Memphis had eight solid days of snow and ice, so I treated myself to a staycation writers retreat. One of my two big goals for this year is to get a new alphabet sketchbook done. It's M is for Memphis, which my local bookstore has been nicely requesting. They sell a lot of P is for Possum and would love a broader Memphis book as well. I've been tinkering with the alphabet for over a year, but the last few weeks I've made a strong start on actually getting art together and putting it on pages. I'm doing a good bit of new work (A is for Arcade at the top)but also plundering my sketchbook to see if I've banked sketches over the years that would go well in the book. I sketched the Arcade's sweet potato pancakes several years ago and will add that sketch to the overall piece of the building itself. I go back through my sketchbooks fairly regularly for inspiration for prints or paintings, but it's fun to be able to pull out those done-on-the-spot images to use as they are.

This is going to take most of the year, but I'm hoping to be able to have it out for fall. Fingers crossed. Books always take longer than I think they well, but I'm pleased with how it's going so far.

Well, it's been a crazy start to the year. I had a cold after New Year's and was low energy for a week, then I went down to Ocean Springs for a few days, just to get out because it had been ages, and now Memphis has been snowed in since Sunday. Nuts. I'm so glad I got down to the coast and spent a couple of days fully outdoors before the crazy freeze got here. It was tempting to stay down there, but I figured my 100 year old house needed shepherding through single digit cold.

I've been using the time as an at-home writers retreat and starting a new book. It's been great to have an exciting new project to keep me company, and I got so distracted I forgot to post all of these Ocean Springs sketches. The first morning I made tea and walked down to the beach with a thermos and my sketching things and tried to paint the sunrise. It moves so quickly that I never capture what I hope to, but it was lovely to sit out and try.

Next I decided to drive out to Gautier. I'd never seen Oldfields, the family home of Sissy Grinstead Anderson. She and Walter lived with her parents and the two oldest kids for a few years after his round of serious mental struggles. He did gorgeous work there. The house had fallen into disrepair and is being stabilized and restored by Mississippi Heritage, thankfully. It has a truly glorious live oak tree in the side yard and a view of Horn Island. I was shocked to see a suburb had sprung up around it, but I guess that's not surprising with its bluff view. I sketched the tree (of course!) and a corner of the lovely house.

And while I was on a pilgrimage kick, Mattie Codling the curator at WAMA, suggested I visit the Evergreen Cemetery where the Anderson family is buried. It's a gorgeous old cemetery overlooking the bayou, begun in the middle 1800's, and the family section is lovely with modest flat stones that have matching trees carved into all the Anderson ones, with Sissy (Agnes) having a star instead. She certainly earned it. She raised four children largely on her own and tended to Anderson's legacy after his early death from cancer. Remarkable woman.

It's powerful to visit and sketch the graves of people you admire. I got to sketch Vincent and Theo's graves a few years ago, and I was glad to spend some time here as well. A live oak tree up the hill and keeping watch felt perfect for this artistic, nature loving family.

I spent the lovely last day of 2023 outside at the park with Henry. We sketched and walked and sat and watched the sky and did a circuit of the neighborhood too. It felt lovely. January 1 was much less lovely, though I'm very glad to see a new year coming in.

I still made art that day, meaning to start the year as I hope to continue it. Henry and I had stumbled across a full length mirror in the Old Forest a few days earlier, and I took a series of photos. I can't stop thinking about how magical that pool of reflective light felt in the midst of the forest. I have two big projects on my plate, but I'm giving myself permission to follow the shiny object and do a small graphic essay. That's especially true at the holiday season, but I do try to take advantage of the more persistent inspiration when it shows up. It may not mean much to others once I finish it, but I'm enjoying the process and the play this week and am hopeful it might be something lovely when finished. After struggling to take my normal forest walks for a lot of the past year, it feels lovely to be starting out in a place that inspires me and feeds my work.

My friend Christina and I went out sketching in the neighborhood again. I was super drawn to the tree and then struggled a bit with the house behind it (partly because I used a water soluble ink without thinking and had to add a bit of gouache to the trim later to keep it from being super muddy). I finished with a super fast line drawing of a different house that was a lot less intricate and more fun. Of course. And I rounded the page out with a Christmas present from my potter friend Melissa Bridgman. So lovely.

We had our family Christmas late, so I had a quiet Christmas Eve and Christmas with a few visits but walks, reading, and sketching. I did my teeny tiny Christmas tree with my favorite creche of Mom's underneath it. I overworked the window reflection part, but otherwise I'm happy with it.

Henry and I also treated ourselves to another trip to the farm, to sketch skies for me and for him to run himself out. I inadvisedly settled at the far end of the farm to do the second one, and you can see the storm clouds gathering, so we came home pretty dang wet, but I got the sketch in before it started raining. So overall a win.

Henry and I went out to the farm a couple of times this past week. I had thought maybe I'd missed my moment (of energy and will) to get a tree, but then I found a teeny tiny one that could be a table top one (out of Henry's reach). So we went back the next day with loppers, no saw needed. I sketched both days and enjoyed being out there in the winter landscape with a big open sky. I think we'll do this a bit more over the winter when there are neither crops in the fields nor ticks making their unpleasant presence felt.

I went to the Tennessee Shakespeare production of The Importance of Being Earnest on Sunday, and it was such a fun show to sketch. All the hats! I kept it super simple and used my newish Majohn fude nib pen with a waterproof DeAtramentis document black ink. Sometimes I try for color, but I really enjoyed just playing with line in the semi darkness. I haven't sketched figures and faces much lately, and it felt good to practice. There are a few audience sketches mixed in from intermission, and one final sketch of a tree at my family farm to round out the page, one I've drawn over a couple of decades now.

It's been lovely out this week, and I'm trying to get back into the habit of walking with my sketchbook. Henry and I stopped in the forest and did a couple of sketches this week on our walks, and I went out house sketching with Christina again yesterday. It's so good to sit and visit and sketch. This morning I gave myself a slow morning to use up the rest of the space on that page and sketch my tea things. I haven't done that in ages, and it felt great.

I included the tiny Bonne Maman jar from my current advent calendar jelly. In an inspired move, they offered a jam-a-day advent calendar, and I managed to luck into one before they all disappeared quickly. As a single woman I'm not eating even a tiny pot a day, so it will stretch into the darkness of January. Which is making me realize that instead of advent calendars with tiny daily treats (which, honestly, are not at all liturgically appropriate for a penitential season, even though they are delightful), what we REALLY need is midwinter calendars that run from, say, Epiphany to March 1. Those dark, post holiday days are when I find myself most in need of small boosts. So I'll be stretching out the Bonne Maman goodness in an effort not to stretch my waistline unduly and also to savor the small treats more mindfully.

I scanned in but hadn't posted the house portrait I did, the last of my "homework" outings with Christina for her architectural sketching class. I loved the impetus to just get out and sketch and watch the world go past. I've been doing some intensive and good print work lately, but I need to get back to this as well.

I haven’t been sketching this week, and I’m missing it, but I’ve been getting some good work done on a new print for my Rowan Oak show next year. This is an especially complex piece. I had a lot of colors I wanted to include, and I hate to carve and print more than three blocks per print. So laying it out got complex, and I’m mixing more than one color for each block, but I loved the sketch I did of this tree, and it’s worth the aggro. I’m doing a series of color proofs as I keep refining the carving as well. At top is the best one so far. The key block is usually all black for my prints, but that was too harsh in this case, so for the top layer I’ve added a brown tree trunk for the cedar and softened to more gray around the edges. You can see the all black version at the bottom of the three proofs together just below. On the middle one I went too grey away from the tree and lost definition on the building. this one I think is the closest to what I want, but I need to clean up some carving, especially in the tree and the building. I’ve also added a snapshot of the three blocks together. The orange green goes first, then the grey of the building, tree, and grass along with the green of the cedar. Finally the black of the tree, the cedar trunk, and the definition of the building go on top.

Here is the original sketch with the first layer of the print.