Three? Really?
We are now a three car family.
Whoa.
And even though this happened two months ago…I still walk out into our driveway and wonder…Who’s here?
Then I remember, all three are ours, we have three driving people in our family, and it won’t be long ’til we have four.
Four people who drive, that is, NOT four cars!!!!
Rhodos As High As…
Directly behind our house is a rhododendron bush. It’s blooming like crazy right now! It’s huge…reaching up beyond our high back deck. As I sat in the yard to draw it, I kept humming and thinking:
The rhodo’s as high as an elephant’s eye…and it looks like it’s climbing clear up to the sky!
Well, it isn’t corn, and this isn’t Oklahoma. It’s Rhododendron in North Carolina. 
What A Difference Paper Makes!
It’s Strawberry Time ’round these parts! Yummy fresh strawberries right from the farm…there’s nothin’ better! But the paper you choose to paint them on…it makes such a difference!!!
I’m actually showing you these in reverse order of having created them. They are both watercolor sketches of some of the berries we got recently from a local farm. The ABOVE watercolor was made in my lovely book of handmade watercolor papers. I really don’t know where I got this book, except that I think my mom gave it to me. She generously gives me all kinds of art supplies, and this paper is to die for!!! There’s no label or any indication of where this watercolor paper book was made, or else I’d share it with you so you could get one too. I love how the paint sits on top of the paper for a bit before it sinks in. This allows the colors to mingle in wonderful ways… that oozling and wazzling I love so much!
This is worked in my trusty, everyday Aquabee Sketchbook. I do love this 9″ x 9″ square book for everything from pen and ink to watercolor to oil pastels to…well, really anything.
And I like the Aquabee paper “look” too. It’s less oozly and gives the watercolor strokes a carved look, as the paper absorbs the paint much more quickly and dries quicker too. Both are fun to work on/with. As are the many other watercolor papers available, of which I have SO many.
Too many papers…not enough time, I’d say! I’m looking forward to tomorrow’s Drawing Your Life Mini Lesson…I hope you’ll stop by!
What Was I Thinking…
Our Spring Break is now over…I’m sending the kids off to school as we speak I type. All in all it was a wonderful week with kids home, being with both families, Holy Week services, multiple egg hunts and painting the hallway. Ever the optimist, I began what I thought would be a fairly simple project: to paint our hallway downstairs and if all went well, to continue it up the staircase and down the upstairs hallway. My eldest wanted to help, so I thought…piece of cake!
We bought the thickest paint from Lowes, what they say is their primer/paint combination that allows for a one-coat application. Cosmic Cream sounded and looked like just what I wanted. I knew, from having painted other rooms in our home, that it would probably need two coats. As the week wore on, and my helper wasn’t able to help with the second coat, it became evident that a probable third coat would be needed. And that’s where it sits… I’m not a fan of unfinished projects.
So. I’m thinking today is the day to put on the final coat of paint. That is, if LIFE will allow. But getting back into my weekly work/family routine doesn’t allow for lengthy spans of time. We shall see. I sat down at the kitchen-end of the hall to draw the above and then painted “the walls” with the Valspar Cosmic Cream paint. My sketch just might be more finished than the walls will be. Oi!
P.S. This is the stuff of the FEAST…ordinary, slightly boring, not-yet-finished LIFE. I hope you have a FEAST-FUL week! And a chance or two to draw it!
Petal Showers
“Hey mom! It’s snowing or hailing outside! Did you know this?” my freshman-in-high-school son hollers to me from the living room. Dashing to the window, we all said in response to him, “That’s not snow! Those are petals!” It was raining petals from all the pear and plum trees in our neighborhood. It looked something like snow! Maybe not hail, but like pink and white snow!
I’m guessing we just didn’t have enough real snow this winter to remind him of what that stuff looks like.
I don’t think I was very clear about WHY my kids have cheshire grins…my oldest daughter, after postponing getting her license for a while, was able to get it back in February; the soon-to-turn fifteen year old boy has just finished the written part of drivers’ ed and can’t wait to get his permit in May; and my youngest just got braces. Though she was so excited to get braces at first, her enthusiasm has since diminished due to a very sore mouth! Poor girl…so much to manage with Type 1 diabetes, braces, and growing into a young lady. In approximately two months time, our oldest daughter will graduate from high school. So many rich and wonderful landmark events going on in our house.
With all this happening, I’m so grateful for drawing. It’s as if my pen or paintbrush becomes a straw through which I can drink in my life and the lives of my children. Drawing enables me to taste and savor these moments. And I’m so thankful for many of you who have plunged in to these mini-lessons with me. I can’t wait to post Friday’s lesson…and next Friday…and the next…:)
Life is there for the drawing! Let’s have at it!
Three Cheshire Grins
Big doings in the Edwards household these days…
All three kids wearing smiles as wide as their faces…
I’d have to say…I am too!
**A Note about the Mini Lessons starting this Friday!! I’m a little overwhelmed by everyone’s enthusiasm…and so I’m afraid maybe you might be thinking this will be like an interactive online class. Sadly, no, these little lessons on Drawing Your Life will merely be a blog post. Albeit filled with drawings/paintings/etc. (by me:) and encouragements by me, there will be no YouTube videos to watch or interactive lesson to tune into at a specific time. I’m just posting on Fridays something that will, I hope, aid you in your endeavor to chronicle your life in images. There will be minimal instruction on specific drawing techniques. I hope this isn’t disappointing to anyone. I just wanted to be clear. I re-read my previous post, If I taught You to Draw, and yep, sure ‘nough, it spells it out pretty well.
Gosh, it sounds like I’m really dampening the prospects of these Mini-Lessons. I just have to tell you I .AM. SO. EXCITED. ABOUT. THISSS!!!!
The Linchpin
Yep. You guessed it! To draw and draw (and paint) my little life!
Genevieve knew it. I’ve even known it in some measure all along…it shows up in my Artist Statement, in this post and this one. But somehow I’ve needed a re-ordering, a sorting, if you will, to realize once again, the path I’m on. One commenting friend suggested it might be “creativity” as THE ONE THING. Though this is certainly valid, it has been too broad for me and I’ve been wanting/needing some focus among all my creative loves. When my friend, Teresa, asked the question and I answered her so definitively, she said, “Well, then THAT’S your job and all the others are your hobbies.” I loved that. There have been SO MANY times when I’ve tried making the others my “job” and I’m left saddened that “drawing” is put on a back burner. Though I love and enjoy-to-pieces the other creative endeavors…I’m content to think of them as hobbies. Drawing is central. This explains why I draw my knitting, draw my crocheting, draw my ukulele and illustrate the poems. This explains so much.
But there’s another element to my “job description” that I haven’t mentioned yet. It was as much a part of the answer to Teresa’s question as “drawing my life”. Here’s my entire response to her:
I want to draw my life and to encourage others to do so as well. I want to empower others (as I myself practice this daily) to see the Beauty that is right under their feet and all around them in their everyday, ordinary lives…if they will but look for it and draw, paint, or collage it to remember and celebrate their life.
This explains a lot…why I teach art to kids from Kindergarten through 8th grade, why I’ve taught a Visual Journaling class a couple of times in the past, why I’ve given several sketchbooks away to friends in hopes that they would draw their lives and find joy there, and why I titled my first Zine, Thoughts on Drawing & Life.
Perhaps I need a little of Genevieve’s determination some days to focus the creative ADD and the flotsam and jetsam of living. Perhaps I just needed to name it…(again?). I have several ways I want to expand my drawing horizons…they include you. I’ll continue in Baby Steps to see some of these dreams come into reality. I’ll share them as they evolve.
In the meantime…draw your life! Read Ish! by Peter Reynolds. Read The Creative License and Everyday Matters by Danny Gregory. Go through the terrific exercises in the books One Drawing a Day by Veronica Lawlor and Artist’s Journal Workshop by Cathy Johnson. I love EDM (Everyday Matters) both on Yahoo and on Facebook for the camaraderie and sharing of our drawings and paintings. Join us, if you aren’t yet a member. Carry a little book around with you and sketch or doodle the little things you see…interesting, beautiful, quirky, fun, and even the sad, dreadful, and horrible. Your life…your beautiful life.
P.S. Teresa used the word “job” interchangeably with “calling”. That’s how I’m thinking of it…a calling on my life.
P.S.2. The Free Dictionary definition of Linchpin:
linch·pin or lynch·pin (l
nch
pn
)
| Noun | 1. |  linchpin- a central cohesive source of support and stability |
A Bird’s Nest
What is it about Bird’s Nests that we are so attracted to them? They’re all over the web, on book covers, as jewelry, as decorations, on cards, in paintings, etc. What is the “draw”?:)
Does it have something to do with the brown mess of twigs and sticks, mud and leaves, tenderly assembled into a home?
Is it the wonder of these little creatures so diligently crafting their home to house and hold their little-ones-to-be?
Is it the pretty, soft-colored eggs that lie there in expectant waiting?
Does it represent hope? new life? spring? future joy?
Perhaps it is all this and more. Perhaps it’s the perfect picture of an exquisite everyday exclamation! A monumental mundane! A typically UN-noticed and hidden jewel perched precariously in a tree, exposed to wind and weather, yet enduring.
When we peer into a Bird’s Nest, do we see ourselves? our lives? our life’s work?
I don’t know. All I know is that I love to draw them. Love to knit them. Love to crochet them. Somehow they speak to me of Spring. Of Hope. Of Life.
P.S. To crochet this bird and its nest, click here for my pattern to purchase. To knit the nest and eggs in the middle photo, click here for the free pattern from Purl Bee.
Touch of Color
Though this sketch was made in the Fall, it reminds me of what’s going on right now in our neck of the woods. Color is peeking out of the winter grays here and there! And it’s only the beginning of March! Daffodils dapple the gray-brown landscape like watercolor splashes, and cherry, plum, and even some pear trees are blooming like torches in a murky world.
This drawing is of my back yard, with the water feature in the bottom right-hand corner. Autumn light, as the sun was setting, tipped only portions of the bushes lining the yard between us and our neighbor. Long shadows crept into our yard from tall cryptomeria (sp?) trees off to the right, undrawn.
I’ll make a drawing (or two or three) of the lovely touches of spring color happening in my neighborhood. I’ve been working on a REALLY, REALLY exciting Baby Step which I hope to reveal to you very soon!!! Oh, I do hope you like it! It has quite a few little Baby Steps within it, but I’m having so so much fun with each one. Today was THE MOST FUN part of the project: spending time with a dear friend whose computer skills are astronomical and who so graciously teaches me the elementary stuff. Our working lunch was just what I needed today…friendship, great conversation, shared lives (our daughters are besties and will be graduating from high school in a couple of months!!!), PLUS the ability to learn what I needed for the next step in this awesome project. Well, I think it will be.
Thank you Amy!!! And to all of you who visit here. May your weekend be full of touches of color, whether it’s in spring blooms or white fluffy snow or indoor beauty!
P.S. I just realized I have posted this sketch before, here. Oh well. I had it in a folder of sketches I had labeled “unblogged”. Might be time to go through that file and weed out the ones that have been posted. Well…you can enjoy once it again!
My Blog in review: 2011
Here’s an excerpt:
The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 17,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 6 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.
What I Want
8 am. The first day of 2012.
I’m sitting here in my usual morning spot, reading, thinking, writing, gazing out the window onto my back yard and the street as it leads further into our neighborhood. What do I want this year? I typically shun the list-making of “things I want to do/accomplish” as it seems too superficial, too bland in the face of the gravity and richness of a dawning New Year. Besides all the eating healthy, drawing and being creative, loving my family and friends, shedding a few pounds…there’s something more I want. Something more. It seems intangible… though the solidity of it, whatever it is, is palpable and real. What do I really want behind all this “stuff”? My eyes turn from paper to window.
And I see it. A shaft of light from the rising east. The sun dawns from one end of our street and makes its way piercingly, solidly down the lane transforming all it touches. On my side of the street, where the sun cannot yet reach, it’s a frozen tundra. Frost everywhere and night’s darkness still lingering. The other side of the street the light transforms lawns into an unearthly green and glows off house fronts as if they were jewels. The Light tips objects here and there. It’s full of promise: sparkles and shards of warmth, of transformation, of becoming.
This is what I want. More of the Light creeping into my Life transforming all it touches. More of its warmth and transforming Beauty no matter how healthily I eat, no matter how much I get to draw and be creative, no matter how well I love others or how many pounds I shed. I want to walk in this Light. I want to look for the Light. To SEE the places it is touching and transforming. To be infused with the Light and so to be changed from within.
This is my New Year hope, desire, and assurance.
Let us walk in the Light together in 2012!
Going On Holiday!
No Skip November is over…December is here! And Genevieve is going on a little holiday. A Cyber Holiday that is…pulling off the Worldwide Highway to go on some merry making ventures. I may pop in with a postcard or two, but I’m declaring December time off from blogging and facebook. I’m not actually sure I can do it! Ha! I do love it so! But I need the extra time for:
*Playing Christmas tunes on my ukulele! Brett over at UkuleleTricks is teaching me some fun holiday tunes and fingerpicking as well.
*Genevieve’s Workshop! As Maddie calls our sunroom/studio with several gift-giving creations afoot and aflutter…oh me, what have I gotten myself into?
*Getting down the poems that are spilling out these days…gheesh!
*Drawing the life around me…it can easily get pushed out with all the hubbub of holiday living!
*Walks in the winter weather…maybe even a snowy walk or two!
*And just simple reverent space to awe at the wonder of the reason for this season! It takes work to create that quiet space and not fill it with busyness.
So Ta Ta For Now to my friends near and far! December will go by in a blink and I’ll be back here to tell you all about it!
A Very Merry Christmas to you all and a Happy New Year!
Three Things She Loves
Piano, Snippy, and Squirt…among many others. I walked into the sunroom, where Maddie had just finished practicing her Christmas pieces, and there ON the piano were two of her favorite plushies who had listened intently while she played.
Why do we ever stop carrying around with us favorite toys, dolls, stuffed things? Do we become too cool? too adult? too serious? Hmmm…maybe I’ll try to revive this in Kernersville.
Now where is that favorite doll of mine?
A Delicious Morning
Morning is the best time of day for me…quiet, solitude, time to think, read, pray, write. But it is made even better when my littlest joins me. I tell her, “This is quiet time for us…you can write too.” So she grabs paper and pen and begins to write.
This particular morning she began a story about her favorite stuffed animals. They are the three she carries around with her these days, that is, if she doesn’t have an American Girl doll in her arms. She’s quite the writer, Maddie is. And a “making machine”! I’ll have to post soon all the recent creations this girl has produced.
The only difficulty with Maddie joining me in the mornings, is that after a bit of quiet and writing, she then wants to share with me what she has written. Not a bad thing…just an end to the quiet, an end to the musing and praying. But don’t we all want to share what we’re creating? Isn’t it just built into creativity to share what we’ve got going, what we’ve made, drawn, painted, written, created?
As Thanksgiving continues…THANK YOU for allowing me to share with you here in this little patch of blogland, the things I create– drawings, paintings, knitting, crocheting, thoughts, life, etc. . Thank you for visiting!
Glowing Gratitude
There was a time, in early Autumn, when I stood on my back-deck balcony to survey the back-yard green. The crisp, chiseled light was drawn to the only color in our back yard. The glow of these two spots caught my breath and held it there as if I were in a darkened theatre mesmerized by the spotlighted display.
On this day, Thanksgiving Day 2011, I catch my breath once again as I survey the landscape of my life and gaze on spots of glowing gratitude:
*Family. Both in my home and within a two hour radius of our home…half of whom I’ll see and hug today, half of whom I’ll hold in the spotlight of my heart.
*Friends. Those I see and know through our church family, some who are grieving this day, some who are mending…I treasure you all.
*Online friends and artists from around the world. You are bright spots as you visit me here. I treasure your comments, your thoughts, or just your presence popping in.
May your Thanksgiving Day be filled with glowing spots of gratitude.
A Second Chance
One Friday morning, a couple of weeks ago, my kids were out of school for Veteran’s Day. As I bustled around the house doing domestic things, I walked into the living room and saw my two girls curled up cozily on the couch together, each playing their DS Pokemon games. Oh my heart. <sigh> My senior girl has had so little time to just “veg” lately…it was lovely to see her taking some time to do just that with her little sister, a fourth grader. The oldest was sharing tips with the youngest on how to maneuver through the game as she herself was reliving a childhood memory of playing these DS games with her brother, who is closer to her age. My first thought, upon seeing them thus, was to draw them. But the press of whatever I was doing, quickly moved me on to other less satisfying things.
As the day wore on, I felt a sadness at not having captured that moment between my daughters. It’s a familiar feeling. For as much as I DO draw, so many moments in life do NOT get chronicled in my sketchbook, and I experience a lingering sadness. Yes, I can photograph them, then maybe later draw from the photo. Yes, I can attempt an “out of my head” drawing. But what i really want is to sit IN THE MOMENT with them, and draw…soak up the moment as if my pen were a straw through which I extract all the sweetness.
I didn’t say any of this to anyone. Just went to sleep that night wishing I had STOPPED doing whatever domestic chore I felt was more pressing, and spent the five or ten minutes to draw them playing Pokemon. The next morning, a Saturday, I was once again bustling around when I happened upon the very same sight!!! Both girls huddled together under crocheted blankets on the couch in the living room playing their DS games! What joy! What wonder that I should be granted a SECOND CHANCE! And by golly I wasn’t gonna be pushed around by domesticity this time! No sir! I dropped whatever I was doing, grabbed my pen and sketchbook and drank from that straw as much of the sweetness as I could. It was wonderful.
And I was so grateful…for my daughters, for lessons learned, and for SECOND CHANCES!
To Walk? or To Draw?
So many times, on my daily walks in and around our neighborhood, I’m thinking, “Gosh, I wish I had my sketchbook!” I see so many things, big and small, tangible and intangible, that I want to get down on paper, to remember, to honor, to chronicle. But alas, the difficulty lies in whether I want my walks to be more exercise oriented, or more laid-back and sketch oriented. Typically, I choose the exercise, and then tell myself I’ll come back later to draw one or two of the several things I noted for drawing.
But do I go back? A day has a way of rolling forward and not allowing a return trip. Or, when I DO return, the light has changed, the leaf has blown away, it just isn’t the same.
So, I’ve taken to coming back home and getting down, from memory, those things that captivated me along the route. It’s kinda cool…to sketch out briefly the little beauties I found on my walk. In many ways, the sketches from memory are free from the constraints of “gotta get it right”, and from all the distracting details my eye would have to wade through to draw only the thing that captured me. When you draw from memory, your mind’s eye has already done the weeding out, and you’re left with a more focused drawing.
I’m hoping to walk today…perhaps you can too. And then afterwards, sketch the things you saw, the lovelies strewn along the way.
I believe it may be the highest purpose of art…to capture, translate, and then share with others, the lovelies strewn along our paths.
Hoping…
Hoping for sky
to peek through the bleak.
Storms rolling in
one after the other.
I know the blue
is there somewhere,
i saw it the other day.
I just can’t see it
for all the gray.
Just Play
About a month ago, I ordered and received a terrific book which has inspired me to “just play”, to branch out of my normal, well-loved ruts, and try some different mediums and ways to draw and play. This book is titled One Drawing a Day by Veronica Lawlor, one of my favorite reportage artists of the fabulous group of illustrators from the One Drawing a Day blog.
It’s subtitle is: A 6-week Course, Exploring Creativity with Illustration and Mixed Media. Though I haven’t been working through it in “course” fashion, I have enjoyed jumping around and being inspired by the different entries and examples. You should read the introduction Veronica wrote to the book…click here. Whether you are a seasoned artist or just starting to put pencil or pen to paper in drawings, you will LOVE this book for it’s freeing call to draw “without judging the result”.
We ALL need that!
View from the Staircase
Sitting on the steps looking down…
this is what I see.
There’s love in every line,
memories in each object.
Even the space of a staircase landing breathes life.
How is it that such ordinary things
can hold extraordinary joy?
This is the stuff of life.
The First Try
The first of “the three”,
Now there are four.
I’ll post it soon,
since I’m making some more!
P.S. The other two Oil Pastel over Watercolor, are here and here.
Water Feature
It’s in our back yard.
It requires a lot of upkeep.
It makes a lovely sound.
And is beautiful to look at.
But mainly it serves as fodder for drawings.
