Martha Kelly Art

I cleaned off the porch at the beginning of the season, removed the second hammock chair that crowds it (no one ever really sits out there with me anyway), and have been spending lots of time out there lately. It's been a great joy. I did a line drawing of this scene some days ago in my smaller journal with the new Sailor fude pen, and I decided to have it in the Quarantine Journal as well. I was down to the right hand side square, and it probably would have benefited from being more horizontal, but it shows the critical elements of the scene, along with my new bird book, a long distance present that I am really enjoying. Spending this much time on the porch has me watching the birds more intently than ever before, and it's been deeply satisfying.

I'm showing off my deeply ugly house shoes in both of these sketches, but they're incredibly comfortable for standing up painting and print work, and I have to say that they are also fun to draw.

I've been divided between sketching, printmaking, and skiving off lately, so I've been irregular in all my pursuits. I have done a few more Mr. Darcy sketches over the last couple of days, however, and here they are. The watercolor one is the aerial view of him I get from my work table stool when he's lying next to me. The others are when we're both on the sofa at night. I'm so grateful for his company.

I had a reptile kind of walk this morning. I got out early to beat both the heat and the holiday weekend crowds in the park, and I had the forest beautifully to myself. I had done a short walk with Mr. Darcy (who struggles with an arthritic hip these days) and then gone back out with my smaller sketchbook. I'm so glad I did. I found a turtle in the middle of the path, and he very obligingly hung around and let me sketch him. He didn't even pull into his shell.

Not five minutes later, I came across a pair of copperheads writhing together on the path. This time I took a photo but didn't stay in the vicinity long enough to sketch. I did the journal page looking at both my turtle sketch as well as reference photos for both.

These are the first snakes I've seen in ages, which is a little unusual for me. For several years now I've been a bit of a magnet for them, enough that the forester has joked about having the copperhead researcher (a professor at a local college) follow me around so she can find them more easily. I was beginning to feel like I might speak parseltongue without knowing it, though truthfully, a port key or apparition would be much my preferred form of Harry Potter magic. Today made up for the gap, however, since I saw two at once for the first time.

I keep sketching my main muse and housemate. I'm really enjoying that Sailor fude pen, and I've had it and my smaller sketchbook lying around handy lately. It's been fun to do during a slow week.

The last sketch has The Woman in White sitting on my lap. I've been listening to a delightful podcast of The Moonstone ("Phoebe reads a Mystery" -- she started with Poirot, and I love her voice), and I decided I wanted a bit more Collins. I found the absolutely perfect quote for the current situation:

“I ought, perhaps, to have made more progress than this; but, as luncheon time drew near, I grew restless and unsettled, and felt unable to fix my attention on work, even though that work was only of the humble, manual kind.” My week in a nutshell, courtesy of Wilkie Collins.

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 been working on my first large block (18x24”) for the new press, and it’s been going incredibly slowly. I’ve also been a little under the weather, so sketching has been sparse lately, but here are a few. They postponed baseball today, so I took to the forest with Mr. Darcy to draw. Always a good option, no matter what is going on, and I needed to clear my head.

A couple of nights ago I got super tired of my own cooking, and I headed to Huey’s. It’s One Week, 100 People on Instagram, and I’m home by myself too much to make any headway, but I did go do a token couple of pages. I got in 12 on this page and another few close up sketches in another book, but I won’t be getting close at all this year.

This last one is older — a couple of weeks ago. It was a gorgeous day, and I took my bike out the green line and had lunch at the park at the edge of town. There’s a bench by a small lake that always has ducks (and occasionally buffalo hanging around behind a fence too...don’t ask), and it’s my favorite long bike ride destination. The flowering trees are going like crazy right now, which always makes me happy.

I was living my best life yesterday, which felt lovely. It was a glorious, warm day in the middle of a rainy winter, and I decided to enjoy it to the full. I worked on the print I’m excited about in the morning (see the bottom photo for a close up — I mostly finished the sky), had lunch, and then went out to enjoy the day. Mr. Darcy and I walked first. I packed my small backpack with sketching gear, so we hung out, painted this glorious curved tree that I walk past daily, and chatted to neighbors as they too got out to bask in the 65 degree weather.

After that I got back on my bike, which has been neglected the last couple of weeks. I did some loops around midtown, enjoying our neighborhoods and looking at the houses, and I stopped at Burke’s Books, Memphis’s 140 year old independent bookstore. Beautifully I happened on a $6 biography of Berthe Morisot. I just ordered a frame my poster from her solo show at the Orsay this past summer, so it was a perfect time to revisit my newest art hero. I looped back through the park for the sheer pleasure of the forest and logged right at 11 miles total. I only learned how to ride a bike this summer, and it has greatly increased my joy. I feel like a kid swooping around. It’s kind of nice to have some pleasures that are delayed to discover along the way.

In the evening I met friends for dinner and a concert by the New Orleans Dirty Dozen Brass Band. So much fun. I’m really grateful for this life I get to live.

Part of my sister’s wedding festivities were in New Orleans, and I just couldn’t get that close without heading to Ocean Springs and the Walter Anderson Museum of Art. I’m a homing pigeon for that place. It was a good choice. I stopped at my favorite antique mall on the way down, spent a lot of the afternoon in the museum, swung through Shearwater Pottery, and was out on the pier for sunset. I forget how elemental water is. I spent at least half an hour just standing and drinking in the sunset, the pelicans skimming right along the surface of the water, and the moon and clouds playing peek-a-boo overhead. I think I grinned ear to ear the whole time. It was a stunning evening. I did a couple of golden hour sketches before enjoying the sunset, one more successful than the other, but sunsets are dicey that way.

The next morning I took my walk by the water and spotted a row of trees looking across the water to Shearwater from the marina (the complex where Anderson’s family lived), so I walked back for my sketchbook. It was cold, but I did a quickish grisaille study for a print — to get the shapes and the black and white.

For those of you who haven’t had the joy of seeing pelicans lately, here is a small bit of joy for you. I’m home and happily working on the print I drew out now.

I enjoyed yesterday’s dawn sketch so much that painted my new-to-me Frankoma teapot over breakfast today. I’d been collecting the teacups and other bits at antique malls. They feel so good cupped in your hands. But I hadn’t found a teapot (these pieces were made mid century at a factory in Oklahoma), so I treated myself and ordered a small one, just right for one person, online. It’s fun to sketch new tea things, and I love the colors and lines of these.

This was extra important today because I’m in day two of painting my bedroom, so very long overdue, and it’s a big project solo. I knew I’d be working on that with all the rest of the daylight and wanted to make a little art first. The #AmWriting podcast and Facebook community is big on “morning pages” for writers — something that’s purely yours, to loosen up for the day. I don’t mind having the energy to dive straight into good work, the way I did right after breakfast on that print yesterday (before starting the painting marathon), but I do really enjoy the looseness of an early sketch. I love that podcast for how they think about living a creative life but also handling all the business and marketing necessities that go with that. I’ve learned a lot from them and enjoyed their company in the process.

Ok, back to work. Here’s where I slept last night. The gray is primer. Color today and trim tomorrow is the plan. I hope to be done for the weekend and back to painting I enjoy more, but it’s also satisfying to be making my space somewhere I’ll really enjoy being. And doing it myself.

It's been a little crazy around here. I'm working on a series of prints, helping my sister plan her wedding, and trying to get some long needed things done around my house. (I'd ALWAYS rather make art than do house repairs/chores.) So I'm behind on scanning in sketches and getting them up here. Here are three from over the holiday season, done while running around with friends and family, plus, of course, sitting with Mr. Darcy in the evening. I'll try to get some more sketches ready to go soon. I've done some that I really enjoyed recently, but I'm not going to let the perfect be the enemy of the good today. Here's what I can manage, and I won't save them until later for more...