Recent Daily Drawings
Every day I try to open my Moleskine pocket sketchbook and do a little drawing. It's a habit that keeps me sane during the hurly-burly routines of being a stay-at-home mom to a toddler.
Here are a few of the recent daily sketches. You can see more on my instagram....
Five Things About Me
Five Things about me.
1. When someone raises a camera, I usually try to duck out of the sightline. I’d rather not be photographed, but I love drawing self-portraits. I feel like I can invest each drawing or painting with more authentic emotion than any photo could ever capture.
2. I have green eyes and an emerald engagement ring. Green is my favourite colour; I love how alive and restorative it is.
3. My sketchbook, my planner and my journal are the three most precious objects in my life. My mother, my husband and my daughter are the three most precious people in my life.
4. I was born in Swaziland; I grew up in Canada; I now live in England. I love to travel, but I’m actually happiest when I’m curled up with a book at home.
5. I studied art history, archaeology, Latin, and German at university. None of these are particularly useful in my current incarnation as a stay-at-home-mom and illustrator/writer. However, my studies taught me self-discipline, to be curious about everything, and that all ideas and things have a hidden history of meaning that reaches back through time.
Fancy playing along?
My week in drawings and verbs
Grateful for... my yoga partner. Even though she sometimes confuses me for a jungle gym.
Accepting... the fact that sometimes life sends bittersweet surprises wrapped in pretty packaging. I've recently had one such surprise, which was both good news and bad news inextricably intermingled.
Baking... pumpkin pie tartlets to fit into tiny hands. I haven't made pumpkin pie for years, and when the spicy aroma filled the kitchen, I suddenly realized how much I missed it. My recipe is from my great-grandmother, which makes it the best pumpkin pie around, if only for the happy knowledge that the women in my family have been baking it for almost a century.
Re-reading... "Bird by bird" by Anne Lamott.
Considering... my plans for the New Year. I'm making a list of intentions, instead of goals. Intentions are more fluid and forgiving. A list of goals sometimes feels like an militant task-master, for when circumstances change (as they often do), the goals become rigid and unattainable. Intentions are malleable, and can grow and change as our life grows and changes.
Stretching... my creative muscles by doing daily drawings and trying to write 500 words per day.
Plotting... a new novel. I'm very excited, but also nervous. Starting a new project is never easy.
What are you doing right now?
My week in drawings
Staring at the autumn sky and reciting the Vagabond Song as I walk through the park (poem is below....)
Dreaming of staying in bed after several very early mornings wake-up calls from Little One. "I finished sleeping!" she hollers at 4am, 5am, we're lucky if it's 6am.
And the poem that is giving rhythm to my footsteps right now...
A Vagabond Song by Bliss Carmen
There is something in the autumn that is native to my blood—
Touch of manner, hint of mood;
And my heart is like a rhyme,
With the yellow and the purple and the crimson keeping time.
The scarlet of the maples can shake me like a cry
Of bugles going by.
And my lonely spirit thrills
To see the frosty asters like a smoke upon the hills.
There is something in October sets the gypsy blood astir;
We must rise and follow her,
When from every hill of flame
She calls and calls each vagabond by name.
My week in drawings and verbs
Currently....
Sipping : My second cup of decaf coffee. Little One is at nursery school. The house is quiet except for the slow tick-ticking of the radiators.
Wearing : A big celery green scarf and a deep purple silk top. I feel like I've been wrapped in the softest cloud of warmth and comfort.
Planning : Little One's second birthday party. I'm going to fill our house with a floating forest of gold, silver and pearl coloured balloons. It will look like the swaying kelp forests in the ocean. Balloons and ribbons will bob back and forth, and float from the ceiling. Hopefully, happy little people will try to jump up and catch them as they float past.
Editing : A story that is dear to my heart. I'm moving words around. Taking commas out, and putting them back in again. I'm slowly sinking into the world and re-acquainting myself with the characters.
Baking : Mary Berry's chocolate cake. I'm not too involved in bake-off mania, but I made her cake for Little One's first birthday party last year, and it was amazing. Hopefully it will be as good this year!
Re-reading : Susanna Kearsley's "Season of Storms" which is one of my favourite of her novels. The story is set in a villa in Northern Italy, where a group of actors are preparing to perform a almost forgotten, and mysterious play. The night before the original staging, in the early 1900s, the leading lady disappeared. Now, the actors and director are defying fate by trying to stage this unlucky play again. Of course, there is intrigue, love and danger, all connected to the mystery of its original performance.
My week in a drawing
This has been a week of adjusting my circadian rhythms to new routines and of making lists for the new season.
So, there have been fewer drawings in my sketchbook, but lots of daydreaming.
What are you dreaming about today?
Please leave a comment or hit reply to tell me!
Want to keep reading.... why not browse through my archives?
Sketching Skiathos Greece
A week in Skiathos, an island off the coast of Greece, was like a week on another planet. The sunshine was clear and bright, as if it had been focused into its brilliance through a huge lens or prism. So different from the hazy, diffused light of London.
The air smelled of sea salt and pine resin. Soft pine-needles cushioned my feet on the hard, red, rocky earth.
I spent a lot of time sitting on our small balcony staring at the horizon. The Mediterranean rippled slowly towards shore, like someone was smoothing the creases out of a silky, indigo tablecloth. In one moment it was velvety blue, then immediately after it shone cerulean like the sky.
In the distance floated hazy mountains with clouds slowly gathering at their summits. There would be torrential rain that night. Again, so different from London rain. It fell violently; the only thing slowing it down was terminal velocity.
On our first morning a pomegranate washed up on shore at my feet. That, I think, was a sign (of what? I don't know...)
How happy we were as we ate olives and tzatziki, baked aubergine (eggplant), and feta cheese. The local retsina (white wine) was fresh, crisp and light.
As we packed our bags, which were as full of beach sand as clothes, we resolved to take an early autumn trip to Greece every year.
"Greece then ... is a land so ancient that it is like wandering in the fields of the moon." Virginia Woolf
My week in drawings
Dappled shade in Richmond Park.
Deers in Richmond Park
Canada House as seen from a bench in the National Gallery
Curves and cones in every angle: All Souls Langham Place
My week in a drawings
It was a bright and cloudy day, perfect for wandering along the Thames with Little One in the early morning. Even at 10 am it was almost empty; we shared the cobbled walkway with a couple of pedestrians and a flotilla of seagulls. We listened to Big Ben chiming the quarter hours ("Bing bong!" said Little One) and watched the waves ripple over the low-tide waters of the river.
Thick, fluffy clouds scudded across the sky. The sunlight flashed morse code: sun, shadow, sun, shadow. The city winked back: glimmer, glint, glimmer, glint.
I wished I knew what the sun and the city were talking about... what was their secret conversation?
Little One and I met a friend and we shared hot, buttered toast, berries, and lattes (but only steamed milk for the littlest of us). Then, we covered our faces with "mer-may" (mermaid) stickers, much to the amusement of the clouds and the city; they winked and blinked their approbation.
It was liberating to do something so brave. It took a lot of courage to pack up the stroller, bundle up my almost-two-year-old and take a thirty minute train journey into the city.
"I studied
there
, just across the river." I pointed out the building to Little One. I used to wander those streets every day with visions of art in my head.
"Wow," she said. It is her word for anything she approves of.
All it took was a short train journey to open up our eyes. I had forgotten that London was right there, spread out like a fairy city, just beyond the doors of Waterloo Station.
Flags of Love flying above Royal Festival Hall
My week in drawings : Kingston Upon Thames
Here are a few drawings from the past two weeks of life in Kingston Upon Thames.
We returned home from Canada and immediately entered a huge heat wave. Couple that with a sick toddler and two polish workmen tramping around the house trailing plaster dust and paint daubs, and you have the recipe for an adventure in patience.
So Little One and I cozied up in her bedroom (one of the only rooms not frequented by said workmen) and did wooden puzzles and sang songs. We picked lavender in the garden and rolled it between our fingers, letting the astringent, clean smell calm our senses.
We ate ice cream when things got really out of hand.
And while she napped, I did a few drawings in my moleskine sketchbook.
Daily Sketches in Canada (continued)
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.
My Week in Drawings
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!
Make your notebook extraordinary
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.
My week in drawings and verbs
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...
My notebook collection
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.
My Journal
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.
My Sketchbook
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.
My Personal Dictionary
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.
My Inspiration Notebook
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 Gratitude Journal
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
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.
What do you think?
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!
My week in drawings
'
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.
What's your story today?
Did you like any of these drawings? Feel free to share them on Pinterest!
How to make work easy PLUS a few daily drawings
{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}
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