Month: October 2015

Last night I went to my first figure drawing class, and I was way more nervous than the model.

For the most part I’ve been doing doodles. I do some still life objects and copy from pictures and books. But figure drawing is the big time.  There are real artists sitting beside you – people who can draw from life way better than you, and they may or may not be part of the Ministry of Encouragement to which I have belonged for the last 3-4 years.

I got there late after work and found a spot.  I nodded at the other participants, already sketching, and, forcing myself not to look at anyone else’s work, started to scribble.

Once you start to scribble, nothing else – if you’re amazing or a hack, if your neighbor is Rembrandt, if you remembered to tell your husband the class ends at 7:30 instead of 7:00 – matters.  All that matters is the pen and the model.

And when the class facilitator called ‘Time’ I did peek at the other student’s work, and I do suck compared to most of them (really – one of the drawers could have been recreating a masterpiece).  But as it happens, most people who are as addicted to drawing as you are, are active members of the ministry of encouragement, whether or not they know it.  When the next pose began, fear was gone and only one thought remained –

I need to find more time to draw.  Anybody got an extra hour in the day I could borrow?

I was looking for something to paint this morning and headed down a road I once associated with uninterrupted mountain views.  Some Mc-Mansions have begun popping up there, and I was about to give up when the phone rang and I pulled over by a woodlot at the edge of an empty corn field.

I chatted with the mechanic and looked around at the frosty field and foliage, noticing a small pile of apples at the edge of the wood. It’s been a good year for apples, but I didn’t see any apple trees.

I know someone probably left them there for the deer, and I’m hoping – even with hunting season beginning soon – it was a gift.  Hopefully it’ll be a good year for the deer too.

I’ve added new originals and links for prints to the blog today. I’ll be adding more as the week goes one.  Feel free to email me at rachel @ rachelbarlow.com if you have any questions about an item.

Over the weekend, I began work in earnest on a book idea that’s been rolling around in my head for sometime.  “A is for All-Nighter’ is an alphabet book for parents, at least an alphabet for the inner child lurking in every parent when they don’t know whether to laugh or cry at the latest science experiment gone wrong in what used to be a very nicely-decorated guest bathroom.

I’m hoping to have it done by then end of November, but a lot depends on how inspirational Thing1 & Thing2 are willing to be.  Judging by this morning’s efforts to get out the door (H is for Hypochondria, E is for Excuses, D is for Dawdle), I should have this book and a sequel written by the end of the week.  The pictures may take a bit longer.

By 2PM yesterday, I felt like the day had been completely wasted folding laundry and was about to be further wasted on mundane errands refilling the sock supply (because nothing is better than teenage feet for wearing holes in knitted material).

I was in the checkout line with the replacement socks when my Family Guy ‘Mom, Mom, Mommy, MOOMM’ ring tone went off. I knew it was home. But instead of adding another item to my list, the crew had called to rush me home so we could take a few buckets of freshly picked apples to a neighbor’s for pressing.

The owner of a foot that is as reliable as Pinto with a blinking left-turn signal, I knew I would be there mostly as an observer.  We have more apples than we know what to do with this year,however, so I rushed and then we rushed our 30 gallons of apples to the other side of our no-traffic light town, and by the time the sun had gone down, our neighbor had helped the Big Guy and the boys press 2 gallons of the apple-iest cider we’ve ever tasted (it may have been more, but, as with berry picking, some of the harvest gets consumed as it’s processed).

Our host and hostess served each of us a bowl of butternut soup, and we headed home in the dark with the certainty that there are few better ways to spend a Sunday afternoon.