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Some New and Renewed Starts This Week

Posted on by Sandy Webster

Yesterday’s walk at the dam was terribly cold but I loved the frost and fog for taking pictures.

It was worth stepping over the fallen tree because up at the top was this surprise!

On the way back to the car I found these lovely frosted grasses/weeds.

Then this morning it was totally different.

And these of just the water that is holding the sky!

And through the woods seeing the water and sky.

Yesterday I joined the gym near my new house to be. This picture is looking from their front door toward the place (right in front of the white Tyvek-sided one by the white truck) where footings have been poured.

I went there to photograph the site and took some soil to make a watercolor for a new sketchbook to document the house being built.

This morning I was back at the gym for more treadmill time and a good 400 hits on this bag. I have so missed the punching bag.

A very fit and pleasant young woman will help get me back into a routine of weights and aerobics. She showed me a room that had nothing but mats on the floor and said, “We will start here with stretches.” I said, “What! I have to get on the floor and then BACK UP!” She said yes, that it was important for someone my age. I told her I would practice at home before we start our routine after the holidays. Yesterday it took one piece of furniture to get down and two pieces to get back up. More practice is necessary.

While she and I were talking, a steady flow of older women were coming in to partake in a routine exercise session. One was happy to meet me and assumed I was going to join them. A look close to fear must have been on my face as she took my hand and told me it was fun. After she left to join the rest of the legging-clad, yoga mat carrying ladies gathered a ways away from me I told the young woman who is setting up my routines that I was not a joiner of groups of women. She asked why, and I attempted to explain that I felt like being caught in a flock of unruly birds….some even wearing pearls. I said it was too much, just too much right now. Maybe later. Besides it was very clear that there was no furniture in the gym to crawl back into a standing position. And by the way, their instructor for these exercise sessions is a whopping eighty-four years old! No, I am not ready. But later today will get down on the floor for the sole purpose of getting back up…practice, practice.

And the Bird Stories Sketchbook has been fun lately. I tore out the first two pages and turned the nest pages into the end paper for the beginning.

After the great blue heron I did a grebe on the lake. He is likely the lone diver I have been watching, much as I would have liked it to be a loon.

Then a drawing of a green heron. I love their big feet!

And lastly this! It was so much fun to draw.

So that is it for now. I will see if my soil from the building site has dried out enough to sift down to pigment powder and get the new sketchbook up here from the studio and start with a drawing of the footings. I like that the only tree in the open field between the back of my house and the back of those on the next street is directly outside my living and bedroom windows. I will have a bit of landscaping back there to take my stones and other plantings to walk among when stepping out of the screened porch.

Til later….

 

Getting On With It

Posted on by Sandy Webster

Isn’t this lovely? The view from the front door the other morning before I set off for my walk. Speaking of which, here are the latest pictures.

The river and then the dam.

I watched this lone bird dive over and over again. It was mesmerizing to watch where he would come up next. A grebe I think.

The birds seen along these walks are inspiring what I draw in the Bird Stories book.

On the heron above I tried to follow the already established marks of patterned paper used. It does not always work out how you plan.  The little grebe will be next I think. Or it could be those pesky turkeys. Just a little while ago we (the cats and I) heard banging downstairs in the studio. The turkeys were taking exception to their reflections.

With help from my new watch cat, we scared them off.

Scary cat isn’t she?

I finished the latest short story and will post it a bit later today. It is a story to start a beer with then think about as you finish the beer. Or maybe a story to start a scotch with. It made me smile….a good thing.

It is hard to describe how these stories come to me. Not long after I have written them, I forget the character’s name but not what they did and how they felt. That part is stuck in there with other fragments of importance. It is like when you are sitting on a long bench and someone you don’t want to stare at takes a seat at the other end. If you look at them, they will disappear. So you sort of soak them up, take them in from a distance and begin to listen…anyway it is something like that.

They stick around just out of clarity until you put them into words. Then they are real. You can see them, hear them, even smell them. You don’t need to know a lot about them, because in those few minutes that you have spent listening and writing them into existence is all that needs to be said about who and what they are. It’s enough without being seen as intrusive to them. It would be so easy to lose them in the fog of too much.

I look at being an artist the same way. Last night I listened for over an hour to a workshop instructor talk about how her workshops will help the student to find their own voice. There will be exercises to complete to help with the discovery. The students will be able to share with others how it is going for them. Eventually, with following along, they will find their own voice, be artists, and then be “successful”. What exactly does that word, “successful”, mean? I assumed monetary gain.  And when the exercises end and they are left alone with a pencil, paintbrush, whatever in hand, do they launch themselves into whatever success is for them? Is this what it takes to be an artist? Do they make lots of work that is their own, stack it up before approaching a gallery for acceptance?

What if they just sat quietly at the end of the bench and thought about what really matters to them and how they would like to say it? And what if they went back to where the materials they know how to use are waiting to help them express it in a visual form? Is that success enough? Or will they just be passing time until another workshop comes along to help them find the artist within? That last question reminds me of what a very dear friend told me years ago, “Sandy, some of us just want to make stuff.”

I like that, and have to wonder if workshop instructors would be wise to refer to their classes as getting together to make stuff. Just a thought.

Anyway, I am going to go read a book, draw, or sit at the end of the bench and wait….

Til later…..

 

Another Dreary Morning

Posted on by Sandy Webster

It is dreary looking out there. The walks have been the same.

The Riverwalk showed this last bit of color.

The cats seem fluffier when the skies are grey. They are waiting for some sunlight.

I noticed how the crows wait for the turkeys to finish before going in to feed on whatever is left. I thought crows were more brash, pushy and less considerate than this. But this day they were outnumbered thirteen to five.

It inspired me to draw a crow in the Bird Stories book.

It takes so much lead to do these these dark birds. So next was a nuthatch.

Today seems like a good day to draw and write. When the sun comes out later I will go for my walk….too drizzly now.

A while back I heard a journalist on public radio talk about the “news” of the day. She pronounced “news” like one would pronounce “noose” or “moose”, or “goose”. Why didn’t she say “news” like “lose”?  Or more closely related, “screws”? Why is it that the words with more of the vowel, “o”, get a shorter “o” sound? My junior high English teacher would have had the answer. She knew everything. That woman would make us recite the prologue to The Canterbury Tales in the language it was written! I can still recite the first few lines and sometimes do, out loud, to myself, just to remember how learning used to be. Miss Willis would rap her ruler on her desk and make us start again if the pronunciation was off even a little bit. One had to recite not only correctly but with feeling! She wore dresses with hems well below the knee and her dark brown hair was in ripple-like waves going away from her face. I never knew where those waves ended up because she was careful to never take her eyes off of us.

Do junior high English teachers know that some of their students will remember sixty odd years later what and how they were teaching?

And for those wondering what the prologue was, here is just the beginning:

 

Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote,
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licóur
Of which vertú engendred is the flour;
Whan Zephirus eek with his swete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his halfe cours y-ronne,
And smale foweles maken melodye,
That slepen al the nyght with open ye,
So priketh hem Natúre in hir corages,
Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages,
And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes,
To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes;
And specially, from every shires ende
Of Engelond, to Caunterbury they wende,
The hooly blisful martir for to seke,
That hem hath holpen whan that they were seeke.
Spell check just had a field day with that!
Anyway it is just now a bit past nine-thirty a.m. I think it is time to draw, or write or maybe just read through the above prologue, out loud, with feeling.
Til later

Filling My Days By Making Old Habits New Again

Posted on by Sandy Webster

There are few pastimes that are as relaxing as drawing. Last week I found four books that had not been bound and a whole pad of watercolor paper that could be cut into folios for two landscape format sketchbooks with lots of blank pages just waiting to be filled. Now they are all ready to go.

The morning walks clear my head so I can think things through. I go by myself because it is early and few people are around. I also go alone to avoid hearing anything but bird song, rippling waters and my own thoughts. Once in awhile I hear myself sighing with relief that it is just us, me thinking and me agreeing that whatever is so.

The walks have been cold. Along the dam a few days ago.

And then the river yesterday and this morning further downstream.

And this tiny surprise along the way.

I treated myself to a skim milk lavender latte at the coffee shop on the way back this morning and opened one of the small journals to practice pen drawing again. This will become easier and better with practice. But it is a start. My old friend, Gwen, and I used to sit and sketch together years ago. She kept it up and I dropped off.  Between her posts and another facebook friend from down under, I am inspired to take it up again. The small book and pen will stay in my purse and I will take the few minutes each time I am in a coffee shop or similar place to just do it.

The turkeys, all fourteen of them have taken to coming back in the afternoons to wander around the front door.

I have made some final decisions on the new house. Do I want to step over a three inch wall into the shower or simply step down three inches to a recessed shower floor? I am stepping down not over. What color shingles do you want on the roof? Does it matter? Yes, you have to choose from over ten possibilities. I chose medium grey. The windows for my house have arrived. This is good news as the ones for another house are still being held up. I asked for exact finished measurements of some interior walls that will determine where furniture goes. The more I figure out here the less I have to ponder over later. I want to spend as little time as possible sitting among boxes and rearranging furniture.

Half of the garage will be used for studio space. Carving and printmaking will be done there but all the papers need a dry interior space. Large flat corrugated cardboard sleeves can be labeled and tucked under the guest room bed. Smaller papers and supplies can fill dresser drawers in that same room. If guests require more than a couple of drawers perhaps they are staying too long.

As for the artwork, I have found which walls most of it will go on in the new house.

I am also thinking that I might even have pale colored walls in the bedrooms and den. I can’t remember the last time there was anything but off-white on my walls. A soft pale sage green in the guest room would be nice with al that pine furniture. My bedroom a pale graphite, the den maybe the same or something like a hot chocolate with extra milk. It will be fun to just look at what is out there in paint colors.

Speaking of fun. This one is very good company!

Til later….