Herman sometimes has trouble distinguishing between kissing up and just kissing butt.
Category: Sketches
Minions in the Morning
The neon tetras are hilarious to watch sometimes.
I got a bonsai so Herman the Hermit could have a retreat for the more social fish, but the the tetras, a.k.a the Minions immediately claimed it for their daily 3PM game of tag.
Herman got sick of the ruckus and gave up the shady spot under the bonsai to spend more quality time with the thinker girl.
Rites of Spring
One of the highlights of the Rites of Spring in our town is reconnecting at the park for the time-honored new puppy meet and greet.
Make Me Smile
We decided to reconnect our granola, earth-sheltered house to the grid before the first snow fell last November, and, after years of watching every watt, we indulged.
We used an electric dryer over the winter and renewed a relationship with our crock pot. I even adopted a school of tetras and a guppy, setting them up in style with a few plants and a little stone thinker girl.
I added a Plecostomus, also known as a Suckermouth Catfish — technically a bottom feeder — to control algae. He was a little shy at first, so I named him Herman the Hermit, resisting the urge to name him after some politician.
Soon, I caught him whispering in thinker girl’s ear, and her smile seemed to grow (he must have been telling her how well he’d clean the tank because he did). Her beaded hat gleams, which made me realize most politician are not bottom feeders. Bottom feeders performs a useful service, after all.
And, anyway, how many politicians would think to make a woman smile by cleaning up without being asked?
Perfectly Still
A few months ago, wanting to improve my paintings and realize a dream I’d had since high school, I began looking for an affordable art school. I wanted to improve my drawings, learn more about techniques and be in a community of other emerging artists.
If you’ve ever looked for art schools, however, you’ll know what I mean when I say that the word ‘affordable’ is REALLY subjective, and, realizing that getting a BFA or MFA would require mortgaging all my vital organs to pay for it, began designing my own MFA in illustration. I looked at the curricula for a number of schools and set about finding inexpensive workshops that paralleled them as closely as possible, settling on an online classical drawing course.
The first part of the course focused on breaking bad habits — holding the pencil wrong, starting with the wrong subjects — and starting new, good habits. Ironically, the affordable drawing course had a fairly pricey equipment list. Wanting to follow it as closely as possible, however, I went online an ordered everything except the $250 easel. And then I waited.
And I waited.
I waited for the stuff to arrive. I waited for the next lessons on using it properly.
And I didn’t draw a thing.
Not a cartoon.
Not a single still life or even an recklessly abandoned landscape. Even my book layout slowed to a crawl.
My art — and with it — my blog was perfectly still.
A friend pointed it out to me: “Your blog is static. You’re only posting every few weeks.” And I wanted to add that the posts were uninspired because I was uninspired. I began telling myself the posts were so infrequent because it took too long to illustrate them the way I wanted.
Then a friend invited me to test out a watercolor tutorial she had developed for an educational website. The video turned out to be a fun review of basic skills, but what stuck with me was a phrase she kept repeating: “Be gentle with yourself.”
I look at other tutorials on the site and noticed that, other tutors — most of them working illustrators that I want to be — all ambassadors of the “Be Gentle With Yourself” philosophy. They were also doing was something I wasn’t anymore.
They were drawing everyday.
My favorite video was a short segment called the “Three Minute Sketching Challenge.” Inspired the Hundred Days of Sketching project, it advocated timed drawings that guaranteed an imperfect result. It also guaranteed, however, that there would be a result.
I turned to my fish tank and set the timer. My guppy, Oscar seemed to know he was being drawn because he chose those exact three minutes to do his daily race around the fake bonzai plant, but three minutes later I had a fishy doodle.
Four minutes after that, it was colored in.
Five minutes later, I dropped the ‘serious’ drawing class and subscribed to the way cheaper site .
I did a few dozen timed doodles, cursing when the alarm clock announced it was time for my day job.
Nothing I’ve produced in the last few days is remotely serious. It’s miles away from perfect. I may chase perfect and sign up for a ‘serious’ art class again someday, but, for now, I’m too busy drawing.
Keeping Score
Around our house, Little League starts a couple weeks before the first practice and, with it, the same exact conversation:
Thing2: “Do I have to play?
Interchangeable parent: “yes”
Thing2: “I hate baseball. (Insert ad nausea exclamations as to why we should not sign up for baseball)”.
And just as I’m looking for the return receipts for the new gear after assuring Thing2 for the umpteenth time that “you love baseball,” something great happens.
Sunday’s something great happened when I drove Thing1 to the rec park for around the free golf course. Ten-year-old Thing2 insisted on going to join me for a walk around the trail, and I said yes, knowing I’d be abandoned for the playground before the end of the first lap on the trail.
We didn’t even finish the first half before Thing2 noticed a classmate and his dad engaged in an impromptu batting practice at the baseball diamond. The friend’s dad, who happens to be this year’s coach, invited him to stay and hit a few, and gave me a few minutes of quiet walking time.
Twenty minutes later, coach and classmate were ready to head home for Sunday dinner. Thing2 helped stow the equipment as he proclaimed his anticipation of the next night’s official practice.
I corralled him back to the trail so we could drag Thing1 from the golf course.
“I hit 30 pitches,” Thing2 told me as he skipped to the last putting green. “That would be a ton of runs!”
T2 was still calculating his imaginary score when Thing1 came into view. We arrived to see him sink his last putt and pound the air with his fist in the universal signal of victory.
The boys had scored big, but I was about to get an unexpected win.
We got to the car, Thing2 waved to his friend across the parking lot. Then he turned to me and said, “Man, I can’t wait for baseball practice tomorrow!”
Score!
Morning Pages
Just as great authors have their morning pages, I’m trying a new routine of drawing exercises before or after I paint each morning to gain a better command of the fundamentals — my homemade art school as it were. These are very well-laid plans – the best-laid plans, so I’m not taking any odds on what will happen to them. But the first day was fun.
Just Fly
Yesterday, we went to the ballet recital of a young friend. The younger sister of T1’s girlfriend, we’ve come to think of both girls as practically family and were excited to cheer her efforts.
It was blissfully typical of most dance recitals.
We watched the older girls, getting ready to soar into the next phase of their lives, enjoy well-deserved accolades after years of practice. Then we watched younger dancers emerging like butterflies. Our friend distinguished herself beautifully, hitting her marks and helping the youngest dancers hit theirs.
As usual, those youngest dancers, with their fairy costumes and exhuberance, stole the show.
One little fairy in particular captured everyone’s attention. About four, she sashayed onto the stage as gracefully as a four-year-old can, glancing back at her group for confirmation that the steps were right. Glee infected her as they began twirling, causing us to wonder if she would twirl right off the stage. She was often just a beat behind the others but always a bounce or twirl above, dancing to the music as if she had her own rhythm section in her head.
The music ended, and her partners sashayed off to the left. She began to skip and hop after them, and for a moment she seemed to be trying to fly. The audience chuckled as one and then applauded, as if we were all remembering what it was like to move just for the fun of it and hoping that the little magic spark that lit up the tiny ballerina might actually get her to fly someday.
The Only Thing
Arlington had barely enough interested nine-year-olds to field a team for the Little League minor’s team this year, so when one of the players couldn’t make it to the first away game, parents and players were relieved that an older player from the Majors volunteered to play.
I was happy the boys got to play, but the older boy’s good deed bumped T2 from his position behind the plate as catcher. Knowing how much he loves catching, my relief was tempered a bit. However, I knew it made sense for the older boy to catch because, even in the minors, winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing.
If the change bothered T2, he didn’t show it. He danced on his way out to center field, bopping to the beat of the internal music in his head as he waited for the ball to leave the pitcher’s hand. In the second and third and fourth inning he danced as he play right field, then center, then right again. He skipped around the bases as he scored a run, sliding into each base for good measure, even when the ball was still in the outfield.
All of the Arlington boys got dirty sliding. The scoreboard was broken, but as our rag-tag team scored one run after another, victory seemed likely.They had faced much older boys for the first two losing games of the season, a win would mean a lot to all of them.
The game ended just after dinner time and shortly before bedtime. Fully revved up, the team began a complex game of skill and strategy that involved racing up and down the bleachers and throwing their gloves at each other. A few dads were talking cars. Moms were talking carpools. The boys were screaming with laughter, making up rules as they played. It was well past official bedtime by the time each boy was buckled in and being chauffeured home.
T2 was sweaty and panting when I asked him if they had won.
“Yeah,” he laughed.
“What was the score?”
“Oh, we weren’t keeping score. We were just having fun.”
“And the ballgame?”
“I can’t remember the score,” he said after a minute. Then he grinned and pointed to his dirty pants. “But I got to slide three times. I think that’s a win.”
It was, and it really was everything.
Color it Clean… or maybe just Sane
So my post about turning brother against brother to get a room clean, generated a few comments and a bunch of emails, mostly from or about other moms recounting tales of terror inspired by room-cleaning events. There were stories of discovering new life-forms that had evolved from 3-month-old left overs, of dirty socks that could only be moved to the washer while wearing protective gear, and more than one person admitted to blocking out their kids’ rooms from memory until they flew nest.
The disgusting kids room is the 800 pound load of laundry overflowing the mental-health hamper. So in the furtherance of parental peace and sanity, I created a coloring page in honor of anyone who’s been tempted to do a Joan Crawford on their kid’s room.
Download and Enjoy!