The Importance of Sketching in Challenging Times...

It occurs to me that our sketchbooks are an amazing tool for entertainment, practice and even mental health and more, especially if we are in lockdown, or self-isolating, or quarantined during the COVID19 response.

A friend of mine, art teacher Mark Alan Anderson, is using his sketchbook to keep his spirits up--and ours!  The cartoons are funny, poignant, and all too honest...and he's given me permission to share (thanks, Mark!) A light in dark times.

I look forward to his sketches every day...you can find him online in our Artist's Journal Workshop Facebook group and other places...

You can see more of Mark's ongoing and delightful coping mechanism on Artist's Journal Workshop on Facebook, or on his always-inspiring blog, here.

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Once during a particularly difficult period in my own life, I kept my sanity and my sense of humor by creating what I called my Fantasy Journal--or maybe I should have called it a Sanity Journal!  My mother-in-law was suffering from dementia of a particularly angry and paranoid sort, and we would get several phone calls a day from her, from her caregiver, from Joseph's sister...it got so I couldn't bear the sound of the phone!

Enter the Fantasy Journal...I kept it right near the phone, with my art supplies, and when I could tell it was One Of THOSE Calls, I'd sit near my poor husband and draw another page!  It made us both feel better.

You may have seen it before, but the current situation reminds me--maybe it's a good time for another one!

You can find the whole journal here on YouTube.

Our journals really can help us find our way through stressful periods...my old sanity map helped me to see I had a lot more choices than I thought I did!  Maybe we could map our way through the days, now...

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Think about it.  Someday our journals from this time may just be historically important, too.

Think of how many journals and sketchbooks artists and writers and everyday folk have kept during wartime that give us an inside view of what life was like for them--how they lived, how they coped. Some cartoonist/soldiers that were incarcerated in WWII let us see their lives and times--and their indomitable courage--in a way that newsreels never could.

Think of the Diary of Anne Frank.  

Think of the Native Americans' winter count images...

Think of Medieval monks toiling away on their illuminated manuscripts, sneaking in drawings of cats or or rabbits attacking mounted horsemen.



There are literally dozens of sketch journals kept by farmers, housewives, schoolgirls, travelers and explorers, as well.  They're treasures!

Why not record your own life and coping mechanisms during difficult times?  Fantasize, draw where you'd like to be or what you'd like to be doing.  Draw what you ARE doing.  Draw your toilet paper, if you like!

If nothing else, you will have a record of courage and survival your children and grandchildren will treasure, and that you can look back on and think "Yes.  We survived.  We are strong."

Don't feel up to making a big deal of it?  Feels too overwhelming?  Try quick sketches, or tiny ones to fill a page, in a grid.  

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And of course there are also any number of groups and individuals stepping up to this challenge, offering prompts or sketchalongs if you're stuck, and those too are valuable.

But think of this as your opportunity to win a moment in history.

That Upcoming Class on Meaning-full Journaling...

I just keep writing...ideas keep popping into my head, in my studio, in bed, at the computer, in the shower...I'm beginning to wonder if I'll be able to actually stop and launch the thing!  6 more pages written today...

And yes, this is how I prepare for a class.  Scribble, scribble, note, cross out, arrows, boxes, transcribe, print, scribble on THAT...retype with changes...

Take photos, choose sketches, make lists...

And of course I'll be adding my visual on how to tip in pages...if I can find it...and shoot photos of the journal I DID so much of that in...

This one will be one of the shots to illustrate thoughts on using other methods to produce meaningful journal images.  I made most of these stamps myself, things that resonate with me, but some are special commercial ones, too...

I'm compiling my Resources Document on journaling and art...books and such...and resisting the urge to include everything out that's there!  Mostly I am only including the ones I actually own and that have proven personally meaningful over the years.  One, The New Diary by Tristine Rainer, was published in the late 70s, but it's as timely as tomorrow's sunrise.

And of course I just ordered another book on the subject...siiiigh...

(If you have a personal favorite, I'd love to hear about it...)

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The class will take place here on blogger; I'll set up a new blog just for class members and make everyone co-contributors so everyone will be able to post, share journal pages (if they wish), ask questions, whatever.

The Summer of Amazing Serendipity...

Fishing River Bridge

As many of you know, 2014 was rough for me...between two deaths in our family, one expected, one horribly not, plus travel, a mountain of work on the new book and my Sketchbook Skool stuff, I was drained and burnt out, just treading water trying to keep up.  I tried to kick back, take care of myself, listen to myself and what my body needed...and what my spirit did.

We got a new holistic doctor who explored some of the health issues (yes, stress and depression CAN mimic heart problems--they are, rather, aren't they?), and that put some anxiety to rest.  The elephant on my chest was named Grief, not angina.

I got an extension on my book deadline; that degree of Presence I just did not have, for business anyway.  And slowly, slowly, I began to find my way back.

It was an incredible summer and fall, milder than it has been in ages.  I'm not a summer person, after a bout with heat exhaustion some years ago, and heat and humidity can keep me indoors unless I'm up and out early.  This year, Mother Nature smiled, beckoning to me...

My darling knight of a husband has always been incredibly supportive of my need to make art, pointing out things to sketch, never complaining, either sketching with me (rarely) or reading and napping while I worked...he knows I am not myself if I'm not sketching and journaling.  I lose touch.

But still...you know how it is.  You don't want to bore or inconvenience someone who is NOT as into it.  You hurry.  You do quick sketches, unfinished sketches.

And somehow know you need more...

Well, I'd always loved our yearly trips to the Ozarks, where he would fish and fish for 3 or 4 days and I would sketch my brains out, at Bennett Springs...but that was once or twice a year.  The rest of the time I would do what I could...

This year, an amazing convergence of syncronicities happened.  The mild summer, yes...but also he discovered warm water Tenkara fly fishing. It's a Japanese style, very simple, very minimal, very elegant...and he had to try it out.

And LOVED it.  And I loved it!

There we were, every day almost, out there together, each doing what we loved most.  He fished--he says that is as close to Zen as he gets, and he can concentrate for hours--and I made art, day after glorious day after amazing day, in the part of nature I love best, near trees and water and wildlife.

I always seem to see a deer when I most need one.

Summer faded into fall and the wonderful weather held.  And he fished.  And I sketched and journaled.

And healed. 

Cooley Lake, one of my heart homes.

Exploring a new brush at Lawson Lake

Painting on a gravel bar in the Fishing River, a couple of blocks from home...

More from that gravel bar...

Tryst Falls and himself fishing...

Oak tree at Lawson Lake

Mayflies, Smithville Lake

Great Blue Heron, Smithville Lake

Smithville Lake, Lawson Lake, Missouri River, Tryst Falls, Cooley Lake, Rocky Hollow, Watkins Mill, Fishing River, all within an easy drive...all beautiful.  All balm to my spirit.

These are only a few of the sketches from our magical season...

Old tobacco barn across from Fountain Bluffs, off Old 210 Highway...

It is December, now, and somehow there are still days we are able to get out there...

And wonderfully enough, he tells his fishing buddies that he has THE Best Wife Ever...because every day it's at all feasible, I'm likely to say "You wanna go fishin'??"

My gratitude knows no bounds.

Small Pleasures...

...it's been a rough couple of months for me and for my family.  An unexpected and too-early death knocked the pins out from under all of us; we are cocooned in our individual lives, feelings, perceptions, stumbling about and knocking into walls that are sometimes one another. I am not feeling at all able to work on my book, it requires too much organization, for now.

A great deal has happened since my Solstice post, but for now I will just say thank God for small pleasures and the simple, everyday things.  A cup of favorite tea, a purring cat, my husband's touch, the beauty of the wild birds outside my window--the sacredness of the everyday.

...a favorite pen with a fine and flexible nib...

...the beauty of flowers...

...a bird seldom seen...I was journaling about him, above...

...and always, journaling, learning, growing, creating.

The class I'm taking is called Everyday Sacred, and it is helping...I have a focus that is letting me see more clearly and let go.

Life has been...LIFE!

...of course that DOES beat the alternative...

It's been too long since I've had time to slow down and just enjoy blogging...work has been intense, between classes and the upcoming North Light book.  Lots of juggling, lots of confusion, lots of needing to stop and take a breath.  And of course, family stuff...

I need to get out and sketch more often!  This one is from 2009, and no, it has NOT been that long.  I was out just last week...

This is from our October trip to Bennett Spring...I did a LOT of sketches that trip!

My sweetie and the other fishermen at the spring...

Our godchild Molly Hammer, singing at the Broadway Jazz Club with one of her favorite pianists...

Copper Creek Band, good friends we go to hear as often as we can...

Joseph's English Country Dance group...

The beautiful newborn Henry!

BACON and a Buddhist prayer...interesting juxtaposition...

...and three wonderful visits with three wonderful young women--daughters of my heart!  That would be Kristin Frazier, Christiana Farabee, and Ailsa Barrett, all in the space of a week...

...so life is good, but life is crazy.  Looking forward to breathing room December 26...

In the upcoming year I plan more journal entries, more reviews of favorite tools and books, more reminiscences, more on simplifying, more demos, more on gratitude, more mini-class giveaways (that last one was FUN!)--and who knows what else?

I hope you'll join me.