I’ve been working on the show this past week instead of making a lot of art from scratch (getting final copies of prints, putting together a catalog, gathering framing supplies), but I took a day off yesterday. It was chilly in the morning, so I cooked up a farmers market stew for the week, but the sun came out after lunch. I decided to head to the park and enjoy the nice weather. I took my Inktense pencils along with my paint set. I’ve been forgetting to use them lately, and it was fun to get them back out. I did one piece in the heart of the forest and another of the sky over the Greensward as I headed home. It felt so good to sit in the sun and sketch for a little while.

I also scanned in a couple of others from New Years Eve. It was another glorious day that day, so I took Gideon out to the farm and then had dinner on my screened in porch that evening. I had fun sketching both occasions to celebrate the end of one year and usher in a new one right.

I started the year out right, doing a tiny oil (8x10") of the morning sky at the Greensward on New Year's morning. And then I read and knitted and sat on the back porch. It was a lovely day. The warm weather (right up until ice started falling from the sky today) has made the holiday week especially nice. I've spent lots of time on the back porch, including a lovely new year's eve dinner.

Today has been the less fun part of being a freelance artist. Lately my emails to the people who have actively signed up wanting them have been getting caught in the junk folders of a lot of folks, including in my own gmail address. I send a test to see before sending the group. There are all kinds of words that can trigger a spam filter, but I'm super careful in my wording. I finally asked the fantastic #AmWriting facebook group (that's a great podcast by three writers who are living a creative life but also navigating all the business end of things that not many of us were trained for), and they said a free email can also flag that filter. So I spent the morning going through Weebly (my website), GoDaddy (my domain), Google (partnering with Weebly to offer an email address from my own domain), and MailChimp (to verify all this) and finally sent out an email that didn't snag in my own gmail account junk folder. Whew. I haven't felt like I needed a site specific email before, but now it seems I do. I will enjoy sending out emails more if they actually get to where they're going. It has felt recently like an exercise in frustration, unlike this blog which I really enjoy. So here's to a new year and sending out occasional fun emails that (may) actually make it through! If you're not on the list and would like to be, you can sign up for the studio updates right here:

I am continuing to enjoy sketching my tea things and Gideon. These were done outside with much more moving around and stick chasing. He's excellent entertainment if a somewhat wiggly muse. I'm still doing as much on the back porch as I can while the weather is good. I spent one whole day out there mailing out calendars, and on the days when I have indoor work, meals on the porch give Gideon time to poke around and have a good time at intervals.

Today was gorgeous, and I noticed while walking Gideon that there were pumpkins decorating the Higbee memorial at the park. I took a longer walk for myself (he can only go so far at a time, or at least, is only allowed to with his heart condition), and I took my sketching things over with me. In keeping with Inktober, I used walnut ink and Inktense pencils with only a bit of watercolor on top. At dinner I sketched a tiny flower in one of my smallest cream pitchers, found at a street market in Paris years ago. That kept me outside a little longer for Gideon to play. Now, however, I've painted and mailed calendars and sketched and done some business and scanned these in, so I'm going to collapse into the sofa with my book for the rest of the evening.

I had a ton of printing and scanning to do to turn preliminary images into WAMA for the show next year. I took a few days off Inktober, but mostly I have really enjoyed the reminder to sketch regularly and play with my dip pen and walnut ink (and a red marker for the pot). I'm also getting into a rhythm of having my materials next to my place at the island where I can sketch Gideon. I always used to draw Mr. Darcy on the couch, where he would settle in with me, but Gideon isn't as snuggly and prefers to be on his own on the floor. So this is where I get a good view of him when he's calm and sketchable.

I also sketched my new enamel pot yesterday. After the deadline I've really enjoyed a few quiet days -- doing a little painting for my own pleasure, visits with friends, and cooking a pot of spaghetti gravy yesterday. My old soup pot was aluminum, and I've been looking at a replacement. This isn't one of the fancy brand name enamel ones, but it's a gorgeous cherry red and gets the job done. I was delighted to find it at Target last week.

Below is a sketch from a meeting about saving the Greensward. Again. I can't believe we're in round 43 of this. We met outside at the gorgeous old Memphis Heritage building, and I sketched it waiting for everyone to show up. I'd biked over and left extra time, not knowing exactly how long that would take. A sketchbook is always a good companion.

It's been an exciting week around here. I worked on a graphic essay about the zoo's land grab for Overton Park's Greensward, the one huge, escape-from-the-city meadow, several years ago. Then the zoo and city backed off, despite the council having handed them several acres of it, and plan to raze about 85 trees and raise the parking lot up level with the meadow so everyone is staring at car bumpers instead of trees and sky. Then, in an underhanded Friday 5pm news dump, they announced they're going ahead with construction anyway. So I updated this essay and sent it off to a couple of publications. They're both in the same publishing family and BOTH decided to use it. I was delighted. You can read the full essay at Memphis Magazine or the Memphis Flyer (our weekly paper).

I'm sad for the reason but delighted to see this essay in print. It was the first graphic essay I had worked on, and I really love the story telling mix of paint and text.

I'd been feeling a little wonky for a few days, so it was nice to get out and go walking and sketching today. "Plein Airpril" is happening on Instagram, and I'm a sucker for a punning, art-themed month (see also "Inktober"), so I jumped in today. I love this sycamore and paint it every so often. I didn't feel like I really locked in today, but it was nice just to get out and work. I decided to change it up and do a real close up once I got in the forest. The mayapples are in full bloom, and I love their sculptural umbrella shapes and shy flowers hiding underneath.

It's gorgeous weather for park visits lately. I took my bike out to Shelby Farms (brown fountain pen plus watercolor) a bit ago, and more recently I took a little bit of time for wildflower sketching (green ink in a brush pen with inktense pencils) on my more regular walk in Overton Park. I'm so grateful for spring after all that awful February weather.

I've been trying something different with my current print. I usually do a square frame for the key block (the usually black one on top) as well as for any colored blocks underneath. Lately I've been doing some trees that are cut out around their forms in a vertical arch background, and I thought it might be fun to see what such an image might look like in a landscape setting. I did the background in a blue/green and then printed the trees on top. I'm quite happy with the results overall. I'll get a better (less rough) version of the blue green block and clean up a bit of the sky, but I like the depth the foreground versus background have, and I'm going to play with this idea again. You can see the layers separately below, along with the tree block trimmed for printing. This is planned to be part of my WAMA show, Feb. 28 to Sept. 4 next year.

We've had some crazy freaking weather in Memphis lately. It was single digits overnight for about four nights, under freezing for a nine day stretch, tying a 1940's record. Really cold. Not my favorite. But I did take advantage of the situation to do some snow sketches that Memphis sketchers don't usually (thankfully) get the chance to do. The top one was done sitting inside looking out my front door with a lap blanket in my lap, but still a pretty quick sketch. The black and white tree sketches were done very quickly standing up in the park with a big, fat, water-soluble graphite crayon, and I added a little wash with my portable water brush. The bottom one was also quick and standing up, but with some watercolor added. Journal text back at home with a cup of tea.

I’ve been slowly working on the element of these trees lately. I had the tree on the right first, then the background, and then I decided I wanted the tree to have a buddy. Today I printed the first batch of both of them. I’m also dreaming of a different background —- maybe daytime with clouds and birds. I’ve done a single, finished image for so long that I’ve really enjoyed playing around with blocks in different ways lately. I got a book about the three generations of Yoshida printmakers, and they often used the same blocks for both a day and a night scene. I’ve been thinking about ways to open up my own process and use blocks in a variety of ways. These are likely for my show at Walter Anderson Museum of Art in 2022. You never know for sure until you get all the work together and see what makes the cut, but I’m feeling encouraged about these.