Across years, 
Across cultures and countries,
Beyond all reason,
We find each other.