Adding a New Dimension

I’m in the process of beginning a new venture…of gathering, typing, printing, and offering to others, some things I like to knit and crochet. They are my designs, of course, and it has been a dream of mine to be able to to do this for quite a few years now. I’ll keep you posted as to how it’s going. My plan is to keep this blog as a means of blending my drawing adventures with my yarn adventures. I think it will work…I’m hoping it will. You will continue to see drawings definitely, but some of them will be about all things yarn. I’ve been updating the About page and the Artist Statement to include this new dimension to the blog. And, of course, I’ll let you know when my pattern shop is up and running:)

Our cat, Lucy, is always curious about my bags of yarn…she paws at it, squishes it, lays down in the middle of a basketful, but doesn’t chew it any more (she’s been yelled at a few times). But she’s just like me: she loves those strings of colorful softness. I wonder if she imagines, like I do, what those balls of yarn will become? Probably not, but the fascination is the same.

Color is coming soon!

I’m looking forward to the colors of fall…how ’bout you?

Line & Yarn

It’s fairly evident to me, the connection between my fascination with yarn and with line drawings… Strings of either fiber or ink woven together to make a pleasing whole. Besides drawing and painting, my husband and family, knitting and crocheting are pretty high on my list of favorites.  With cooler weather comes a desire to have yarn run through my fingers, either with a hook or some needles.  My oldest can crochet ANYTHING, as long as you do NOT give her a pattern!:) And my littlest is learning and doing quite well.  These are just a couple of sketches done very quickly while she was crocheting.

Similarities in Life & Line

My life has the same feel as making a continuous line drawing:

I begin in one area, let’s say the cat, and pretty soon my lines have traveled off into the pillow or chair, without completing the cat.  Then, before I know it, in the midst of lines describing the chair, I find myself drawing the bookcase or the chairs in the background.  Flitting from one thing to the next as my eye carries me around the scene and my pen follows on the paper.

My days are the same.  Flitting from one thing to the next…work, take kids places, draw, work, take kids places, go here, go there, grocery shop, clean some part of the house, take kids places, maybe knit a bit, go here, go there.  None of these are ever really “finished” in one go, I have to come back to them later, figure out what I was doing, then go off again.  Perhaps you know this type of life.

What I need to remember in the midst of it all, is that when I step back after I think, maybe, my line drawing is finished (or has rather “stopped in an interesting place”-Picasso?) I actually LIKE the look of things…the crazy, haphazard look of the lines, the restatements, even the “mistakes”.

This way of drawing isn’t “pretty”, it actually looks a bit “off”, wonky, all “sigh-god-lin”.  But whenever I see continuous line drawings, I’m drawn in, hooked, mesmerized…love, love, love that way of drawing.  So why do I fret when my life feels like this?

Edith Schaeffer, in her book, Hidden Art, speaks of our lives as being tapestries that God is weaving.  Here in this earthly journey, we only see the underside of the tapestry…all the knots, tangles, dangling threads, crossovers, etc.  But one day, we will see the other side…the beauty He has been weaving out of the chaos of our lives.   I’m banking on that!

**Note:  “sigh-god-lin”  is my feeble attempt to spell a word that I’m not sure is in use today…I grew up , summer after summer, on the stage of Horn in the West, an outdoor drama in Boone, NC.  Widow Howard used this word in describing what happened in making the new quilt she had made for young Mary & Jack’s wedding.  Preacher Sims asks her, “What’s that quare (queer) lookin’ thang in the corner?”  She replies, “Why it’s a log cabin pattern, ere ya blind?”  and then as the realization dawns on her that the corner log cabin is upside down, she says, “Lawdy mercy it IS wrong…I got that thang in there all sigh-god-lin!”

Based on Line…

This is a painting from a few years ago based on a contour drawing of a still life set up.  I was then, and am still, captivated by line.  I was learning from terrific artists such as Bob Lysiak and Skip Lawrence…and I can see Bob’s influence here.  Though I could have softened edges here and there, what I like is the emphasis on line and color.  This is watercolor, believe it or not.  Watercolor is amazingly versatile with possibilities all the way from oozling transparency to creamy opacity.

I have  recently been reading some books by Charles Reid that I borrowed from my mom. He also loves line, and I’m enjoying the simplicity of concentrating on following contours in and out of subjects, from foreground to background, and even “losing” some lines here and there.  I’ve also been enjoying charcoal lately…the approach there is less emphasis on line, more on shape.  But even this is enhanced by the time spent with contour drawing, especially if I train my eyes to draw contours of SHAPES, not necessarily THINGS.  That would certainly have helped the above painting be more connected, and less cut-out looking.  Still, I like that painting for what it is emphasizing…two favorite things-color and line.

Endless Inspiration

As temperatures cool, I’m outside more and enjoying the beauty of some of my favorite subjects–trees.  I cannot get enough of them.  I’m usually in a quandary as to whether to simply sit or stand in the presence of a tree’s beauty drinking it all in, or to record it’s beauty in pen or paint while standing there.  More often than not, I come home to record what I remember…not merely a duplication of what that tree looked like, but of what it felt like to be near it.  I teach at a school where nature is upheld as an endless source of inspiration for our minds, our imaginations, our hearts.  I LOVE this aspect of the Charlotte Mason philosophy of education.  In our teacher training days a few weeks ago, we were handed a packet of information about Nature Study that included wonderful quotes about trees…here’s one for today:

And see the peaceful trees extend

their myriad leaves in leisured dance–

they bear the weight of sky and cloud

upon the fountain of their veins.

–Kathleen Raine, Envoi