Here is the story of our trip to Manitoba in daily drawings.
The clouds in the sky spoke volumes. Toddler cuddles were filled with whispered songs and stories. And the waves of Lake Winnipeg recited haikus as they lapped against the stony shore.
It's June already? Where did the time go?
Summer in London: the roses are blooming, the wisterias are long gone, and everyone is in a brighter mood. We've just had beds dug into our yard, and I can't wait to start planting flowers!
The ballerina completes a grande jeté and lays an egg.....
Those colours!
What is a notebook?
A notebook is paper, card, glue, and perhaps a twist of thread to stitch the binding together.
The components are simple.
But notebooks are magical. As soon as you purchase one at the stationery store and scrawl your name in the front cover, it has been transformed.
It is no longer
just
paper, card, glue and twine; it is an extension of you. When you add yourself to the ingredients list it isn't just
any
notebook anymore, it's
your
notebook. There is no other like it in the world.
You add your thoughts, your habits, your visions, your goals. It is messy. It is neat. It is dog-eared. It is imbued with your personality and emotions. Sometimes your notebook is the only safe place to express those emotions...
Not only that.
It is your notebook at this specific time and place. A notebook you bought and used two years ago will bear no resemblance to the notebook you bought yesterday. In that interval of time you have changed and matured, and the notebooks will reflect that.
To make your notebook extraordinary, and like no other, all you have to do is sit down and: write, scribble, sketch, glue, paste, cut, doodle, or do whatever else you feel like doing at that moment.
And then it is yours.
And it is extraordinary.
Because you are extraordinary.
I love verbs.
When I hear a verb I feel that I am right in the action, swinging along with the story.
So here is my day in verbs....
Reading // I just got a rather large amazon delivery, which made a random day in May feel like Christmas. So, I'm anticipating breaking the covers of: Tell it Slant by Brenda Miller and Suzanne Paola, and A House with Four Rooms by Rumer Gooden. Now I just need to find some quiet moments to start my journey though the pages. Also, Swatch by Julia Denos, which is a poem of a picture book. Just perfect in every way.
Listening to // Right this minute I'm listening to Little One trying to sing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star on the baby monitor. We're still preserving the morning nap, even though most days it ends up being "quiet time" rather than "sleep time." She sits in her cot, babbling and singing to her three darling stuffies.
Sipping // My second cup of decaf coffee. Only decaf or else
Painting // I'm working on my fourth illustration for this week. If I want to finish my current two picture books by my deadline I have to paint four illustrations per week, minimum. This is to allow me time for a holiday (yay! Canada!), and time at the end of the project to repaint or fix any illustrations that don't meet my exacting standards. I have three baby-free mornings, and five afternoon naps in which I can work. Every minute counts.
Seeing // The gorgeous, skim-milk-thin, post-rainy-day morning light. The grey clouds are low and gossamer. I expect they will burn off by the afternoon.
Running // Errands... not marathons. Little One and I have lots of tasks to complete today, but once we're done, hopefully the afternoon will be perfect for duck-feeding by the river. Once we've gone for our doctor's checkup... bought some new shoes... stopped by the pharmacy... and run around the Bentall's shopping centre examining all the knee-high window displays (why do stores display everything so low!?)....
What are your verbs for today?
Running to the river... always at top speed. She's the fastest 18 month old I know.
A notebook to hold all the lists...
This weekend I spent some time organizing my studio, and I thought it might be fun to take you on a tour of my notebook collection and show you how I use them.
I have been keeping journals continuously since I was 12 or 13 years old. I started in sweet looking cloth-bount diaries, then moved on to Mead 5-star spiral bound scribblers, then decided that I needed to be stylish and chic, and graduated to moleskines.
I write an entry almost every day. Normally I describe what happened that day (or the day before, if I'm writing first thing in the morning), and outline my thoughts about my projects or things that might be happening in my life.
However, I don't always write journal entries in my moleskine journal. I keep a concurrent journal in a Scrivener file and sometimes I brain-dump my thoughts into that. It's nice to be able to type at the speed of my thoughts, instead of waiting for my hand and pen to catch up.
I'm not precious about my paper journals. They're messy. They're full of scribbles. They're peppered with mis-spelled words and incomplete sentences. Sometimes I only have the time to write quick lists about the day -- things I saw, things I thought about -- in a rapid logging style. My journal is for un-selfconscious experimentation and expression. It's where I push my voice to its limits and figure out what my heart really wants to say. It is utterly private, but at the same time, there isn't much in there that is deeply secret or unsharable.
I recently moved from a moleskine pocket sketchbook to a normal sized one. At first I liked the smaller size of the pocket book because I could wedge it between diapers, wipes and bottles in my hold-everything bag. Now that Little One is older, and we don't need to bring the kitchen sink on every outing, I've opted for a slightly larger notebook. It gives me more freedom to decide how large I want my sketches to be.
This sketchbook is all about daily experimentation and play. I'm not enamoured with the moleskine sketchbook paper. It only does an adequate job of dealing with watercolours and some pens bleed on the paper. That being said, I quite like that I can't be precious about what I'm doing. I feel free to make mistakes because these drawings are only for myself.
I have many other sketchbooks which are the workhorses for my various jobs and projects. For those I normally use A3 or A4 Seawhite of Brighton sketchbooks. They're big, bulky, fantastic, and rarely leave my studio.
This is where I have to admit to you that I'm a nerd; I'm completely, hopelessly nerdy. When I'm reading and I come across a word I don't know, want to use more often, or think is particularly lovely, I write it and its definition down in this little notebook.
I don't know where I got this book from and it started off as something different. It's first iteration was as a book of lists: things I wanted to bake, things I loved, etc. But, it turns out that a book of lists didn't inspire me.
But a book of words?
Heaven.
Here are a few of the words therein....
caparison:
ornamental covering for a horse
fulsome:
complimentary or flattering to a excessive degree
dilatory:
slow to act; intended to cause delay
furze:
gorse (a type of plant). Thorny, evergreen, small yellow flowers, grows in the moors.
pellucid:
translucently clear
plaints:
another way to say "complaints"
numinous:
having a strong religious or spiritual quality.
Will I ever use any of these words in every-day writing or speaking? Probably not, but I love knowing that I have enriched my vocabulary with them.
Whenever I read inspiring passages or facts I copy them into my inspiration notebook.
In essence, this is like an old "commonplace book," which is defined as a notebook into which notable extracts from other works are copied for personal use.
I'm on my third commonplace book. At first I copied clichéd quotes and song lyrics (I was in my teens). In my second book I copied beautiful paragraphs from novels, and useful paragraphs from non-fiction.
In my third book, in addition to recording beautiful and useful things, I'm also trying to incorporate more poetry.
I need more poetry in my life.
My Easter resolution this year was to keep a gratitude journal. I've flirted with the idea for years; scribbling little notes in the margins of my journals or day planner, but I've never stuck with it for longer than a few weeks, because I've never had a concrete plan.
I realized that if I listed three things I was grateful for every day, that would be 1095 happy things to remember over the course of a year.
I wanted a special notebook to motivate my in my quest for gratitude, so I ordered the gorgeous "Line A Day" diary from Chronicle Books, which is a perpetual diary that runs for 5 years.
Think about this: five years of daily gratitude would record 5475 happy moments.
My day planner is a black moleskine notebook with squared pages. I have quested high and low, though stationery stores across three continents, and never found my perfect planner. My main requirements are: a weekly view where the daily portions are vertical instead of horizontal, so I can write lists; and lots of space in the margins for weekly lists that are not day-specific.
For much of last year I used a planner that I had made in inDesign and had printed at our local Notting Hill printing shop. However, after six months the ring binding was in shreds and pages flew hither and thither whenever I opened it.
Since moleskine notebooks have the strongest binding of any notebook I know, I bought a book with squared pages and ruled the spreads myself.
I LOVE this little planner of mine. It is my brain. It is my time-keeper. It keeps me sane and helps when I feel overwhelmed. Everything gets written down, so nothing is forgotten (at least nothing important).
And, there are plenty of pages in the back for me to keep notes on projects I'm working on, books I'm reading or want to read, random lists, and weekly recipes so that I always have the ingredients lists on hand.
It's a mess, but I love it.
Do you have any notebooks you can't live without?
And, would you like a more detailed tour of any of the above notebooks? Please leave a comment to let me know.
And, as always, show your love by pinning on pinterest, sharing on facebook or twitter, or hearting in bloglovin!
'
This week I.....
.... found the perfect shade of blue-green to paint the forest landscape the dominates the next two picture books I'm working on. The brightly coloured African animals will really pop against this colour. This colour is sometimes called
eau de Nil
(water of the Nile).
.... was inspired by this quote. It made my heart spin: a full revolution. I've decided that my criteria for accepting any project needs to be whether or not it causes a revolution in my heart.
.... want to tell more stories. If the world isn't made of atoms, but tiny stories, that means you have millions of stories in your heart; billions in your body. Can you hear them? Your stories are enriching your life and singing songs of encouragement.
Did you like any of these drawings? Feel free to share them on Pinterest!
{Soaring through the week, and crossing things off my list one by one}
It is a sunny, sweet day: perfect for sitting in the breeze and dreaming.
Next door, workmen are clanking, whirring and banging. It gives me a false sense of industry. I'm not doing much, but someone nearby is working very hard. It feels like that work transfers to me by proximity. Like when I'm drinking tea and the washing machine is spinning loudly. I'm not doing anything, but it is working very hard, and so I feel satisfied and accomplished.
I have been thinking a lot lately about what work means.
My Dad always said that we should "work smart, not hard."
And I've spent my entire life trying to figure out what that means.
It means being efficient. It means figuring out what is absolutely necessary, doing that necessary thing, and then resting. It is when we rest that we get our best ideas.
The trick is figuring out what the necessary things are.
The other day I made a list of my "necessary" things. It is small but mighty: daily drawings, daily journalling, writing stories, working on my illustration projects, reading novels and poetry, keeping detailed to-do lists. (Playing with little-one and hanging out with my husband are necessary things, but they don't fall under the "work" category; they are unadulterated fun.)
That is all.
Six necessary things.
Of course, my day-to-day life contains a million and one things I need to do: hanging laundry, cleaning the toilet, making my toddler's dinner, making our dinner..... These all huddle under the umbrella of "keeping detailed to-do lists."
My to-do list umbrella protects me from the storm of tasks that constantly hurls itself at my door like a monsoon. I simply write down the things I think are most important.
And then I stick to it.
Then powering through the drudgery becomes automatic. For example, I don't question whether or not I clean the bathroom on a Wednesday, I just do it. And, while I'm cleaning, I go through the motions by rote so that I can let my mind glide off and spin in circles, thinking about my wonderful, confounding ideas.
But, that is tangental.
Meanwhile, I'm focusing on daily drawings, journalling, and doing good work in my studio.
What are your necessary things?
How do you work "smart, and not hard?
Is anyone interested in reading a more detailed post about how I structure my to-do lists so that I can minimize my effort on a weekly basis?
{Don't forget, you can download all sorts of to-do list and planner printables if you join my
"Studio Friends" mailing list.
I'll add more printables every month.}
{The work in progress}
{Hippity-hop hippity-hop}
{Drawing faces on paint blobs}
{I can't get enough of cherry blossoms: I captured these on our morning walk to little-one's nursery school}
{A weekend trip to the Isabella Plantation in Richmond Park, a short bicycle ride from our house}
{A midsummer night's dream. Celebrating Shakespeare's 400th anniversary}
{Happy Birthday to the Queen! I sketched her surrounded
by coins from all the Commonwealth countries I hold dear:
Canada, Great Britain, South Africa and Namibia.}
{A portrait of Mrs. Pontipine from the children's
TV show "In the Night Garden.}
{Baby's desk...}
{My desk}
{Bright colours for a gloomy day}
The wonderful thing about my "daily drawings" is that I don't berate myself if I can't actually draw every day.
In fact, I do draw every day, but not always fun, experimental or "sharable" things.
My theory is that if I have a goal of "daily fun drawings" and I draw 4 or 5 days out of seven, then I'm succeeding wildly.
It's just like my "daily" yoga practice. My ultimate goal is to do yoga first thing every morning. But I normally manage it three or four mornings per week. That's still a victory, right? It's more than nothing!
I'm trying to celebrate small moments of progress.
What is one small thing you've done this week to move towards your dreams?
{Drawing on the train}
Part of this daily drawing discipline is about experimentation.
My normal style is pen and ink coloured with watercolour, then scanned and given sleight of hand photoshop touches.
This works really well for me. But, sometimes it's necessary to jump into new waters for a refreshing swim. Then one can return to work with a renewed mind and fresh perspective.
So, I've been playing with collage this week. I feel like I've returned to the delights of kindergarten, when cutting, gluing and sticking were my favourite activities.
I've done fewer drawings this week, as little one has been miserably sick with conjunctivitis. So in between cuddles I rush to my sketchbook to record the visions from my inside-eye.
{There is nothing better than clouds of cherry blossoms and a clear sky. The skies have been altogether too cloudy for my taste recently.}
When I open my front door I step into a cloud of purple fragrance. It is sweet and intoxicating. At my feet the bees are getting drunk on the nectar from the hyacinths. My window boxes are an open bar with an infinite tab.
I love to see the bees waltz, bourrée, and fox trot around the hyacinths, muscari and daffodils.
Sometimes, when I'm stuck in my studio with a fog of thoughts and worries clouding my senses, I think I hear the flowers knocking on the door, wanting me to come out to play.
So, the other day I did.
I drew a fairy, and she and I cavorted with the spring flowers for an afternoon.
In January I resolved to do daily drawings. I purchased a new moleskine sketchbook (small enough to carry in my hand-bag, but still large enough to hold big ideas), and set out to experiment, play and have fun.
I haven’t managed to draw every day, but I draw most days, and I consider that a success.
The thing with being an illustrator is that I
do
draw every day, but most of the time the drawings are for other people. They fulfil a brief. They need to be vetted by editors and art directors. They get sent back for changes. I love my work, but sometimes I crave the freedom to experiment.
So daily drawings are a way for me to let my creative soul soar.
Here are a few.....
I'll keep posting more on either a weekly or monthly basis.
Do you have a daily discipline that makes you happy? It doesn't have to be drawing, it could be journalling, or yoga, or cooking delicious dinners.... There are so many ways to ignite our creative hearts.
In February we made the long trek to Johannesburg and Namibia to celebrate my sister-in-law's wedding. We frolicked in the sandy desert and I enjoyed sketching the out-of-this-world scenery.
If you like these sketchbook pages, please feel free to share on Facebook, Pin on Pinterest or Tweet to all your friends!
What have you been up to in the past month?
The seasons are changing from gloomy winter to glittering spring and we're gradually settling into our new little house. I'm so grateful for the feeling of new beginnings; new home, new ideas, new routines, new excitement for life!
{Packing....}
{Enduring a 12 hour over-night flight with a 14 month old baby girl....}
{From the air}
{Sand and sea forever}
{I got my Dad's watch repaired at a friend's antique watch shop. My Dad would have been thrilled that his watch travelled all the way to Namibia to be repaired. He loved Africa.}
{My niece and nephews playing on the dunes}
{The wedding car}
My Christmas gift this year was upgrading my iphone4 to an iPhone6. I've never been much of a technology snob, but this small change has revolutionised my smart phone experience. The camera is crystal clear, maybe even nicer than my fancy dslr in some ways.
However, the one thing the new phone didn't have was my favourite "cloudy cosmos" wallpaper.
So I decided to paint my own!
Sunset on the winter solstice above the roofs of west London.
The view from our kitchen window
Sketching on regent street
It's dark and cold, the time when we all crave the light the most. Yesterday, on Winter Solstice Eve, the sunset was merely a faint glow of light above the Victorian rooftops of West London.
When the year is the darkest, I have to keep reminding myself to keep my inner light shining brightly.
What do you do to protect the light in these dark months? I read, write and draw. They are the triumvirate of all things good for me.
(If you like the drawings, feel free to pin, share on facebook, or otherwise appreciate them!)
I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas!
A few more daily drawings.
We're starting to get excited for Christmas!
I am challenging myself to do daily drawings in my tiny moleskine sketchbook for the advent season. Who knows? If I find it inspiring enough I might even continue into the New Year.
Here are the first few pages...
If you like them, please pin on pinterest, or share on Facebook or Twitter!
I hope you all have a wonderful, lovely Holiday Season.
It's murphy's law that the minute you proclaim to the universe (or the internet, that's the same thing, right?) that you're ready to start working, you get steamrolled by the worst head cold you've had in months.
I'm lying on the couch drinking tea and blowing my nose while Little M sorts through our recycling in the kitchen. She is judiciously taking all the bottles, boxes, papers and containers out of the Westminster City recycling bags and scattering them on the kitchen floor.
I don't mind, as long as she's quiet and playing independently and doesn't mind that I've been rendered horizontal.
So, rather than pushing myself forwards, I'm taking a step back and reviewing where I am and where I want to go. I'm paging through my sketchbooks, and leafing through my journals.
I used the last page in my teeny-tiny moleskine sketchbook the other day. Here are a few selections from the past few weeks. I'm not sketching every day, but I'm sketching regularly, which is good enough. Don't you think?
Hopefully I will get over this dreadful lurgy soon.
What were you up to this week
? Please let me know in the comments.
* * *
And finally...
Did you like the drawings in this post?
Feel free to pin them, heart them on bloglovin, tweet them, or share them on Facebook. And, make sure you subscribe or follow along to get even more weekly inspiration and follow along in my creative journey.
See you next week!
{This was the last page.}
