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Someone told me a couple of weeks ago that I was “gifted” as she looked through my children’s books. I said, no, I just always drew things. Of course this led to other discussions with even the idea because my mother liked to draw, it might be an inherited “gift”. So I looked it up. No, anyone can draw, and draw well if they are willing to keep at it. It always fascinated me how it was possible to put an image of an object onto a flat page. And if I could get the most simple of objects drawn, then I could move on to more complex things. When I was quite young, I thought Walt Disney would call me and offer employment because I was so good at drawing the dogs from Lady and the Tramp. He never called and to be honest the line drawings of his characters were really quite simple…no shading necessary, just lines surrounding the space it took to suggest a couple of happy dogs ready to bounce around on the screen. Easy stuff. And I could understand how my fame for drawing never went beyond my mother’s interest….”that’s nice, dear.” She never even suggested I try drawing a flower or my own shoe. As long as I was amusing myself, that was good enough.

And I did keep amusing myself. Took art classes in school when offered. Tried different mediums. But always came back to the pencil with that wonderful ability to disappear under the pressure of an eraser.

When I was in Australia in 2005, Adele Outteridge challenged me to do a drawing a day for the following year. Here is how I did it to keep it simple, doable and fun.

A wide-spined concertina flag book filled with small tags in both directions of things around the house. 365 pages in total with the last on the inside back cover. This book is so much fun to open as it explodes between my hands when pulled apart.

Seven rows of fifty-two pages! And I never put a day off till the next. I didn’t want to let myself down by slacking off. And I loved it! Every day finding something I could fit on a tag…and then dating it.

Sketchbooks filled with drawings that became more complex over the years. This one is from a book I added stitched pieces to while adjusting to my husband be committed to a care center for those suffering dementia.

A couple of weeks ago at the library where we “Shut Up and Write”, I tried describing in a prose poem how to draw. Here is that piece that just came as natural as drawing itself.

Drawing     S. Webster

I need to find something to draw. That is the first step. Next, lay a piece of paper at an angle, top edge leaning down on the left. Place a kneaded eraser nearby and pick up the mechanical pencil. I’ve chosen a wine bottle opener, turn it in my hand to see how it should look on the page. There. Flat on is always easier than the demands of perspective. I never get things right if looking at it from the foot or head. Lay it directly under my gaze and there it is. Now put that on the paper. Start drawing the left side first. Get all that perfect before moving a little to the right to get the next part. No sides of the palm smearing over fresh loose graphite. If it happens, shape the kneaded eraser to fit the parts needing to be removed. Continue drawing to the right and down. Decide where it needs to be darker, where the shading needs enhanced. Remind yourself that this might easily end up as a wadded-up ball in the bin. I could start over. But I won’t. Feelings of failure take over. Maybe try again tomorrow. Pour a glass of wine. Think about how much easier it would be to draw a glass of wine.

I used this past week’s time at the library to write the poem to go with the warrior chief drawing. This week I will try again since I am not that happy with the effort made. But I have gone back to the frog hauling his crown around while looking for the princess who will take a chance and give him a kiss.

Maybe a couple castles in the background. Wish there was a way to show him riding on a camel as he travels the land…….+ there is only so much space on the page. But I can describe it in the rhyming poem that goes behind the picture. I think a camel is the perfect way for a frog to set off in search of a princess, don’t you?

Anyway, it is getting time for lunch. I am thinking a creative Bloody Mary to go with a savoury scone I baked yesterday.

And a parting thought for those of you who wished they knew how to draw. Get to practicing. It’s either that or fall back on the excuse that your are simply not “gifted”.

Til later….

Taking an early walk before heading out to have coffee with the boys at the senior center. It is our new meeting place for now and is where I take my chair yoga classes once a week. The weather is way too hot and humid to walk later in the day.

I am still going to the library to write on Tuesday afternoons. This week the time was devoted to finding the words in rhyme for the Down the Rabbit Hole book. Then yesterday I reworked those words to go with the order of illustrations. Some more tweaking and I think I have it.

So then it was back to the concertina book of illustrations and stories. The Warrior Chief is finished and I think I will write his story poem while at the library this week. Something with bravery and his little muse that rides along on his shoulder whenever he heads off into battle.

The next page of leaf prints was just begging to have something drawn…..so I decided a frog would be good. He has a backpack where he keeps his crown while traveling in search of a princess willing to lay a kiss on him. Needless to say, I stopped myself before I got too far because I could tell I was getting too caught up in his optimistic anxiety. I need to go back to drawing leaves or baskets.

Actually I could draw according to my written bit on how to draw something from one of my Tuesday sessions. I will add it here because this is a short post. A friend from poetry is bringing her granddaughter over to talk Australia. The said granddaughter just returned from her stay there working for a clothing design company and fell in love with the country. I will enjoy sharing stories with her.

Here is the drawing lesson.

Drawing     S. Webster

I need to find something to draw. That is the first step. Next, lay a piece of paper at an angle, top edge leaning down on the left. Place a kneaded eraser nearby and pick up the mechanical pencil. I’ve chosen a wine bottle opener, turn it in my hand to see how it should look on the page. There. Flat on is always easier than the demands of perspective. I never get things right if looking at it from the foot or head. Lay it directly under my gaze and there it is. Now put that on the paper. Start drawing the left side first. Get all that perfect before moving a little to the right to get the next part. No sides of the palm smearing over fresh loose graphite. If it happens, shape the kneaded eraser to fit the parts needing to be removed. Continue drawing to the right and down. Decide where it needs to be darker, where the shading needs enhanced. Remind yourself that this might easily end up as a wadded-up ball in the bin. I could start over. But I won’t. Feelings of failure take over. Maybe try again tomorrow. Pour a glass of wine. Think about how much easier it would be to draw a glass of wine.

Better go…

Til later…

 

I talked to the grocery man filling the shelves with lettuce this week. I am no longer buying bagged salads or boxed mixed greens. We have a Cabinet member who could be the most ignorant Secretary of Health and Human Services ever in our history, who has removed all measures to safeguard our foods. The lettuce man told me there were, so far, no issues with our store’s produce, but to be safe, buy foods grown and processed in California. So here is my first several times washed Romaine lettuce. We here in the states have some very stupid voters heading off to the polls to cast votes for those who have learned how easily those voters can be manipulated to keep the CEO’s pockets spilling over with the money saved by unsafe practices.

The front entry is finished this week. Next, when the rain subsides, I will have the concrete floor coated in the color of the exterior paint. Just a bit of repotting and changing some plants around yet to go and then I can move on to getting the garage floor treated. I moved the gong to the sunroom where it seems to fit better.

The new pillows arrived.

And the new placement of stones opposite the bench.

Because of handling these stones, I thought I should write about them at my weekly Shut Up and Write session at the library. Here is an excerpt.

Stones    S. Webster

I thought I should write something about stones today. You know, the ones we pick up just to feel their roundness with both hands. Holding their weight with such tenderness as we turn them this way and that to feel the smooth surface, knowing it will have to come home with us. Georgia O’Keefe stole her friends’ stones to line up along windows and floors in her own home. She felt justified in this because she said those friends would never love the stones as much as she did. I saw them in her house and wondered about those she stole from. Did holding onto the friendship mean more than holding a stone? I would have retrieved my own stone from her house and thereafter watched her closely. At least she understood how holding a stone can matter. How keeping stones within reach just to touch in passing can bring such calm. Mine are formed into a snake in the garden. Others in a line from that garden along the walk to the front door. Inside there are bowls filled with stones just waiting to be held. One bowl has a stone someone gave me – a stone she coated with a clear acrylic so it would forever have the wet stone look. She even pointed out a face she saw in it as she pressed it into my hands. All I see is a stone choking on someone else’s expectation. The next hole I dig, that stone is going deep inside where it is free to rub itself back into existence. And hope by the time it works its way up to the surface, no one is waiting to do anything but toss it back down.

I am back to working on the Concertina Story Book. Just laid in the second illustration. The poem that will go with it will be about a warrior chief that you can see taking form….love where his head dress is heading.

I should have it finished by the end of the week. Sadie will keep an eye on my progress.

Til later…

This was the last of July this year and the last time meeting with old men at MJ’s coffee and mailing center. She is retiring to a new life in Georgia and will soon be moving there. Only returning to dog sit her regular customers and go out to eat with her old friends here. I will miss her being the answer person for everything local and movie related. She is a font of knowledge.  Her mother graduated two years ahead of me at a school in Florida. We live in a small world and I will miss seeing her five mornings a week over coffee and old men talking. Nothing lasts forever. Several years ago when I moved here, I gave her a letter of how to get into the house, where the cat food was and who to call in case I missed showing up without letting her know first. I had to retrieve that letter this week. Not sure there is anyone as dependable as MJ has always been for many of us. We did find a new place that is happy to put the coffee pot on for a bunch of geezers and myself if we remember to bring our own mugs.

I am doing a bit of tidy up here at the house. The front door is painted and one of the new rugs in place. Tomorrow the painter will return to do some touch up and help get the next rug under the bench.

I am trying to get the Lost Time book into a Publisher layout so I can see if I want to publish it at KDP on Amazon. The problem is getting the color and contrast right. Also Microsoft keeps reminding me that Publisher will cease to exist after October 13 this year and to move files into Word. I will eventually, but now need to take a day or so to switch them all to PDF files. I wish companies would just leave things alone. Publisher has been so easy to use. But again, things change and I need to adapt or come up short.

There is not much else new going on. Monday I can sleep in if I want but may just get an early morning walk in. It is still so bloody humid here…like everywhere else!

I went to “Shut Up and Write” at a local library and wrote the following. It is part of a longer piece written in the one hour allotted.

There are things needing doing. And they are taking too much time to do right. So, slightly wrong becomes good enough. We can so easily lower our level of satisfaction. So easily settle for less. And what strikes me as odd is how we are so easily satisfied with “the less than”. How little it matters if the upper sheet has a fully tucked-in corner or the dishes are completely wiped dry before going back in the cupboard. Or if a shower has to be every morning. And these “less thans” ease their way into other parts of our lives. We stop being attentive to old friends under the guise of minding our own business. We skip a meal because not cooking is so much easier if there is a container of yogurt and some corn chips to go with that glass of wine. We are not quitting doing things. Just managing what is left of our time. And becoming overly proud of what has been done, with so little effort. Now we have time on our hands. We can go to bed earlier, sleep in, watch the whole season of a British crime mystery. We are not going to take up a new hobby. We don’t need to learn anything new because we know so much already.

Some will arrange the memory objects of their former selves within reach. When touched, they are holding on to what they know. There is a kind of comfort in that, re-living what they have knowledge of. Holding it close and they are what they were. I’d rather not do that. Not now when I can keep everything and everyone at a distance. Far enough away to feel the freedom of moving on at my own pace. I don’t need to look behind me or touch the past. I just want to be in my own skin, dressed in comfortable clothes, and ready to react to each new moment heading toward me. Convinced that none of them matter enough to hold on to. Isn’t that an interesting way to be? Isn’t that wonderful?

Anyway, it seemed worth sharing in case you are tempted to understand someone who is settling into old age.

Til later….