I've been having fun sketching Mr. Darcy, always my best muse, with my new Sailor fude fountain pen. It's also a quick, easy way to sketch in the forest on our daily walk, so I've been getting used to this pen as I walk and also sit on the couch in the evenings. I'm really enjoying the feel of it and the varied width of lines I can get.

I've never done a CSA before, and for years now I've traveled too much to even consider it. This year, however, I will be staying home, and I'm trying to shop as little as possible. Plus I'm tired of my same cooking, so it seemed like a good idea to branch out, support fantastic local farmers Whitton Farms, and learn to cook some new things. Boy howdy, it's a lot of food for one person though! I can see that I may be sharing some with my folks as we go along, but it's exciting and very beautiful to paint. This week I am going to learn to cook beets (which I usually just buy cooked and ready to go), and I think I'll try my hand at a beet/goat cheese salad. Or feta, depending on whether I can get some goat cheese easily. And I haven't had sweet potatoes in a while. It's good to bust me out of my routines.

I also did a nest sketch. The mama goes off occasionally for short periods, so I sat up on a ladder (inside my kitchen, not near the nest!) to peep down in. It's quite a deep nest, and I'm hoping another egg or two is hidden on the near side that I couldn't see. But it was fun to glimpse the one speckled one. I didn't even know what a cardinal egg looked like. I'm so excited about a baby or two.

My sister gave me a gorgeous book called The Boy, The Mole, The Fox, and The Horse for my birthday. It’s not only gorgeous and wise and kind (and about cake to a pretty good degree!), but the drawings are superb. Charlie Mackesy has a lovely IG feed with more drawings, small readings from the book that are kind of perfect for now, and also time lapse videos of his pen doing these drawings that vary from very thin lines to very thick ones. It reminded me of what I’d heard about fude pens, and I decided now was the time for a new toy. I can’t put it down. I got a Sailor fude (navy, 40 degree angle instead of 55) plus an ink converter, for right about $20 total, in case you’d also like a new toy.

The line variation is delicious. I’m still learning how to hold and vary it, but I’ve had such fun playing with it the last two days. In fact, I think I’m heading over to the forest now with my sketchbook. The forest is so beguiling for line drawings, and it’s a glorious day. I’ve had a ton of commissions lately, which is excellent, but it felt good to finish the last of them (for now) last night. So today I’m making art, but making the art that feels like fun because it isn’t due or required for anything.

I’ll probably come back with more, but here’s the total crop right now. I’m using a basic black, water soluble ink right now, but at some point I may try waterproof so it won’t run with paint. I’ve really enjoyed my waterproof marker and colored paint in the Quarantine Journal project lately.

I’ve never done a small test/sketch print before. I always do drawings first, but not prints. However, with the new larger size I’m working (at least part of the time), it suddenly makes more sense. That’s a huge time commitment, and I saw a printmaker I follow on IG do a test print and thought, yes! Also it’s a chance to print at several different places in the carving process and see what I think. So here is a small test print of a tree tunnel just outside of Auvers-sur-Oise, just up a small path from the cemetery where Vincent and Theo are buried together. I went two years ago and went back several days later to sketch it again. Both times I got distracted by color and texture and straightened the tree out more than I meant to. So when I went to do a print, I pulled out my reference photos along with the sketch. The sketch captures what grabbed me about the scene, the photo helped me get the shape truer to what it is. Here are the sketch plus my more careful drawing for the print.

I almost never do reduction prints because once you cut away, you can’t put it back again. And I have trouble planning in my head several layers without being able to see them put together and then adjust them. So I usually do several blocks. But for this small test print (and a simple, two part image), I printed the green at two different stages first and then cut away more for the black to go on top, printing the solo black somewhere between those two stages. I still cut away more of the green than I think was good. I’ll go back in with markers or paint and play on top of these proofs before doing the bigger one. But I think it may be possible, with that level of preparation, to do a simple reduction instead of doing two separate blocks. That would definitely be less carving and also less expensive, buying one larger block instead of two.

Here is what the two different base layers of green looked like before I printed on top of them. I wish I’d left the green a little higher along the horizon line. That’s one thing I’d like to play with and likely change in a larger version.

It's a glorious day, I got through the Farmers Market early enough to feel safe being there, and I came home with the most beautiful eggs I've ever seen. I sat on the back porch and sketched them, had my lunch, and watched Papa Cardinal chase off a Blue Jay and a mockingbird. I had grand plans to get back to my seagull block this afternoon, but I may take a nap instead.

It was a really good day. I put a commission I was pleased with in the mail to its new owner, I turned in three coloring book pages (my first ever) to the Memphis Flyer to see if they want them for a Memphis coloring book. I love the Flyer, it's a great idea, and they'll split proceeds with the artists instead of just asking for free art. It was fun to do a few of my favorite places and also play with a new format.

In even better news, my mama cardinal was back sitting on her nest. She'd disappeared for a couple of days, and she'd seemed bothered by me right through the window when I used my kitchen sink. She hadn't been sitting yet, so I'd been a bit worried they had decided just to start over somewhere more private. She's been spending a lot of time in the nest today, though, and she stayed while I sketched her. I'm delighted.

I rewarded my morning of work on a gorgeous day by getting on my bike and going to Elmwood, always one of my favorite places to sketch. There are MANY fewer people than in Overton Park these days, so I feel much safer and not at all crowded there. I rode a couple of loops around it, stopped to sketch, looped through Central Gardens on my way home, and ended up with an 11.5 mile ride, which felt great. A late sunshine walk with Mr. Darcy and a happy domestic evening (with asparagus brought by a kind friend after she got my email update!), and I'm living well today.

I'm still doing commissions (and thank you, good people, who want to celebrate your special days with original art!) along with a little slow carving, so nothing except journal to show just now. It's fun to have something quick to do when other projects take longer.

The international Urban Sketchers group has had a challenge going lately to bake something and then sketch it. That got me craving cookies. My baked goods are usually utilitarian -- good but not so pretty. I decided it would be fun to draw the ingredients before starting though, so that's what I did. And I added in the super simple recipe. Since it's got oatmeal as the biggest ingredient, it's got to be almost healthy, right?

I also sketched the book I just finished and really enjoyed. I'm finding that good fiction is what I want just now. City of Girls was great, and I also loved The Other Bennet Sister. I rarely read the Austen fan fiction follow ups, but I heard the author talking on npr and was impressed with her. I also fell in love with a play about Mary that Tennessee Shakespeare did this past Christmas, so I was primed for another investigation of her. The first part ran parallel to Pride and Prejudice, which I didn't like as much, but I felt it got better after it took Mary on her own journey. It definitely took some liberties with several of the characters, and some of the themes felt very 2020 (the research into personal happiness), but the writing was good, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I was quite sorry to see it end and will now have to come up with another book I look forward to reading as much as this one.

It feels a little silly in April, but I've gotten chilly on damp evenings a few times lately, and I'm ongoingly grateful for these gas logs that bring happiness and coziness to just such days. Mr. Darcy is quite happy about them too.

I've been working on commissions the last few days. It's lovely to have some short term structure to supplement the very long term museum show I'm working on. It's surprisingly happy to cross a finished project off the list. So I took a break from the journal while I worked on a couple of those, but last night it felt good to get back to it. I froze some individual slices of my birthday cake last month when I realized it would be me and a whole cake alone in the house. Last night I got a slice out for after dinner. I'm glad I spread out the enjoyment of it. And so are my jeans.