We flew from Cork to London. Aer Lingus had a two-hour flight delay because something was wrong with the toilets and they had to bring in a different plane. (Honest, that was the reason they gave us!)
I tried to draw fellow passengers in the waiting area. Since I don't know how to draw faces yet I just left them out. My motto this whole trip has been, "Do what you CAN do" because if I did what I wanted to do I'd be coming home with an empty Moleskine!
Sometimes it's just about impossible to get myself to draw or paint something. On those days doodling comes in handy. It's a way to play with line and color and lots of dots, I seem to really go for those dots!
I haven't heard a word from Beulie yet, but we only returned her to Canine Companions for Independence on May 13th so it's far too early to expect any news. But she gave our family so much life, she was such a vigorous, happy little puppy and her move into advanced training has left a deep void for the rest of us. So I doodle in my Moleskine with a great set of Stabilo markers.
We were up early this morning so DD could participate in the Human Race, an annual fundraiser for nonprofits in Sonoma County.
Steve and I went to Pearl's for breakfast, a real down home sort of place where everything is BIG! I ordered tomato slices instead of half a plate of hash browns and cut a few other corners but ended up eating those nice thick slabs of bacon...
Later we worked on the bike path and filled up three more very gigantic huge debris bags with weeds and clippings. Lots of dog walkers strolled by and some thanked us for our work. It seems to suit me to stand in the ditch and pull weeds.
When I got home I tried to fix a page that hadn't worked. When I first painted the green swatch the paint didn't stick on regular Moleskine paper so I added gesso and made it darker. Then I remembered the lined stamps and then I added doodles and then I added a real foxtail from the bike path and then I smudged around with Pan Pastels and, well, you get it, I was just messin' around and having a good time doing it.
And now I'm going to sit around for the rest of the day!
I've become an obsessive doodling maniac and it sure is fun!
A couple night's ago I started making crowd faces on the bottom of a page I had started in the dog park. Which means -- I had my Moleskine with me at the park and I had it on the sofa in front of the television. And I'm keeping it close by wherever I go so I can doodle ALL DAY LONG!
I remember, from an art therapy class I took, that repetitive patterning is calming, so very true, and it gives me something to do when I'm transitioning from one situation to another. Just doodle. I've become addicted to Pan Pastels and watercolor pencils. The pencils go with me, the pastels are for home use -- not shown here, but I use them often.
So.... it's whatever o'clock, do you know where your Moleskine is?
For the past three weeks, THREE WEEKS, I have been working on this little doorway in my watercolor class. Each week it has improved and I admit to learning a lot, but I have so had it with this piece! Eventually it will be part of a three-part divided painting but I haven't completed the other drawings yet, let alone the painting. Even Beulie is bored, she curled up at my feet and slept through the entire class.
Doorways, paths, bridges and architectural details all catch my attention when I'm poking around looking for something new to draw. Flowers are fun. Trees are still hard for me but I liked the way last night's bark turned out. I like masonry and stones, piles of rocks and things like that. I don't like landscapes unless I can confine them into some small bit of detail.
In fact, I prefer small -- small images and small paper. Sometimes my classmates sit in front of humongous sheets of watercolor paper and my eyes glaze over. I haven't graduated beyond 9x12 paper and prefer something littler than that. Like my Moleskine that I used last night. Or some torn piece of something larger. This image was on half of a 9x12 so I guess it's about 6x9, quite enough for me.
Oh, the weather report. It rained all day. The forecast is for rain all week.
I found a better view of the same bridge I've been trying to paint with watercolor pencil. It's still not great but I like it better than yesterday's attempt. In real life the colors in my drawing are not as saturated. And today I remembered to include the sidewalk leading off the bridge! The part I like the best in mine is the bark on the tree on the right side. I'm looking forward to tomorrow's lesson in my online class.
Today was a holiday and I only worked one hour. It was cold and foggy until after lunch when the sun finally came out. There is supposed to be rain starting tomorrow and for most days all week. So we're back to winter - the groundhog was right!
Probably because I went to the memorial service yesterday morning it felt like Monday all day today. I kept watching for the mail carrier, wondered why the neighbor kids weren't back in school, why the package guy didn't drop a box on my doorstep and why the phone didn't ring. But no, it's Sunday all day, and a very dismal one at that. I enjoyed the quiet and flopped on the sofa for some reading and eventually collaged the recent storm. (The snow leapard does have a head, it's just hard to see in this photo.) But it's all there -- the crossed-arm parent, the potentially out-of-control kid and the sensible bowl of hot soup on a cold day. Freud would be proud!
And then I confounded my brain by trying to paint a Christmas ribbon before I put the last bits of wrapping away. 
My usual every other Tuesday infusion of Herceptin was scheduled for today because of the New Year's holiday. For me, it was almost a drive-through experience -- some set-up time, a 30-minute drip, finishing up and I'm out of there. Beulie was with me. Each time I got her settled and quiet another staffer would walk by, stoop down and pet her furry head, offer a treat and wind her up again. She is so loved there! There was also a little boy, about six years old, who was as bored as Beulie was, so I handed him the leash and pointed to all the walking areas where he and Beulie could parade through and visit anyone who looked up. Beulie was thrilled to finally have some action and the kid was proud as punch.
All this is by way of saying that I didn't have much time to draw, but got something started and brought it home to complete. I used watercolor pencils again in my Moleskine.
My goal today is to enjoy the rain and stay in my jammies for as long as I can. I drew another set of ornaments, practice, practice, practice.
Brix is one of my most favorite drawing subjects. He's four years old, a labrador/golden retriever cross. I raised him from eight weeks as a Canine Companion for Independence puppy but he was clear from the get-go that he didn't want to be a service dog, he wanted to be the boss and he wanted to cuddle all day, not work. The professional trainers got the message so he was released from the program at 23 months and has been our beloved family pet ever since. He sleeps a lot giving me a real chance to draw some basic contours before he shifts position again. Here I used watercolor pencils, a Micron .5 pen and my faithful Moleskine sketchbook.
It was my husband's suggestion that we drive to the ocean yesterday, the gorgeous blue Pacific Ocean. I would have stayed home and scrubbed toilets or something and totally wasted this great sunny beautiful Saturday. We stopped at a little deli partway and enjoyed sandwiches, then off to the beach. All three dogs were with us and the three of us adults (daughter, me, him). Such a day! We jumped waves, something our poor deprived dogs didn't know how to do -- and they are labradors, water dogs! One refused, the shy one who is afraid of everything. But the other two got into the spirit of it all, rolled in the sand, plowed through the water, frolicked and tried tentative sips of salt water. Yuck! The nights are cold here now but the days are unseasonably warm and bright with sun.
I waste a lot of time. I often sit around flipping through Flickr photos and being generally unproductive while CNN is recycling in the background. Today was one of those days. It was hard to wake up, it was hard to stay awake, it was hard to Get Things Done. Most of the day was dull gray and dreary -- the mountain behind our house was missing again in the fog -- and nothing got crossed off my to-do list. But it was fun spending the morning with my friends and our eight dogs (4 women, 8 dogs). We laughed and laughed and eventually brought the sun right out. Then I worked. And was home by 6:00 pm and started sitting around again. And now I want to read. Tomorrow will be better.
I watch too much television. When I'm on my deathbed I don't think I will wish I had watched more TV but I am likely to wish I had made more sketches. I can at least say that I rarely focus completely on the program, it's just on and I'm sitting there doing something else. Ideally I would turn off the TV. Second best is to make sure I'm sketching something while I'm "watching." So last night, at least, I did just that while I was tuned in to "60 Minutes," one of my favorite programs. One more page of Moleskine filled!
My moment of enlightenment this afternoon was when I realized that, whenever I draw even the most insignificant little sketch, it becomes a state occasion, not a habit habitually performed. For example, when I get hungry and decide to eat, I go into the kitchen an pull out sandwich fixings and construct a sandwich, sit down and eat it. It isn't a state event. It isn't something that particularly catches my attention. It's all over in maybe 15 minutes. And then I move on to some other habitual behavior like, for example, sitting down with a book. I don't make any internal announcements, "Now I'm going to do this great thing for the good of the universe, I'm going to take in a page or two," I just do it. I have yet to complete an entire sketchbook although I have begun several. Some days I don't draw at all. So.....what I need to do, in addition to Practice, practice, practice, is draw More, more, more...and several times a day, several times a day, several times a day, without it being such a Freakin' Big Deal! Just draw, doggone it!
Sometimes I like to stay up late when the household is quietly sleeping and just draw. Last night I tried to copy this jaguar from a photo. The longer I drew, the more I saw and the more I loved the cat and wanted to "get things right." I'm hoping to use the same photo for a watercolor painting later this week. But for this first attempt I simply used a charcoal pencil in my Moleskine sketchbook.
Greetings from the blue skies of northern California. After days of rain the air quality is pristine, there's a slight breeze and everything feels...well, pure. Steve and I took the three dogs for a walk and lunched with the tourists.
Last night I finished reading a wonderful little book, A LIFE IN HAND, by Hannah Hinchman on the art of the illuminated journal. I don't know why the publisher has allowed this book to go out of print but I was able to request it from our public library and read it in two evenings. I kept wanting to put it down and do some journaling and drawing of my own....which is what I did after we got home this afternoon. One of her suggestions is that, when you go for a walk, find something to bring home to draw. Such a simple idea...and it works. There are so many acorns on the ground this fall that we crunched in places while we walked.
And then, first thing after getting in the front door -- the dogs fell asleep and I added a page to my Moleskine. 
