I've been watching my fellow sketchers post end of the year recaps of their sketch books, and I decided that would be fun for me as well. I'm still new to keeping more intensive and regular sketch journals. I only started seriously in the fall of 2013, and I find that it has immensely enriched the entire spectrum of my work. I'm making prints and paintings from scenes I never would have expected to make more serious art from, but once I had a sketch I liked, the image nagged at me and demanded further attention.

I also love both the casual and narrative aspects of keeping a sketch journal. It's fun to tell more of a story than is possible in a free standing painting or print.

At right is my sketch of the sketchbooks I used in 2015. Three of them are partial, and five (the small ones) exclusively from 2015.

Here are the highlights from each of my sketchbooks for the year.

My April to June sketchbook saw the NYC trip with my sister in April. It was very much a theater trip for her birthday celebration.

My June to October sketchbook has my favorite cat in the world on my knee and one of my more successful marker sketches.

My larger handbook watercolor journal is mostly trees. It has some pages from 2014, some from 2015, and I'm using it much more slowly since I don't have it in my purse all the time. Here's the page that was open in my Dixon exhibition. I did a print from this for the show.

I ended up doing a number of prints from the sketches in these books and may well do more. It's good to have the raw material.

The bride's mother is a minister, and it was important to her to get a photo of her daughter with the baptismal font. I overheard that and did a sketch as well. 

During the break between photos and service, I staked out a fairly close pew, painted the flowers, and laid in at least the upper backgrounds for a couple of church sketches, to have them ready to add figures in.

I did one more quick one during the service when I saw the sister of the bride holding the hand of one of the flower girls. And I ended with the couple facing each other and exchanging vows. (Added into a background I had started before the service.)

I am still enjoying pulling back from the large and complicated prints for Dixon and doing some smaller, simpler blocks. I've been wanting to do a print of Mr. Darcy fora  good while now, and I've finally got one underway. I worked from one of my evening couch sketches, drew it larger, and did a little more sitting on the sofa and drawing from life to add the detail needed for a print instead of a line drawing.

I proofed it first in black, but my sister (in town for a Star Wars weekend instead of Christmas this year, which has been great fun) requested color, so I tried that as well. I may do a varied edition of both, since I like them both. I'll do a little more proofing before deciding for sure.

Mr. Darcy had fun greeting everyone at the sale over the weekend and also hung out for the music. He's always right close to me, so this was my view down my bass last night. I'm so lucky in my companion as well. He's great company for me working on my own. 

The musician series I had started seems to have taken a left turn into being a dancing series instead. After all the large, complicated, multi-block landscapes for the Dixon show, I am enjoying trying out some different subject matter and doing some much smaller, single block prints.

I am also celebrating happiness and the show being up. This good moment in my life. Dancing is the best celebration out there, and I've been lucky to have had some truly lovely dances recently.

This is quite a small print, 5.5x10" paper, and I'm happy to have some smaller things available for Christmas. My Open Studio Sale with potter Melissa Bridgman is next weekend (Dec. 12-13, 12-5 both days, 1780 Autumn), and I'll have some of these. They're also up in my online store at https://squareup.com/market/martha-kelly-art.

Memphis Theological Seminary is hosting a workshop this weekend on interpreting dreams. They have one major speaker but were apparently a little desperate for someone to give him a midday break, so I got the call. Dream interpretation is not something I know anything about, but making art from visionary passages definitely is. I'll be doing a bit of an art history survey of Biblical dreams and visions in art (Isaiah's call, Jacob's ladder, Ezekiel, Revelation), talking about why these places in the text are so powerful for artists, and saying just a bit how I approach making art from a text in my own work.

I'll also talk about how art helps me tap into that unconscious place within myself. I recently found myself making prints that I only belatedly realized were working through something that had happened earlier in the year. So I'll encourage the folks to doodle or sketch and use that as a way of being present in the moment and perhaps listening to the things that flow out of their pens. My college painting prof always said, "Don't think. Just paint." I have never had a great deal of luck starting out with an intellectual agenda for a project (I'm remembering a largely failed effort to do still lifes based on the five senses many years ago.) I make much better art going with the image and instinct that floats to the top and keeps haunting me. Often that's just the best image I have going at the moment, but occasionally it also tells me something about how I'm feeling about events in my life.