Splurge...

I have not been doing much drawing lately. I've been working on the house, Christmas presents, and displays at the shop, but as soon as Christmas is over I will be playing with these. And I mean the day after...I'm itching to give these a test drive! I use pan watercolors and/or watercolor pencils in most of my sketches, and I've been eyeing this set for a while. Merry Christmas to me!

Danny and Jack Gregory's New Sketch Film

Danny and Jack just keep coming out with great films about sketching! This one is about Butch Belair, who sketches in his car. I hide in my car because I'm shy about working in front of people. Amazing to read that someone as good as Butch is also a bit shy about it!
Enjoy!

To El and Back: a film about Butch Belair from DannyGregory on Vimeo.

A Good Mail Day...

I got some twine and washi tape in the mail today from Pretty Tape on Etsy. I've not been buying too many supplies, because journaling can be kept to minimal supplies, but a bit like this can be fun and inspiring! I've not been drawing much lately. I moved and am trying to get everything put away and settled. I may have to try out this tape though......

Kohala

Jennifer and I explored the north end of the island one day. This area has quite a few galleries and we tried to visit as many as possible. We visited the gallery at the Bamboo Restaurant, and I wish we had been there at dinner time, because it gets very good reviews and it was a very cute place. On the way home we parked on the coastline and watched the whales play and the sun set.

Across the street from the Bamboo Restaurant were several places to stop for a treat, including the Kava Kafe, which I sketched from my photo later that evening.

Kohala on Dwellable

Loco Moco

I tried this dish in Hawaii since it's a local favorite.
 
  It's rice topped with 2 big hamburger patties and 2 fried eggs, smothered in gravy. To me, it sounds icky, and looks questionable, but it's really quite delicious! But it's huge...I think it would feed two people!

New Drawing Video...Tommy Kane at Work

Danny Gregory and his son Jack Tea Gregory have made another interesting drawing video. This time they have featured one of my favorite sketch artists, Tommy Kane. I've been a long time admirer of Tommy's detailed sketches. As I watched this I noticed that he creates his drawings rather like I do...he seems to start with some area that interests him and build out from there. He also seems to jump right in with the ink pen too. He has much more patience than I do though, and often will spend hours detailing his drawings. His drawings are full of life and carry such a feel for the places he sketches. I hope Danny and Jack will be making many more videos...it's facinating to watch!
Red Hook - a film about Tommy Kane from DannyGregory on Vimeo.

Friday Favorite....

Today I am honored to be featured as Mary Nasser's  Friday Favorite on her blog.....check it out!

Mary uses maps in her artwork, and you all know how I love maps. You can see some of her work here. She also recently was an artist in residence at Red Cinder Creativity Center on the big island of Hawaii, loves her dogs and bicycling. You can see we have many interests in common!
Here is one of her recent works, inspired by her time living by the volcano on the big island:
This piece is entitled "Lake"

Yellow Tang

I've been busy moving, and not had time to put a pen to paper. I decided today to do a page while I was at work. I worked with the the few tools I had there: 2 ink pens and my little set of watercolors, and a stamp pad. Snorkeling in Hawaii was fantastic....I'm one of those landlubbers who says things like, "Wow! It's just like an aquarium!" That's what happens when you don't live near the ocean!

On Focus and Organization

Here is a little more of the journal that AnicaAnscott and I are making together. The journal is about what keeps us from being as creative as we'd like, and learning what will help us achieve our creative goals. 

I have always fought disorganization and distraction. But lately, while I'm trying to pare down on clutter and get organized, I'm learning to embrace my distractibility....to a certain extent. I have several projects going at once and move from one to the other as the mood strikes me.Working this way seems to keep things interesting and fresh, and improves my concentration. I also learned that I'm not the girl to be painting with oil paints or other media that take a long time to dry. I'm just a bit too impatient for that, and lose interest.

This page started with an illustration of a closet from a children's book that AnicaAnscott put in place when she created the journal. I took it from there. I should start taking pics of how it looked when I started, and then when I finish. When the journal is full, I'll post an album with all our pages together.

Time lapse of Doodle Drawing...

If you ever wondered how those doodle drawings (or zentangles, as some call them) develop, here is a wonderful time lapse video showing Sandra's beautiful drawing as it develops. Enjoy!

Plate Lunch...yum.

I'm not much into drawing my food, but Hawaii has some interesting local favorites. The plate lunch comes with lots of rice and usually macaroni salad, though it the second side could be any number of things. Various meats are used also. My favorites are huli huli chicken, pork, or chicken katsu. I never would have thought of having mac salad and rice together, but it's a pretty darn delicious lunch!

Glossary of Hawaiian Words...

...and some beautiful tile depicting Hawiian life long ago. These tiles are on the side of the visitor center at the "Place of Refuge."

 Here are the actual tiles. I wish I knew the name of the artist, but haven't been able to find it.

Circus

This is part of a beautiful little journal, handmade by AnicaAnscott (the link leads to her flickr photostream). We are working together to fill it with pages about our art, and some of the things that sometimes keep us from spending the time on it that we think we should. When she sent the journal to me it had the background of blue and red and the circus viewmaster reel, and I embellished from there.

I believe through some years of my life I've been so busy with other things (like childrearing, for instance) that I focused on that and not my artwork. And that is OK by me. Spending time with the kids was important to me and I throughly enjoyed it. During those times I was creative, but in a different way...decorating, painting sets for church plays, projects with the kids, sewing their clothes, etc. At a conference once, I heard a speaker say you can have it all, but sometimes it's better to not try to have it all at once...to enjoy the different seasons. Maybe if you have lots more energy than I, you can have it all at once, but I think I'll take mine in stages. Even the circus has 3 rings!

Pu'uhonua'o o Honaunau

This one was sketched from a photo I took. I stamped the page while I was at the park, and bought the little stamp there too.This is such a beautiful place. Black rocks, white sands, blue, blue sea.....

Do you know your next door neighbor?

I've been been reading Karla's new blog. Karla is focused on giving back. She's always been like that (I know her parents are so pround of her!). Lately I've been thinking about what kinds of ways I can make a difference right where I am...small things on a daily basis. Mother Teresa said, "Lonliness and the feeling of being unwanted is the most terrible kind of poverty."

 I remember when I first moved to this town I worked in the pharmacy. Sometimes people (many elderly, living alone) would call in their prescriptions and then want to just talk. I was a 21 year old who was with people all the time...it stunned me to realize that people would call the pharmacy in part to connect with other people.

I have had some wonderful neighbors over the years. They baked pies for us, we loaned each other tools, and did an unofficial "neighborhood watch". One neighbor even left the doors open at night when Joe was working out of town, so that if I was afraid, I could come in with baby Michael and crash on their couch or spare bed. Many of our neighbors had kids our children's ages and they all played together, going from house to house, and we parents looked out for each other's kids. We sometimes babysat for each other too.

Soon I'll be moving to a new neighborhood, and I need to make sure I get to know my new neighbors. I know it will be good for me because I tend to hole up in my nest sometimes, but it might even be good for someone else.  How about you? Do you know your neighbors?

Honu

I drew this from a photo I took at Pu'uhonua o Honaunau. I picked a page stamped with the park's stamps while I was there. If you are traveling and you don't seem to be getting time to draw, carry your sketchbook anyway. As you go you can collect postmarks, national park stamps, stickers, maps, and postage stamps from places you visit. Don't forget to collect bits of ephemera like napkins, menus, ticket stubs and the like. It's good to glue an envelope in the back of your journal (if it doesn't have one already) in which to save all these goodies.

Drawing Breakfast...

As you know, I love a good drawing video, and this one is very nice. It's of Danny Gregory and was made by his son, Jack. It's always interesting to see how someone's drawing comes about. Danny's book Everyday Matters got me drawing again back in 2005...I'm thankful for that inspiration!

The Art of Breakfast from DannyGregory on Vimeo.

Jennifer's 20 Wishes...

So I told you about the 20 Wishes in the last post. My sister Jennifer also thought of 20 wishes and put them on tags. She has them hanging in her office/studio from an antique Hoosier cabinet. I took several photos, rearranging the tags each time so you can see more of them.

 I love the "Be a Philantropist" tag. She has made that one come true. One of her favoite organizations to support is Heifer International. They do great work.

"Dance A Lot" 

That's a great wish and I know she's done a lot of that too! I've seen her at weddings and parties dancing like crazy...and she is even learning dances from the past by dancing with others interested in history. Here she is dressed in Regency period clothes, ready to go to a holiday ball:

 Jennifer is a talented writer. Check out her blog, One More Voice.

20 Wishes

Here is an old project I've been meaning to post about. Back in 2008 Jennifer and I were at the lake and we read a novel called 20 Wishes. It was about a group of women who decided to make a list of things they wished for themselves, and what happens in their lives afterwards.

 Jennifer working on her list of 20 Wishes and a bit of mine started on the bottom.

Well, pretty soon everyone at the cottage was working on their list. It turned out to be harder for most of us than you would think...because there were a couple of rules:

1. The wishes have to be for yourself. Most of us had trouble with this. We'd say things like "I wish for my children to be happy" or "I wish my husband could open the bike shop he dreams about."
2. The wishes could be as wild and outlandish as you like, but they had to be something you could have some power to accomplish...in other words no "I wish I would win the lottery." but you could wish "I'd like to make a fortune in real estate." You could not wish for good health (lots of that is out of your control), but you could wish "to be an appropriate weight" or "to be strong and fit."

Anyway, it was fun, and revealing in lots of ways. We wrote down things we'd never written down before, and dreamed for ourselves, which was much harder than we thought...even for those of us who think of ourselves as dreamers!

I made tags with my wishes on them. If you counted, you'd see that there are only 18...they were hanging in my studio at the shop and a couple went missing. The two missing were "Travel the USA" which had a Route 66 drawing on it, and "Build muscles!" which featured a beautiful female body. Apparently someone wanted those two wishes for their own...I have a gate across the entrance to my studio now.

 Some of these wishes have come true...Joe and I rode our bikes to Holly's house, and I have traveled more in the last few years. Some of the wishes I found were still outside my control to come true in the way I thought....but maybe they can happen in a way I didn't dream of at the time.

How about you? Could you come up with 20 wishes for yourself? It's harder than you might think!

Tomorrow, I'll share a picture of Jennifer's wishes.

The car is outside!

Come on down and see it. It's right by the Route 66 Museum and Old City Hall Shoppes, in front of Waldmire's bus. Warning: lots of pics ahead!

You can click on the pictures to see them larger.

 I painted the little Moleskine Journal on the seat because it's the kind of journal I use for my sketches. The idea is that the whole car is treated like a travel journal...and it's pretty much the same kind of thing you see if you flip through my sketchbooks.

 It's exciting to see it outside...I saw some folks posing for pictures on it this evening. Fun!

Using Photos....

I've been printing out some photos and using them in my travel journal. I've just been printing them on plain paper, and have to be careful not to get them wet, because that printer ink runs something terrible. But I like using some photos...how else can I capture that look when my mom and dad were reminiscing about old times at their first home:

As always, you can click on the picture to see it larger...much easier to read that way. Here's one from when Joe and I went out to see the lava flowing into the sea. It's an amazing sight.

And here is one from when Ted and Jenny and I went driving up the Hamakua Coast:

At first the the type Aish part of me freaked out about having the trips all mixed up in the journal instead of in chronological order. But I'm journaling bit by bit, about whatever strikes my fancy. And I'm also journaling around pages that I created while I was there, and on pages I had stamped with park stamps or postmarks while there. So my journal will be a collection of memories in no particular order. And lots of the pages are being done after I'm home and have more time to work on them...some purists only do theirs on site. But that's not me. And who is going to care anyway? The journal police?? I'll tell you what...creating a journal this way certainly extends all the fun of the trip way past the time I came home on the plane :D

The gods guarding ...

These are carvings of Hawaiian gods. They are guarding the temple at Pu'uhonua o Honaunau. It's a facinating place that gives you a feel of what old Hawai'i must have been like. These carvings tower over you and feel very menacing.

And here's a few photos!

 

 

Captain Cook on Dwellable

Pu'uhonua'o o Honaunau

Just celebrating being done with the paperwork at work by doing a little sketching. Scary looking, aren't they?!