James Gurney and Thomas Kinkade's book is out again!

What a delight to hear last year that The Artist's Guide to Sketching was coming out in a new, updated edition.  When James asked a few months ago if I'd be willing to write a blurb, I was more than happy to agree.  It's been one of my favorite books forever. 

And now it's here!

 

 

I've owned the original edition since it first came out in 1988.  I have bought many, many art books in the intervening years, and a great many of those I've passed along to family and friends and younger artists...but Artist's Guide to Sketching is one I will keep forever.  

It's a delightful and inspiring ramble of two young college friends who took to the back roads and rails to explore America in their sketchbooks, and it's as much fun to read as it is to explore with them, page by page.  Plus it's a treasurehouse of drawing and sketching techniques, instruction, and inspiration that's stood the test of time.  I may be simplifying and into Discardia at this time in my life, but this one sticks with me! 

When I got the package with the new book, I was as excited as a kid at Christmas.  Not only is the book itself gorgeous, but the inscription made me giggle!   

 James also included some promotional material, a brochure, some background on how the original book ans the update came to be, postcards, AND some wonderful stickers...one is already in the front of my own sketchbook!  (One favorite says ANALOG FOREVER!)

They were able to scan the original art, so the new edition has crisper, cleaner images, many of them now in color. There's also a LOT of new material in the updated version. Take a peek!

 And that's just a small sample!  

The book is still full of the same clear instructions and demos as always, and it's even more inspiring.

Once upon a time when I was a good deal younger, I had given up on farm life (going back to the land you didn't come from in the first place is HARD, and EXPENSIVE and COMPLEX), my dream was to buy an old bread truck, retrofit it as a traveling home and studio and take to the roads...no wonder this book resonated with me!

Thank you, James, I am more than delighted, and honored to be asked to review.

 

These two young lad went on to do incredible things...James to create the world of Dinotopia, among other things, and the late Thomas Kinkade to become known as "the painter of light," as James says inside the back book cover.  

Good job, you guys, and thank you for  37 years of inspiration and pleasure.

A course on dealing with Traumas...

 

 ...I found on the Daily Om site.

I'm finding it helpful, in identifying traumatic experiences from childhood and beyond, and in identifying my triggers then and now, as well.

And how to deal with them, or overcome them. I've known I have them, and sometimes I react all out of proportion to the initial cause...and I hate that.  I want to respond, not react.

But one thing I've found especially enlightening is that there are some things I have no intention of overcoming.  I have never understood, much less condoned, bigotry.  

I was brought up in an era where white women spat at little girls trying to go to school, young men were being hanged for nothing more than the color of their skin--or being in the wrong place at the wrong time.  When women decrying their husband’s murder were burned alive, or wise leaders assassinated for speaking of love.  I saw newsreels on the liberation of concentration camps, and learned about the depths of human inhumanity. In more recent times I’ve seen people murdered for nothing more than loving whom they love.  I don't understand.  I never will.  I don't want to.        

I lived near the riots in Kansas City after Martin Luther King's assassination, and I was shaken to my core, by the assassination itself and by the pain of that small neighborhood. I could hear the gunfire, and saw the sullen glow of the fires in the night. I couldn't wrap my mind around it, or us, and I needed to find a way to HELP.  

I called the pastor my mother had loved, before her death, a man we all respected, though I had long since left that church.

Do you know what he told me?  "Those people deserved it."  

That is NOT a Christian response, any more than some of what we are currently seeing.  Please, let's not go there again.  By all that's holy.  Let's not.


Yes, that is a trigger, for me.  Bigotry, racial inequality, inhumane cruelty to anyone, of any color, creed...or who they choose to love, or be..  

Cruelty to animals, as well.

And I realized there are some traumas I don't want to heal. I don't WANT not to be triggered by inequality and mindless cruelty. And don't intend to.  I fought it then, in my twenties; I'll fight it now, in my 80s. Maybe differently.  I'm too old and too crippled up to march.  But yes, any way I can.

Am I angry we have to do this again?  Hell yes.