when i was in kansas my sister and i played in our journals at night. i spied a rifle paper calendar for 2014 in her upstairs art room. the floral garlands encircling the months were irresistable. so i sketched one based on lots of different months in the calendar. the wonderful thing about sketching loosely and inexactly is that what you draw will never be a perfect copy.
of course that also means that same loose inexactness will seldom render a person that actually looks like the intended model (victim). but as my sister and i discussed, sometimes you end up with something even better. some crazy quirked-out altar ego. and of course this is an extremely excellent excuse for not being able to draw worth a shiz. you can just say when your model comments on the finished masterpiece, "drawing peeps the way they actually look is unimaginative." do understand you'll have to change your tack if talking to someone who is a highly efficient renderer. there isn't anything wrong with letting circumstances dictate your sketching philosophy.
a second ago my sister & mama moss just facetimed me. i miss them, but not the sudden change in kansas to arctic conditions. MM has an internal combustion engine that keeps her warm. no sweaters necessary. ever.
sister and i snuck back into each other's sketchbook/journals and wrote on the pages and added grades on some pages. she did the writing on the sketch above.
on my way home last night i got this pic as we flew low over LA.
if you emailed while i was away your email might be lost in space. in other words a needle in a haystack. resend if it's important.
thanks for the kind and generous comments about mama moss and also my decision to return to the classroom. there's a lot of work involved in bliss following. and a feel-good trend in the last couple of decades, maybe more, that tells us we can and should fly in that direction. as a pragmatist i'm inclined to sort out the risks and rewards and choose accordingly.
blah blah blah and happy thursday! xo
convent?
How fun!!! I’m from Kanasa too! Cobly, clear out in the northwest corner…. Lawrence is an awesome town! Love your blog Mary Ann!!!
Love love love this post! Had me laughing then got so tender. Thank you!
Do you sketch with a pencil first or just plunge ahead with your pen? and what kind of pen do you use?
“Choose accordingly” if we all lived with this in mind, we would be happier and more peaceful.
And not agonize but accept the choices.
RIP Nelson.
Mary Ann, you are a wonderful example to us all to indeed follow our bliss. Some of the toughest advice I received when my mom passed away and my dad came to live with us was this: “you need to take care of the living, not the dying.” This came from someone who I respected a lot and who was very thoughtful. She prefaced it with “you probably don’t want to hear this….but.” At the time my children were younger, so I was pulled in many directions. But I managed to do my best in caring for my dad with help from other family members until he passed and to care for my children as well. Now that both of my parents have passed, I find I am trying to balance family and art. But life is a constant balancing act, isn’t it? A little cake with those veggies. A little net surfing and a walk on the beach. A teaching job with some late night pen and paper revelry. A bit of Kansas cold and a lovely lump of LA sunshine. What most of us need in the end is to feel loved from a letter or email, a hug or hand hold, or some face time. Even though my mother-in-law doesn’t know who I am, she is always happy to see me and hold hands while we talk and laugh about how neither of us can remember things so well anymore. And that’s just what we both need: to feel loved no matter what.
I for one, thank you for bringing some chill back from Kansas with you…about time we have some COOL!
Glad you’re home safe and sound. Enjoy!
Glad to have you back, but did you have to bring the Lawrence weather with you? xo
wonderous-mus journal pages as always Mary Ann. I LOVE the idea of sneaking into one another’s sketch books and grading them…what a hoot. Um we got slammed yesterday by an arctic blast, cold, snow, the whole shebang as it were so you are lucky you got out when ya did. I personally like a good dose of snow and cold as it keeps me on my toes and gives me an excuse to stay indoors and play in my visual journal, not that I need an excuse but when the streets have not been plowed, when one gets stuck leaving her driveway and not even completely making it into the street, well if I did need an excuse, that would be a really good one to use. Welcome home!!!!!Say hi to the cat posse!