Drawn reports in the form of the portraits - war in Ukraine. June 19-25, 2023.

June 19-25, 2023. Days 482-488 of war.
This week we started with a hot topic of hot weather and how my parents are fairing it. Eight neighboring cats and some new dogs with new people were featured in the stories of everyday life. We spoke about ways people adapt to different situations and learn to live with different things, agendas, professions, and weather. We spoke about languages (there was an excursion into French as we had a French-speaking family member visiting - which was a great treat for my parents). Engineering problems of the sunken submarine was Dad's favorite topic, Mom listened with horror about Messenia migrant boat disaster. But then all attention was back to Ukraine and even as russia descended into the chaos of a new kind. 

More Matilija Poppies

These native California flowers (with an unfortunate common name of fried egg flowers:) are still greeting me by the road sides. I had all intentions to do a proper negative painting in one of these but ended up slipping into finger painting and decided to leave it as is.

Bike and Sketch Adventures.

Bike and sketch with my current large (A3) sketchbook and my propensity to take all my art supplies with me (a problem which I claim is a leftover from the stay-at-home covid era*) make for some interesting choices of stops: benches are preferred, sitting on the ground is great too though I take a lot of space around me. But so far I did not find a way to work in this sketchbook while standing and holding it. It is just physically really hard. I am yet to find a pay to prop it against the bike though - this is something I will try next.

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* though anything that lasts this long is no longer a leftover but a new reality - I should just give this new setup a name and then face it. Naming things is important for me - here are some options: "bring all you can paint with", "unlimited choices make you mad", "can you promise to use at least half of this?", "Imagine traveling with this all", "really? printmaking on a bike?" :)

Drawn reports in the form of the portraits - war in Ukraine. June 12-18, 2023.

June 12-18, 2023. Days 475-481 of war.
This week during our video calls we tried to match views, sounds, smells, plants, and animals. For example my parents would tell me about the cat that keeps getting into their home without permission and I would tell them about a cat that decided that every evening should be spent under my window singing cat songs. We compare notes on the color of pomegranate flowers. And bird songs. Every one of these subjects sends my parents down memory lane - so I got to hear some stories too. 

My parents prepared some Ukrainian words to discuss with me and told me about a new cat that is a menace to the lizards. We spoke about our family and friends in Kharkiv and Kyiv and how tired they sounded this week from all the sirens and air raid warnings and but how everyone was telling about continuing donating and volunteering. 

New Sketchbook - Number 150!

I wanted to do something big for the nice round number of 150 - after all, it comes only once! (just like 149 and 151 ;) But the truth is I wanted to do some larger works this summer, and choosing an A3 sketchbook was a simple way of making sure that I would stick to my plan. 

A3 means it is at least twice larger than my usual sketchbook. A3 means that my backpack does not close so when I bend down sketchbook hits me on the head. A3 means that wind can get the book out of my hands. It also means some giant pain in terms of sharing images - scanning this beast takes both time and skill. There is quite a bit of cursing while I work in this sketchbook because everything is different at this scale and sometimes I want to just paint and draw and not solve a new puzzle. But I am enjoying the ride (most of the time :)

Here is the result of the very first outing with the sketchbook #150: Matilija Poppies are such an amazing subject to struggle with!

btw: I filled another A3 sketchbook almost exactly three years ago and finally made a little video of all the pages. Here is a post about it - with a link to the video.