I'm trying not to "publish" my whole memoir here, but it's mostly what I'm working on these days, so I'm going to show bits and pieces. It's been fun to go through old photos and journals and ticket stubs and remember trips and people. I found a photo I didn't remember at all of my first dog Dougal lying on my lap while I played banjo. Henry gets across from me and glares and looks put upon. He is much less a music fan. Here are the photo and the version I did from it for the book.

You can also see the font I'm tinkering with. I keep going in and making minor adjustments. It's an app for my ipad, iFontMaker, that lets me draw my own letters. My first attempt looked scarily like Comic Sans (or a ransom note, as fellow illustrator Martha Park said of her own first attempt), but I tried again and came out with this, after numerous adjustments and probably more to come. If I'm going to do a whole book, it would be way easier to use a font (even drawing with an apple pencil requires me doing most words several times), and it's more legible. So I'm laying out with the font for now. Worst case scenario it's a good place holder for me to know what to write where if I decide I don't like the final look.

Three years ago I wrote about 19,000 words of a first draft of a memoir. What I learned is that prose isn't really my medium. But it was cathartic. I ended up writing a path out for my younger self from a bad place, and it was helpful. I also figured out that I had written way too broadly, and the story I'd like to tell is tighter and centers around a transformative summer in Greece I was lucky enough to spend there. I thought that maybe someday I would mine some of that outpouring for graphic storytelling.

This spring, as I am stuck in my house for most of the days thanks to a flare up of the POTS I've been trying to figure out how to live with, I'm toying with that project again. I don't currently have the physicality to do a lot of standing up work in my print shop, but sitting on the couch and noodling with small illustrations gives me joy. And going back to relive some of that travel when I'm feeling more closed in is also appealing.

I don't honestly know if I'll have the courage to put this very personal story out into the world, but I'm enjoying exploring it. There is nothing like the brain fizz of a new project to perk you up a little. So here's the first page. We'll see how much more makes it to the public sphere.

It's been a sunny and unusually warm start to the year, and I'm taking advantage with some sketching walks in the old forest. It feels good to get out, let Henry explore a bit, and enjoy a place I love so much. This first is Diamine Golden Brown ink with watercolor. I've done a couple of different graphic essays with those materials, but I recently refilled a pen that had dried up, and I'm planning to use it more. The ink is dark enough to show a line but light enough to meld with the paint without making a muddy mess. Really perfect.

I did a super quick one New Year's Eve. It was late in the afternoon, and I mostly just painted the sunshine itself. The sun and owls and a feel good day for me felt like a good omen for the coming year. One of those moments I wanted to memorialize for later in my sketchbook.

Here are a couple of older ones, one complete with a few raindrops as I was finishing. That's the Diamine Ancient Copper ink again, and the last one is Inktense pencils with watercolor on top.

I'm a cover girl! Clearly not me, but my work. I spent several months working off and on illustrating the nooks and crannies of Burke's for the 150th anniversary. It's one of my truly special places, and I was thrilled that Memphis Magazine let me illustrate their feature. I was also thrilled it ended up being the cover story. These are still on the new stands through October, and you can also read the full story and see all my illustrations on their website.

Memphis Magazine let me illustrate their back page feature "The Last Stand" last month. I loved having an open ended invitation to tell a story. It was a quickish turnaround, and I didn't manage a full narration, but I went to two farmers markets after getting the assignment and had fun conversations as well as seeing the rich visual bounty of such places. I ended up doing a graphic feature called "Farmers Market chit-chat." I keep saying I'd like to do more visual storytelling, and it was lovely to get the invitation. See the whole spread here.

And of course Henry made an appearance.

The High Museum in Atlanta has an exhibition of Georgia O’Keefe’s New York era paintings, a broad selection of her work, but clearly (above) I was drawn to the skyscrapers. I highly recommend the show to anyone who can get there. I had a whirlwind trip. I’d pondered going before the snow, and clearly that was a bad idea. Then I thought about going next week, but the forecast when I checked looked ominous again, so Monday morning over breakfast I decided that that was the day. I had scouted out a garage apartment in walking distance of the High that was only available until Thursday, so I made the reservation at 7:30, threw some things in the car, and was out by 9:00.

I’ve been feeling for a while that I was stuck in a long covid rut, partly from fatigue, partly because of a fear of reinfection, and partly because it became very easy and comfortable to stay home. Having learned covid strongly disagrees with my particular biology, I’m still masking in public and miss the dancing I used to do. But I chose Explore as my word of the year and set myself a task to go somewhere new each month, even if it’s close to home. Museums are great because they’re not too crowded, and there isn’t that focus on food and drink, plus they feed my soul. I loved my Crystal Bridges/Nelson Atkinson trip last fall, and I’d like to do some more museum visits. I been once to the High around college age, but it’s been so long that I counted it as a new place. Piedmont Park certainly was. As with my fall trip, I brought along food, stayed within walking distance of the museum, and never moved the car (more key in Atlanta than some places). I went to the museum both mornings but walked in the park afterwards (and even the first night I got in). That rhythm of walking and looking at art and sketching really feeds my creativity. I also saw two old friends I hadn’t seen since before covid, which feeds my soul.

I did three museum sketches, two park sketches, and one early morning full moon sketch off my tiny balcony. There was a lovely large table and good light in the apartment too, and I did a bunch of Henry in the snow sketches while I was there too. Trips often get my sketching into overdrive. I’m working on a new graphic essay, maybe even a book, from my photos of him in the snow. It was an excellent three night getaway, and I’m so grateful I could just go.

I’ve been doing a bunch of book work this week since getting the Apple pencil. It’s taken a bit of getting used to, but is so much better than scanning in and cleaning up huge blocks of text. I can also play with it and change sizes, wrap it around images, etc. It feels much more immediate, and while I’m working to keep my handwriting legible, I hope that energy will translate into the book. I see that the pencil somehow migrated in color a bit, but overall I’m getting the hang of things and am grateful for this new tool. This is a double page spread. Georgia and Walter were in the Oxford American essay, but no one who knows me will be surprised to see that I added Constable now that I have a bit more room. He’s my number one influence on work habits and art philosophy, but OA is about Southern culture, so I leaned into American artists for it. I’ve got a few more watercolors and a back cover to do, but I’m getting close. I forget how very much longer all this takes than I think it will, but it’s always worth it to have a book in my hands.

Depending on your point of view, I either got a new toy or invested in my work last week. I love making art on paper with paint or carving, but the text part of making a book is painstaking if I write by hand and scan in, cleaning up lines of text and trying to keep them in the correct area around the images and in a ballpark of the same size. So this week I got an iPad Pro and Apple pencil. Being able to write directly on the book page without the smudges and dirt a scanner can add in is a huge pleasure. I’m still getting used to the iPad version of photoshop and the feel of the pencil itself, but I’m feeling encouraged. I’ve got a couple of different book projects in mind, and I think this will be a huge help.

I’ll lose that variation of ink that a real pen gives you, but I’ll regain the energy and creativity of wrapping text around the images and playing directly with the spaces instead of trying to replicate that on a separate page. I’m still working to figure out sizes and keep my writing neater with the pencil, but I’m very happy with the early progress.

One of my big projects this year was the Oxford American graphic essay Memoir of a House. It's still on the new stands in the Summer issue, but once the Fall issue comes out, I'll be free to publish it as well. I'm expanding it just a little and making it into a book, which I plan to have out before Christmas. I'm adding in maybe a dozen more watercolors to go with the 30 that were in OA, with a few more tidbits about the history. One bit I'm adding is more of how I use my front room. It's always a gallery, but it has been known to double as a dance hall or a space for house concerts. The inimitable Joe Newberry played his songs and told his stories with Mr. Darcy lying at his feet, and I wanted a sketch of that moment for the book. I've also been known to have swing parties with a live band, as part of the local contra dance weekend we used to put on in town. It's been fun to revisit and expand this project a bit.

Oxford American is on newsstands and in bookstores (Burke's and Novel locally), and my essay is also up on their website. I'm so delighted to see it out in the world!

It was a great pleasure to have a physically small winter project to do through the worst of my long covid. I could be on the sofa, under a fuzzy blanket, with Henry on my feet, and work on the 30 small watercolors while watching British mysteries. It meant so much to have a hopeful, exciting project that was also manageable for me. I'm still not standing up to do oil paintings, but I'm back to doing a bit more print work again. This essay saved me through the worst of being able to do none of my regular, much loved activities. 

WKNOfm hosted me to talk about the essay (and to announce my next big project), and that interview is here. They do such a great job supporting a whole range of arts in Memphis. 

Here is one more painting from the essay. I had such fun doing a small portrait of Georgia O'Keeffe in her adopted landscape.