Tips on Elevating Stress Before Travel

In the days right before the beginning of my recent travel, I was swamped with attempts to close projects on all fronts of my life. My stress showed in my inability to finish things, uninteresting choices in colors and design, snappish dialogue, prolonged conversations with myself about boundaries, multiple versions of to-do lists all over the floor around my table, and very dirty hands from inks after refilling my pens. As you can see - neither making lists (something that I do in any situation) nor refilling pens (a very therapeutic activity under different circumstances) worked. But here is what helped:

1) getting online to chat and draw from a windowswap with a friend - using only my portable printmaking tools. 

2) going out to draw on location - with a very limited set of tools (two markers and my portable printmaking tools). 

Neither of these sketches accomplished what I wanted artistically, but both of these brought me to a much calmer mind state.  And a reminder that limits (on time, materials, and other resources) are a very useful tool. 

Pumpkin Gragen Continues to Thrive

Pumpkin Garden worked was my "go to" sketching model lately - intricate textures, tangled shapes and gentle collection of colors sitting on one's art table is a sure way to start my day - even if all I have is a three minutes and some dirty post-its (see pumpkinnio sketch below ;) 

On My Table: Beginning of December 2024.

November happened super fast! There was a lot of daily sketching between many projects most of which I cannot share (for various reasons). Still, there is an exciting adventure ahead of me - and a hint of what I will be using on this adventure can be found in what's on my table on the first day of December!

Thanksgiving Weekend Brings Pocket Sketching Back

It's been one complicated year! One of my Thanksgiving traditions is to start wrapping up projects and write lists - lists of gratitude, lists of dreams, lists of plans, lists of what worked and what did not this year. I will continue this throughout the end of the year as it is a lengthy project for a planning maniac like me :) But one important thing that already came out of this "pause and regroup" is I cleaned my sketchkit (actually several that blended into one), streamlined it, and while I took some lovely walks, I collected some treasures and drew - in pockets of time, in pocket sketchbooks, with my pocket kits.

Drawing People As They Work Instead of Working

It was Monday and I was planning to do a lot of work. There was A LOT of noise. The rain did not stop anyone. Lively conversation in between the sounds of power tools with some words that I could recognize. No work was happening on my side of the window. Solution? Draw the wonderful mayhem that everyday life is :)

I used the first tools that were available - ballpoint pen and a box of almost empty watercolors. 

Enjoyed every minute :)