A Side Blog

This post feels a bit scary. I’m going out on a limb and starting a side blog, another blog for a specific purpose and period of time. It is called Letters To An Artist with the tagline being “365 Imagined Letters from the Father to His Artist Child”.  Today will be the only time I reference this blog to you, my dear readers on Drawn2Life. I will NOT be posting daily post alerts on Facebook or Twitter or EDM Yahoo. The blog is there for you if you have interest in it. It offers share buttons at the end of each post, because it’s the kind of thing you may want to share with a specific friend or friends. But if you want/need alerts about the daily postings, you’ll have to subscribe to the blog, since I will not post alerts like I do for Drawn2Life and my other blogs.

I know, I know…I’m crazy to do this. With only a few days away from the busiest time of my year, the Art Show at the school where I teach, here I am starting something that requires I tend to it each and every day. The only thing I can say to you is that I am compelled to start this project both for myself, and for any readers who may be encouraged by it. Many things have been brewing lately in my heart and mind ever since last weekend when Maddie was sick with strep throat. (If I ever needed proof that interruptions in life are actually seedbeds for new or renewed creativity, it’s been this week!)  I won’t go into all that. But I’ll tell you a bit about the blog’s reason and  purpose.

I’m pretty sure I’ve shared with you here in Drawn2Life some of the struggles of being an artist alongside being a wife, mother, teacher. What I do not tend to share with you outright is that I daily take these struggles to God, my Creator, and I write it all out in journals. I’ve done this for years and years. A few days ago, I began to switch the direction of the writings. Instead of me pouring out these struggles I deal with day in and day out, year in and year out, as if I’m talking to Him; I thought I’d see what it would be like to write, imagining that God was writing to me. I have received such good direction from my Maker for many years, through many sources.  Sometimes the direction has been hard or difficult, yet always needed. Ofttimes it’s exhilarating and renewing.

When I wrote the first one, the second one then flew off my pen, and I haven’t been able to stop writing since. But you may have no interest in this, and that is your prerogative! This “side blog” DOES include artwork. It is purposefully set small in size compared to the “letter”. But you can always click on the image to get a better view of it. I toyed with the idea of creating new artwork for this blog. But quickly realized I need to be realistic and cull from the trove of artwork I have already.

Rest assured, business as usual will go on here on Drawn2Life!! Keep tuning in here, whether or not you decide to follow on the “side blog”. And some of you are so kindly checking in on me at Drawn2Knit and Drawn2Be. It must be dizzying for you. But I do appreciate each and every one of your visits, and as always love reading and responding back to your comments.

I’ve kept the blog on a private setting for a couple of days, giving it a dry run, so-to-speak.  The scary aspect of this is the 365 thing. The commitment to do this for an entire year. I really don’t know whether I can do it or not. But I’m up for trying and I know it will be enriching for me to put my mind to this. Perhaps it will be for you…I’d love to think so.

Click here if you’d like to check out this “side blog” of mine. May your day be a drawing day, a painting day, a make something day!

Buried

As if it weren’t enough to have an Art Show to prepare for, I’ve also dived, head first, into SEVERAL knitting and crochet projects! Add to that the drawcumenting of my days, the cooking for family, the shuttling children here and there, the everyday goings on of small town living…and I’m waving my white flag! “Uncle!”

I don’t think my cat, Lucy is too worried about me though! Truth be told, I’m sitting under that mound happily working at whatever my hands need to be doing at any given moment. Well, maybe there’s the odd groan of frustration from time to time. But in case I’m scarce around blogland in the coming weeks, you’ll know why! :0

A Garden of Hope

I spent a couple of hours working in the Garden this week!

In December, you say?? Yes. This is a year-round Garden.

A unique garden whose rows and vines are shelving structures.

The food “grows” on these shelves and then gets harvested and bailed into bags

to be given to school children in Guilford and Forsyth counties.

Please read more about this amazing Garden here!

I’ve written about the Out of the Garden Project before, which you can read about here. I really do love the mission

that Don and Kristy Milholin have planted.  (Don pictured above)

The growth of the Garden is astronomical: they now serve over 900 children and their families in over 50 schools.

 That’s 900+ bags of food EVERY WEEK OF THE SCHOOL YEAR!

As you can see from my photos, the shelves are quite bare. A Winter Garden to be sure.

But this Garden needs to be producing all year round and especially so at the holidays!!

There are many ways you can help:

If you’re local, you can give canned food and/or volunteer to pack and deliver bags!

If you live anywhere, you can donate money! And this is the best part of it: For every $5 you give, you receive an Honor Card (the little painting is by yours truly.  This makes a wonderful gift to give on someone’s behalf.  The back of the card has a space for you to write the name of the person in whose honor you have donated to OOTGP.

No matter where you live in this wide world of ours, consider giving in some way to those less fortunate than you.

In so doing you will bring hope to the children of the Garden!

Portrait #22: The Happy Couple

Back in September, my husband officiated the wedding of some sweet friends of ours.  This was perhaps, aside from my own wedding, the loveliest wedding ever! It was held at the beautiful Dewberry Farm here in Kernersville.

This portrait is not intended to be a detailed description of the individual faces of the bride and groom, but rather a portrait of the sheer delight and happiness they each had for each other on that day! And when I see them on Sundays, that delight hasn’t paled at all!

I wish Will & Kelly many, many days of happiness to come!!

Trumpet Call Announcement!

Hear Ye! Hear Ye!

An Art Show to help a Garden Grow!

Thursday, November 29th 4-8 pm

Featuring Artists from the Triad area

(one of whom is ME!)

Put it on your calendar to come enjoy wine, hors d’oeuvres and music while browsing fine art & craft for your holiday shopping! Entrance cost is $10, and a portion of anything purchased goes to continuing the growth of our Ciener Botanical Gardens!

It has been a loooonnnngg time since I’ve done something like this and I’m soooo excited! I do hope to meet many of you at this lovely event! I will be featuring my drawings and paintings of downtown Kernersville, as well as offering Genevieve Cards and Prints.

This is a one evening event! Please come by and say hello!

For your invitation and ALL the details of this event, click below!

Small Works of Nature

**Several of my works created on location at the Gardens and downtown Kernersville area will be displayed and offered for sale!  The above drawing of Angel Trumpets was created while sitting at the Ciener Botanical Gardens drawing and enjoying the flowering purple basil next to it!

Le Cycliste and Le Tour de Pig

Sharpie & Sketchbook went with me to Lexington, NC this past Saturday to cheer on my husband as he came in to the finish line of the Tour de Pig bike ride.  The rest of us sat in our chairs ringing cow bells, hootin’ and hollerin’ as cyclists came in.  Many of them love being celebrated after the grueling 30, 50 or 64 miles they’ve just ridden.  Randy made his best time ever for a metric century! We then ate delicious barbecue together as this was a Festival for Lexington’s famous and favorite food: barbecue!

Trying to draw moving cyclists is not easy.  I quickly sketched in the areas that weren’t moving and then added in cyclists from memory of them as they went whirring by.

I see now that I need to go back into my sketch to put the date 10/13/2012.  I’ve been so busy lately I didn’t know right at the moment what the day’s date was.

If it weren’t for these sketches to pin me to the ground, October might have been over before it even started. TGFS! (Thank God for Sketchbooks!)

I Love Yarn!

Did you know that I love yarn?? Did you also know that today is “I Love Yarn Day“? Woo! Hoo!!!!

I haven’t shared much of my yarn goings on these days…so TODAY is the day!! I finished a vest that is waiting to be blocked and buttons added.  I need to do this as the weather is just about right for it! I’ll show you when it’s all done!  And with what I had leftover from the vest, I’m knitting a simple lace scarf.

Can you see why I love yarn??  Color, color, COLORRRR!!!! And Noro yarns are some of my all-time favorites!! If you’re interested, you can read about my love of yarn here and here and here.

Did you also know that I like to design my own knitted and crocheted things?  Check out my new page for the FREE patterns you can download!

And check out my Etsy Shoppe for many other patterns you can purchase! Here’s a little gallery for you of some of those patterns: (i can’t seem to get the first three images OUT of the gallery. Oh well. Just look at the other 9!)

I hope you have a wonderful I Love Yarn Day!

Maybe you can knit or crochet a bit! And then perhaps you can draw what you’re knitting! Even better!

Weekend Drawcumentation

I had a very full but wonderful weekend! When it looks like there may be little time to breathe between the coming and going, my desire to draw kicks in full throttle.  Maybe it’s something to do with a need to slow down somewhere in the midst of it, or to have a touchstone to my life as I’m experiencing it fly by me.  I dunno.  But I do know that I have to travel lite and so I put my trusty square Aquabee sketchbook in a ziploc bag with two Sharpies, one big, one little.

The awesome thing about drawing with a fat Sharpie is that it forces you to be quick about it and to just get down the major parts…no fiddling about with details.  If there’s time, you can use the thinner Sharpie for a few details, and then sometime later, go back in with watercolor.  A lovely combination I think.

My weekend started off with drawing downtown at our Ciener Botanical Gardens with a few other artist friends.  I do not have this one to show you yet…I tackled a very long accordian drawing and I CAN’T WAIT to show it to you when I’m finished!!

After that, I took my two younger kids and a friend to the Dixie Classic Fair!! Friday evening was beautiful and warm.  The above drawing was done in YesterDay Village, my absolute favorite part of the Fair!  Trees wrapped in Christmas lights, old cabins and tobacco barns, tractors, pottery and basket weaving, and the awesome chain saw sculptor,  Jerry Ward.  Maddie and I hung out here for quite a while, munching on Kettle Corn as the evening fell into indigo.  It was lovely.

Then right before we left for home, I heard strains of beautiful music coming from the vicinity of the Clock Tower.  I asked William about it and he said that he and his friend had already listened to this guy twice that afternoon and loved his music.  As I got closer I realized I had heard this musician before.  It was Jim Cole, who back in the early 90′s had performed several times in Winston at our church.  It was awesome to hear him again…exquisite guitar melodies with a fantastic voice that has hints of James Taylor, a fact that Jim jokes about since he hears it so much. It was the perfect way to end the night.  Well, except for the fireworks that began as we walked away from the Clock Tower.  Ooohs, aaahs, and sighs from a lovely evening.

On Saturday we traveled to Wingate University to spend the day with our college girl!!! It was fabulous catching up with her, going on a tour of the campus and seeing the places she hangs out the most, which is the Batte Center since she is a music ed. major.  We tailgated with BBQ and all the trimmings and then went in to watch Wingate play football against Mars Hill.  We only lasted to the end of the 1st quarter.

I sit here blogging and it’s 44 degrees outside.  But that day (just 4 days ago), it was 84 degrees, and in the blistering, autumn sun, neither Maddie nor I could take it anymore.  We got our folding chairs and set up in a strip of shade provided by the concession stand at the top of the Erwin Belk Stadium.  I only got on paper the two people leaning and sitting, before a friend walked by and we chatted and caught up with each other.  The rest of the family was done with the heat by this time and wanted to go for ice cream, so I had to finish this from memory when we got home. It wasn’t too hard to leave Catherine there again, knowing she will be home this Friday for fall break!

We got in the car AGAIN on Sunday afternoon!!!  We are crazy, yes? We drove to Lincolnton, NC where Randy’s parents live in order to celebrate his dad’s birthday. I do wish I had a drawing of this day.  But I was having too much fun gabbing and hanging out with the family to sit down long enough to draw.  Those memories will have to stay logged in my heart and mind.

That’s always the tension: do I draw it? and thereby live it?  Or do I just live it?  If you draw everything, you won’t experience some of it.  But if you don’t draw any of it, you’ll miss something.  So even a drawing from memory or from a photo is better than none at all.  Hmmm…so where are those goofy photos of Grandpa right before he blew out the candles on his cake……??  I gotta draw THAT!

October means The JDRF Walk!

It’s been TWO YEARS since Maddie and I participated in the JDRF Walk for the Cure.  Last fall was just too crazy and it pained me to have to bow out of it.  I vowed not to let busyness push it out of our calendar this year!! So we are signed up to walk, and would invite ANY of you who would like to walk with us, to please do so!!

Saturday, October 27, 2012

Wake Forest University BB&T Field

Winston-Salem, NC

Registration starts 9 am

Walk begins 10 am

I’ll be posting once a week about this wonderful organization called the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation.  This group has been around since the 70′s.  Due to their efforts in research and fund-raising, they have literally made it possible for a child with Type 1 Diabetes to LIVE.

When Maddie goes to her appointments at the Joslyn Diabetes Center, she is now told that a cure is around the corner…possibly in the next 5 to 10 years!!  The need for funding is great as they close in on finding a cure and discovering other technological advances that make living with T1D so much more manageable.

If you would like to contribute to this fine organization to help find a cure, PLEASE CLICK HERE! The set up for donating a few dollars is SO simple through the JDRF site.  Maddie’s Mission is the name of our team.  Your contribution, no matter how small, goes to benefitting Maddie and so many of her friends she has met who are also living with Type 1 Diabetes.

We would be truly grateful for your donation!

AND if you’re in the area, please walk with us!!

To read more about Maddie and her diagnosis of Type 1 Diabetes when she was 7 years old (she’s now 10!), click here!

And…for all other posts about Type 1 Diabetes, click here!

Website Shuffle

www.jenniferedwards.com

A few small to the world, big to me, changes are being made ’round here.  One is a rearranging of subject headings on my website.  Drawing & Painting (a link to this blog) is now front and center.  I now have a button for you to click to go straight to my Art Videos.  And there’s a special spot for Commissioned Art.

The link to Genevieve’s blog, my Etsy shop, Flickr, and my About page remains the same.  So nothing huge.  But I’m letting go of the yarnworksbyjennifer site, to offer most of my knit & crochet patterns through the Etsy shop, called Drawn2Shoppe.

Speaking of the Etsy shop, there are a few changes being made there as well! You can see it in the banner here! VERY SOON, I will be offering ORIGINAL artwork via this online venue.  I am very excited to be getting back into offering my artwork for sale.  This is something I used to do regularly, years ago, on a local basis through exhibits and home shows.  I have a renewed outlook that my art is not a money-making venture, but rather something to share with others, both through my blog AND for them to own, should they so choose.  To that end, prices will be kept as low as I can, to offer a little spot of Beauty from my life to yours!

More to come on that later! For now, enjoy browsing around the links on my website portal.  And if you felt so inclined, would you share it with a friend?

Thank you. Thank you!