Letting Go of the Bay Leaf: Drawing

Showing posts with label Drawing. Show all posts

Sunday, September 25, 2022

Mosaic Monday #191: Summer Highlights

Autumn arrived in Montana right on schedule. On September 22, low clouds shrouded the hills and rain pattered on and off, accumulating to six-tenths of inch - a deluge by western standards and the first rain since August 27. The thermometer stretched toward 60 degrees, but that may have been aspirational. Overnight, the aspen leaves are more gold than green. I was suffering from a bit of a cold; snuggled under a quilt on the couch. What better time to look back at the highlights of summer?

Note: I am accustomed to seeing the Sego or Mariposa Lily, which is smaller and pure white, but the Sagebrush Mariposa Lily was a stunning new species!

As long as we are in the natural world, let us continue.

In June and July, Swallowtail butterflies were common visitors in the garden. Check out these videos. In the second one, the butterfly is missing the bottom part of one wing ... hard work pollinating all these flowers!

Birthdays always provide a convenient excuse (as if I need one) to draw!

When we are on Skype calls with #1 Son, the conversation at some point touches on newsworthy events, quite often of a political nature. #1 Son is well informed and asks questions that can sometimes make you uncomfortable and certainly make you think. In a June call, he pointed us to Tony Benn and the Five Essential Questions of Democracy. Tony Benn was a British parliamentarian who died in 2014 at age 88. To quote the article at the link below, Benn was "a tireless promoter of a power-to-the-people ethic that placed its faith in the great mass of humanity rather than billionaires, media moguls and political powerbrokers."

Benn believed that those in positions of economic, social and political power should always be asked these 5 questions: "What power have you got?" "Where did you get it from?" "In whose interests do you use it?" "To whom are you accountable?" "How do we get rid of you?" "Anyone who cannot answer the last of those questions does not live in a democratic system," he explained. "Only democracy gives us that right. That is why no one with power likes democracy," he would continue. "And that is why every generation must struggle to win it and keep it." Wise words in 2014, and seeming quite prescient. (If you would like to read the whole article, here is the link. And if you want to test your civics knowledge, consider any elected position and try to answer the questions for it.)

Pioneer League baseball came to the Flathead Valley this summer, and everyone is asking why didn't this happen sooner? Easy access to Flathead Field, not a bad seat in the house, appropriate (read: gorgeous) views of the Whitefish Range, and baseball snacks. What more could you want? One July evening, the game went on a 30-minute weather delay. And no wonder. Check out these skies. I have never seen cloud formations like this. In the end, we left the stadium, anticipating a LONG delay. And, this is a storm that dropped ping pong and golf ball-sized hail on the nearby town of Kalispell. You still see "Hail Repair" signs across town, especially at auto repair shops.

You can click on the photos below to enlarge if you wish.

July also marks the birthday of Spousal Unit. I decided to try my hand at Trifle, a classic British cold dessert of sponge cake and fruit covered with layers of custard, jelly and cream.

This was not a traditional Trifle, and I would change several aspects of the outcome, but it was still DELICIOUS!!!

And here's the birthday card!

I have written about my native garden, and my attempt to let the natural ecosystem work without interference. I was intrigued to see these birds eating something off the Goldenrod. The plants were not in seed at the time, so my only conclusion is they were picking off the aphids that I had "allowed" to stay. Good for them and good for me ...

At the end of July, we were tickled to be visited by a long-term neighbor from our former neighborhood near Cleveland, Ohio (Cleveland represents - we have had 7 visits from that area). Neighbor - you know who you are! Loved having you and I am already looking forward to our adventures next summer! Here are a selection of photos from his visit.

Two photos from Kootenai Falls.

We take almost everyone to the Highline Trail in Glacier National Park. With limited time, it delivers maximum views for minimal effort (relatively) and almost always has wildlife in store. Once again, the Highline kept its stellar reputation.

First time I have ever seen a Columbine with this pink/yellow combination.

I swear that we did not pay this mountain goat to walk right in front of us near Grinnell Glacier Overlook!

At Granite Park Chalet, we saw a mule train resting before its onward journey. I knew mule trains are used to stock the Chalet in the summer, but this is the first time we saw one.

But by far, this was my favorite picture of the day!

Mosaic Monday

Welcome to Mosaic Monday, a weekly meme where we get together to share our photo mosaics and collages.

Please include at least one photo mosaic/collage in your post.

The link will be open from 1 p.m. Sunday until 11 p.m. Tuesday (U.S. Mountain time).

Remember to add the link to your Mosaic Monday post and not the one to your blog.

Please link back to this post so that your readers will be able to visit and enjoy more wonderful mosaics; taking the MM blog button from my sidebar is an easy way to link back.

As host I will visit every participant and leave a comment so that you know I stopped by.

Please try and visit as many other blogs as you can, especially those that join in later, so that everyone's creativity can be appreciated fully.

Thank you for joining in today and sharing your mosaics with us.

Sunday, April 17, 2022

Mosaic Monday #174: Daily Drawing Challenge for Lent

Happy Easter, everyone! Lent has drawn to a close, and for me and #1 Daughter, that is a literal statement. You see, we took on a daily drawing challenge for Lent! A period of time when Christians focus on spiritual purification, meditation and penance, Lent typically lasts 40 days, not including Sundays, based on the 40 days Jesus fasted in the desert before starting his ministry. I asked #1 Daughter to consider something we could do together during Lent, and she came up with the idea of the drawing challenge. We settled on 45 days, and she pulled from several Pinterest sources to compile the prompts. And off we went!

These 45 days have brought laughter, amazement, and learning. I asked #1 Daughter to make some observations, and she knew full well I would share them here!

I can commit to something daily, if I really put my mind to it. This honestly surprised me. I thought I would struggle to find the time each day to sit down and draw (and trust me, there were days that I did struggle or got swept up and completely forgot). On those days, I felt horrible, but had to give myself grace and tell myself it was okay. I have always been afraid to do something like bullet journaling because it requires daily sitting down to journal. I always believed I wouldn't have time for that.

It has been wonderful knowing that I will hear from her every single day. But it's fascinating how that expectation can make a Mom worry. We agreed that we would not send each other photos of our drawings until both of us were done. No copying, or influence, allowed! Given that #1 Daughter works full-time, and lives in an Eastern Time Zone, I knew that I would typically finish first, and would hear from her in the early evening. This pattern was well-established after a week or so, when one evening came and went without a text, I worried!!!

#1 Daughter is a natural artist; me? Not so much. (She drew "Milkshake", "Garden Tools" and "Sea Monster". I think you can figure out the rest of her work from here.) Where did she get this talent? Even when I look at a real object, I struggle to recreate it. We agreed (with a few pre-approved exceptions) that we would draw from memory. It was amazing to me how often I could not conjure an image in my mind of objects that I have seen thousands of times. As I read somewhere lately, you have to see it to draw it! I also had to work on my competitive nature -- it would have been easy to be jealous of her skills! (Most of the time) I focused on improving my abilities! We both agreed that there are prompts we would like to re-do when the challenge is over.

My Mom is SO creative and her drawing has improved SO much since she first started.

Some words/phrases prompted immediate ideas, but I tried to go beyond the obvious. One example is Overgrown; my favorite is Evening Drink.

It was amusing that one time, we drew almost the same picture! (The prompt was "Exhausted".)

I also found that I tend to "see" scenes rather than just the object that is represented by the prompt. Or maybe this is just my way of hiding my inability to draw a certain object by giving the viewer lots of distractions!

For the drawing itself, I'm a very literal person. I don't often stray from the drawing prompt or draw additional items. You want a plant? I'll draw you a plant. Nothing more, nothing less. Even on some of my more creative drawings (ie. "Rain" prompt - rain coming from under an umbrella with clouds on it), I still almost always started with the item in the prompt or something closely related to it. I find the times I have the most fun doing it were on weekends when I had a whole day to take my time and enjoy it. To me, this is very apparent in the "Summer Fair" prompt. It started with the Woodstock sign, then the trees, then the guitar and then the posters on the tree. Because I had time to build it and stare at it and let my creativity flow with ideas.

One of the things I have learned from my daughter in the last 45 days is the value of sketching. I tend to try and draw perfectly from the first line - and how often does that happen? But even after I am done sketching, I like to convert that pencil drawing into something permanent. I use markers of various widths to create emphasis, as needed. I like to use color in my pictures, but sometimes I think the simplicity of the black and white is part of the message.

Many of my drawings are in pencil. Sometimes this was intentional, sometimes I was too lazy to color it in, sometimes I just fell in love with how the drawing looked in pencil only, sometimes I was afraid coloring it in would ruin it. I think this is due to my limited color pencil collection and I have taken a vow to change that. Aside from pencil and colored pencils, my other medium was gel pens. I loved using a simple black outline to make a drawing pop (the "Music" and "Architecture" prompts are favorites of mine, you can also see my first attempts at this in the "Overgrown" and "Camera" prompts where a thin sharpie didn't quite cut it), but I also loved the crisp clean sticker-like feeling the gel pens gave me. The "Lantern", "Rain", and "Freedom" prompts are good examples of this.

The drawing journey also brought home the joy of shared experiences. More than once, we each drew an object/scene that we knew would have meaning for the other. At times it was amusing, even eliciting a full belly laugh. Some drawings documented family memories, and I was touched to know that my daughter still finds them meaningful.

But the best of all was to hear this from her:

I love my mom. She makes people feel loved through her drawings.

A fitting summary for Lent: it is all about Love. #1 Daughter - thanks for the idea of the drawing challenge, and bringing a new element to this period of meditation and renewal. I love you so much!

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I am taking a break next week; please come back for Mosaic Monday on May 1.