Martha Kelly Art

I had a lovely, quiet morning at Rockport State Park. I’ve been doing a lot of online work and canine caretaking lately, and I haven’t been out to my favorite parks as much as I usually am when I’m out west. It was lovely to get a morning to take off with my sketchbook, do several favorite short trails, sit and watch the river a little a bit, and do a couple of sketches. It was my reward for doing ISBN and Library of Congress research after breakfast.

I’m learning all kinds of things about self publishing, which is good, since I’ll be doing it quite soon. My inner book nerd was happy when I found one source that said ISBN numbers were begun by British bookseller W.H.Smith (a favorite from my university days). They needed a cataloging system for their books and hired a former WWII code breaker to create one. It was later adopted widely.

Books need a different ISBN for each edition - hardcover, softcover, ebook, etc. You can buy them in bundles of 10 if you’re self publishing, or you can just get one. Once you have an ISBN number you can apply for free for a Library of Congress number, which is cool and also necessary if any libraries might want to carry your book. I’m going to get more serious about applications soon, but the hike first was very welcome.

It's been so crazy this trip I hadn't gotten to my favorite spot once. I fixed that this week and took a sunny day to go with a picnic, my sketching things, and my book to a small stone beach at the confluence of two rivers. I sat in the shade and did two two-page spreads, I read a while, and then I just sat on a rock out in the river and drank in a little sunlight. It felt wonderful. I think I may get a print out of the vertical sketch too. I hadn't meant to do a second page, but when I looked up as I was packing away the sketching things, the clouds were amazing, so I kept going. 

I'm taking a ton of photos of Mr. Darcy right now. He is both my muse and my heart, and I enjoyed taking some more that day. Below is my recent favorite (I'm also pondering a print), plus some other photos of the day. We took a short forest hike on the way home, and I found an encouraging message on a trail post. I'm grateful for the pull together spirit I find a lot of places these days. 

I've done some sketching today, which felt really good. Mr. Darcy is doing well, and we went to the gorgeous forested state park nearby to walk before he starts his new round of chemo. I did the vertical spread as well as a tiny bit of truck (see bottom) to fill up the other day's bicycle page. 

Then when I got home, the clouds were absolutely gorgeous, so I settled in the lawn to paint. I hadn't meant to do Alice at first, looking mostly at the clouds, but then, there she was, and I've enjoyed drawing her along the way this trip. So here we are at the far point of our trip, the destination, before heading back toward home. 

I know I posted the barn yesterday, but I wanted to get the full page spread here as well. I had intended something more domestic, but this is what happened instead. Often it's just the next thing that catches my eye. 

I got on my bike seriously for the first time out here and did 13 miles on a gravel trail the other day. It felt good to get going again, and I took a break to paint this barn, which is one I always admire when I go past. I've painted it several times, never quite getting what I'd hoped. This one may be the closest I've managed. A horse came over to watch as I sketched. I keep meaning to finish that page and scan the whole thing, but other stuff keeps happening, so here it is for now. I’ll post the whole thing whenever I get it done.

It’s been a hard couple of weeks. My beloved muse Mr. Darcy has lymphoma. I’ve been working a bit on the prints but mostly doing vet visits and taking extra care of him. I think we’ve figured out a treatment that should give him another year or two, which (since he’s a big dog and 10 years old) is all I had realistically hoped to get with him anyway. It’s not nearly as hard on dogs as on people, and if he can stay happy and feeling good, I’d love the extra time. We’ve had to figure out different hip medicine for his arthritis, and that’s been hard too. But he looked frisky and much like himself last night, so I think we’re on the right path. I’ve been picking up lots of heart shaped stones as I walk that feel like talismans somehow. I know it’s magical thinking, but I still find myself holding them as I walk. So this page is a pretty good encapsulation of my last couple of weeks.

In other news, I’ve been thinking about the forest ABC book again after taking a break when I got here. It’s good work I can do downstairs with Mr. Darcy, and I wrote out an author’s page yesterday. Now I’ll have to erase the pencil work, scan it, and clean it up nicely. I still need a title page, but otherwise it’s going to be cleaning up and adjusting scans and putting the images on exactly the right size page with a small extra margin for the gutter. It’s getting close.

I got here and slept about a week. I've been updating the blog, and I also have been working on three new prints that sprang out of the journey. So it took me a while to get back to sketching. It has felt marvelous to be doing my regular walk out here, though, and I decided to celebrate that with several sketches. I took the sailor fude pen along, as I had been in Memphis, and I sketched that lovely, small waterfall where I turn around. I also sketched the treasures I found along the trail after I got back. It's good to have the journal going again.