What do you do when you have music fans visiting Memphis? You take them to Beale Street. And when you're really lucky, you'll spot Blind Mississippi Morris wheeling his amp toward a club, holding onto the arm of his "manager," as he calls her in air quotes. It was a fantabulous night with legit, old school Delta blues and an out of this world bass player.

I totally lucked out this weekend and found a teapot in an antique mall from Shearwater Pottery in Ocean Springs, Mississippi. The studio is owned by the family of Walter Anderson, one of my absolute favorite artists. He did designs for them as well as doing his own work. I have a few of their wine glasses and had recently been dreaming of a teapot and thinking of taking a trip down to the coast. Then this one appeared. It’s got a stylized spout, and I wish I knew how old it is. Beautifully it matches my very favorite tea cup and cream pitcher from Paris, which are also happenstance matches from different “brocantes”, my favorite French word. It means a second hand sale place, anything from a fancy antique shop to a flea market to a yard sale. It has the mystery and excitement of treasure hunting about it, and I love that the one word spans that whole spectrum.

I needed a quiet morning today, so I did a little printing, a little journal writing, and I also painted my new teapot as a celebration.

Here are a few photos of Walter Anderson murals in Ocean Springs. I’m still longing to get back down there.

The Memphis Symphony did an unusual concert last night. Our new conductor Robert Moody noticed striking parallels in the devil at the crossroads stories of Stravinsky and Robert Johnson and decided to do a mashup. He used a chamber group and brought in bluesman Vashti Jackson to both be narrator and to play Johnson's blues interspersed with the Stravinsky pieces. There was also dancing and and an actor and film bits shown as well. It sounded a bit bizarre, but it really worked. My companion noted that both musical forms have a strong percussiveness.

I had hoped to mix some ink that would be a lighter flesh tone in a brush pen (those are hard to mix in the dark of a theater), and I tested it at the top right before going. It was a sad failure and ended up both grainy and with the turkey basting quality of old TCM colorized films. I ended up just doing a series of line drawings in various pens, though I did add in the red suede shoes and matching tie of Mr. Jackson. It was a fun night.

I took the whole weekend off and went dancing, which was flat out marvelous. I’ve also been doing some work on my house, so actual art work has been thin on the ground lately. I have done breakfast sketches the last two mornings, though, and I’m easing back in. I’m both using and drawing a new-to-me teacup I found brocanting over the weekend. It’s Prussian and hand painted and the most delicious blue. It feels nice to be beginning days by drawing again.

I’ve been having a little trouble with my printer and also taking all my free time lately to dive back into oil painting, so I haven’t done any scanning yet. I am, however, doing some home sketches along the way. Here were a couple of teacups that started the year, along with a couple of Mr. Darcy sketches. And one more self portrait. I’ll try to get organized to share the rest of what I’ve been doing lately. On the organization front, I did spend all morning doing end of the year book keeping yesterday. The less fun part of owning your own business. Today I will be joyfully back to painting on my water landscape series.

I got some sticks of water soluble graphite on the advice of Ruth, who works at our marvelous local art store the Art Center. I’ve loved my tin of it, which I use with a brush, but I hadn’t tried the sticks. I love having an art store with local artists working who know and use the stock. I especially love not having to order and wait for days if I get a new project in my head. I had woken up with several new prints dancing around in there and went to buy the blocks so I could start right away. I’m working on them now, but in the meantime, here are the graphite sketches I’ve been doing. After all the packaging and marketing and reprinting of the holiday season, it’s good to get to do spontaneous art again. I’m so grateful for everyone who buys real art for presents. I absolutely couldn’t do what I do without you. But I’m also grateful to be past the push and with a little winter time to play with new ideas.

Speaking of presents, I got an email from Antiques Warehouse (a big, neighborhood antique mall that I love) that they were open on Christmas Eve. I went over there just for fun on my quiet holiday and found the mirror above. I’d hoped for one on a stand that I could use for self portraits, but this one was $8, nice looking, big enough to really see, and lightweight to move around in my various work spaces. A total win. I got it and the Royal Doulton teacup (bottom right) for my gifts to myself, and I’m enjoying both of them. I feel some more self portraits coming. I’ve missed doing figures lately.

I made it through three shows and two sets of houseguests (all delightful to see) in a week and a half period, and I was due for some serious vacation. I’m out in Washington state, sleeping late, reading lots of baseball news, hitting some truly great thrift stores, and revisiting some favorite places in an unexpected streak of sunshine. I’ve managed exactly one sketch so far, and I’m trying not to put too much pressure on myself. It’s sometimes good to take breaks.

I have been taking photos as I walk though. The frost is amazing, especially since I stay right along the Skagit River. I’d always heard the term “hoar frost” in the British novels I read, but I hadn’t been sure what exactly it was. It turns out that mist and fog rising off rivers in cold conditions can freeze in almost sculptural ways. I’ve had fun taking some photos.

The frost in the great meadow at Rasar State Park (one of my magic places) extends only into about a third of the meadow and burns off as it gets further away from the river. Part of that is the deep valley that keeps out most of the sun. The bottom right photo above is just about noon. I can see why fairy tales so often came from the northern regions. It’s not a little uncanny to walk out of strong sunshine and into blue dimness in the middle of the day. It feels like entering Narnia and the land of perpetual winter, where you walk over an invisble boundary into fairyland. My dad brought me a book of Scandinavian fairy tales when I was little that was one of my favorites for years. I’m feeling its echoes on this trip.

I also went down to the pebble beach at the end of the park, which is one of my favorite places. It’s stunning in winter in a completely different way. It was a gorgeous way to spend a morning, and then I headed back to the land of heating and good, local pizza after being out in the cold for a couple of hours.

I've been mostly DOING Inktober even though I've been bad about posting here lately. Most days I've managed one ink sketch, but the majority of my work this past week has been tons of computer work (taking my attention from scanning for other purposes) to get the Mr. Darcy Goes Home book and the related counting book ready to send out. I've got a mid November deadline to be able to submit to my dream publisher without needing an agent first, so I'm working flat out to get it ready. I'll show a couple of reject sketches from that process here, but for now, a few more Inktober sketches to show what I've been up to around the edges.

Above is the Side Street Steppers. Below is one sketch as I was stopped at a train on my way to a printmaking demonstration at Dixon (I'll be doing several more of those) plus a quick sketch waiting in line at Home Depot, buying materials to shore up my floor to receive the type cabinet (see the last blog post).

Plus I always enjoy drawing treats, as a way to keep enjoying them, and also remember nice days I've spent with other people. Here is one of those, just to round things out.