Those of you who remember me 50 pounds heavier in my 20's know I've always had a slightly shaky relationship with food. Mostly sugar. My parents used to hide the treats from me. I said for years that I had a loop track going in my head saying, "Can we have a cookie? Is it time for a cookie now? What about now???" Incessantly. I spend a ton of my time thinking about what I'm going to put in my mouth next -- which is probably one reason art is such a joy to me, because it's the thing I'm most likely to lose myself in for a while and not think about food.

In my late 20's my dad was newly single and going on a ski trip/legal conference but didn't want to go alone. All of us in my family knew that I was never going to be a candidate for downhill, with its speed and athleticism, but Dad talked me into trying cross country. I knew I was going to be terrible at that, but I didn't want to also be embarrassed by my total lack of wind and stamina, so Dad and I started walking daily to get ready for the trip. As it turned out, I never could stay upright long enough for wind or stamina to be an issue. I did, however, find myself a happy winter occupation of going out snowshoeing with a sketchbook in my pocket.

By the time the trip had rolled around, I was already losing weight (slowly) and feeling physically better, so I kept up the walking and didn't actually diet (I hate going hungry), but I made some substitutions in my eating habits that felt sustainable long term. I lost the 50 pounds over a year and a half or so and managed to keep them off, finding a balance between eating what I enjoy and moving enough to offset it.

Then menopause hit, followed by long covid, which has meant an interruption to the daily 3 mile walks I did for decades, and it's been more of a struggle. I work at home right next to the kitchen and I'm a stress eater, so periodically I fall into putting more things into my mouth than I'm physically hungry for. When that happens, I do a day or two at a time of a food journal. The rule is that before I eat something, I have to draw it, so it makes me more mindful. It's also positive and satisfying activity, rather than a punitive measure.

A lot of these pages are done with a pair of ink brush pens, one dark and one lighter in tone, but I also use these pages to play with different media than I normally use. I keep them pretty quick so meals don't get cold. Another upside is more mindfully enjoying my mixed pottery collection that I use for my daily meals. Above are a teapot from Sauk Mountain pottery in WA (and the memory of sharing it with a good friend), a bowl and teacup with a Julian of Norwich quote by Melissa Bridgman here at home.

I like the idea of markers, but usually I reach for watercolor instead when I'm out sketching, so a food journal page can be a good reset.

One time I was away from home (and away from my regular big sketchbook for this) and tried watercolor instead, but it was too much of an effort to keep up. The food journal can't be too big a mental barrier or I won't do it at all. But watercolor was fun for a day.

I have been kind of fascinated by the advent of GLP-1s and read a lot about them. I'm mostly holding steady where I want to be and don't like adding medicine I don't need, but it is HARD to lose weight the old way, and I'm so glad for my friends who have found the relief they need. It's also been such a comfort to me to read the experience of others and hear the term "food noise." I come from a family of people who legit forget to eat lunch (never have I ever), and I thought I was a freak outlier with my internal cookie loop track. It turns out there are a lot of people wired the way I am, and that has been such a joy to know. Which is probably one reason I'm stepping in here and writing a much more personal blog post than I usually do. Another reason is that I'm still working on the memoir and getting more used to the idea of sharing  personal details. When I do take that leap, I find the sharing  makes bridges and helps other people, the way that reading about food noise helped me.

I don't hold myself strictly to these food journal days. It's meant to be mindful rather than punitive. Sometimes unexpected things happen during the day, and I fizzle.

Sometimes I fizzle super fast.

The flip side of all these food journal pages is a quantity of pages in my regular sketchbook celebrating treats. Yesterday was one of those days. I walked inside Crosstown (bad air lately with the smoke pollution) and felt called by the nearby cinnamon rolls at Lucy J's bakery afterwards. I've always loved Wayne Thiebaud's paintings of cakes and pies and all the good things. So often when I'm having something delicious, I like to enjoy the look of it by sketching it before eating it. I did a whole show one year, buying eclairs, Napoleons, and macarons in Paris and painting them before eating them. It spreads out and slows down the enjoyment for me. So here is a celebration of yesterday's deliciousness. I'm grateful to have found a moderation I can live with that has room for delight still built in.

I had such a welcome day yesterday. Events have overtaken me lately, and I've barely been getting through the necessaries with no time for the soul giving extras. I kept yesterday morning to finally see the new Parisian Cafe paintings exhibition (clustered around 1900) at Dixon yesterday. Like all large group shows it was a mixed bag, but the good stuff was really good. There was a stunning Vuillard, who is one of my favorites, and a lot of great prints (always happy for me) including a lifesized Steinlen cabaret poster that was beautifully designed and executed. I love that 1900 era, with so many different styles and subjects burgeoning. Clearly in a specific subject matter you don't get as many of the symbolists I love from that period, but they did have a Munch I'd never seen before, and there were a lot of recognizable artists as well as a bunch of new ones to me.

Beautifully, the museum cafe has designed a special menu just for this show. I treated myself to a salad Nicoise outside with the trimmed trees that also feel like Paris and the Rodin sculpture in the background. It was good to see art and take time to sketch again, and I did a big, loose piece in my biggest sketchbook with a dip pen, some green ink, and a bunch of watercolor on top.

That evening was a bonus urban sketchers outing to Shapeshifter Art School. They have two new shows up in their galleries, and it was such pleasure to just relax and sketch and talk with friends. I ended up sketching our founder Elizabeth Alley, who is also a founder of the school. She has been such a light to the art community here in Memphis.

I finally got my walnut ink back in my main sketch bag, and I've been enjoying it lately. I've got a big, blunt dip pen, and these forest sketches are both in my biggest sketchbook. It's been fun getting big and messy to offset the more careful illustration work I've been doing for the new book.

My favorite cafe has a summer special of peach chai. It is delicious. I got it the first time and sketched with walnut ink and a fat yellow marker plus a little paint. Then I kept thinking about it and went back and sketched with the walnut ink again and a little more paint. It's funny. I had one big sketchbook one summer, and I found myself a little reluctant to start a sketch feeling that it was a lot of real estate to cover. I loved the ones I did, but I didn't always sketch as much as I might have. This summer the big one is the one I'm reaching for the most. I decided just to have a large one going alongside my normal size and not try to box myself into one or the other. I think the dip pen is a game changer. It forces me big and loose, and I'm just enjoying playing with the space.

There was a tree that caught my eye from my favorite patio, and I settled in to sketch it, with my fun little Prius in front. I like drawing my small car in an age of hulking SUVs. I've been on a dip pen kick lately, and I used some walnut ink. I had thought to add paint afterwards, but I ended up liking the line and deciding not to overdo it. I didn't get nearly the full tree on the page, however -- I usually go bigger than I mean to. So I did a second version.

This time I started with the tree and got *almost* all of it in. I started with paint too and added very little line afterwards (in my current favorite Diamine Chopin ink). I like this one for different reasons, but as so often happens, neither one is even close to the vision I had in my head before I started. In my better moods I think of the paint or ink as a partner in the process that takes me in a different direction. In my worse, I wonder why on earth I can't manage to draw a tree the way I want to. Mostly I was pleased with the outcomes, so we'll go with that today.

Elizabeth Alley was sitting with her show on its final Saturday at Shapeshifter Art School and invited folks to drop by. I had wanted to sketch it a bit more, so I took my dip pen and biggest sketchbook and did a couple of loose, fun sketches. Drawing other people's work helps me really pay attention to it and remember it later. I love this show so much. I love how the arctic has just captured Elizabeth -- Levisham moor did that to me years ago. It's magic when a landscape takes you by the scruff of the neck and demands your attention. My favorite piece is her life sized silhouette of herself with the arctic in rectangle right at her heart. I love how she's busted out of her longtime traditional painter mindset (still something very real for me) and made these playful, large, casual installations, layering paper pieces , assembling a wall of glacier paintings, and crocheting "plushy glaciers" that hang from the ceiling. Her enormous ship (see a previous blog post) is also in line with this playfulness. It all works. When I try to switch to 3-d or installations, it looks like a 4th grade project, but I guess I should keep trying. Anyway, I wanted to just drink it in and hang out with some great art, and I ended up hanging out equally with some great friends. Cool people kept showing up and dropping in, and it was a delightful day. I'm grateful for this brand new art space in town.

Shapeshifter Art School invited the Memphis Urban Sketchers to visit again while the exhibition by our founder Elizabeth Alley is still hanging. I love this new art space for Memphis and am so glad they want us to be involved. Everywhere you look is surprising and creative. I settled in to sketch this gorgeous utility sink (how often do you hear those words together?) and have a catch up. I managed not to overwork the brick, but often when I go out to sketch I get sucked into a more complicated, all over sketch right off the bat and then end up doing a looser, "warm up" sketch afterwards. ("warmed up?") It would probably be a good discipline for me to do thumbnails or a warm up sketch first, but I never think about it -- I just get excited and dive right in. Often I like my second sketch better, which was the case yesterday.

I'd brought my biggest sketchbook, thinking it would be good for me to loosen up from my smaller, tighter illustration pieces I'm doing at the moment. I also threw in my bottled ink at the last minute and used a broad, blunt dip pen and some Diamine Chopin ink to do a quick sketch of Elizabeth's enormous ship installation hanging from the ceiling. Which is delightful. I used a little orange and a little grey paint to pick out details, but mostly I let the lines do the heavy lifting except for that orange pop. I'm going to try to get out the dip pen more often. This was so much fun.

My friend Libby Elder got a photo of me (at the far end) spread out on a convenient box just going for it. I love the friends in this group and the reminder on my calendar to get out and just draw for the pleasure of it instead of working on a specific project.

I got caught in a downpour at Dixon last week and for a second time found myself waiting it out on the porch sketching the three fantastic butts of the Rodin Three Shades from his Gates of Hell masterpiece. After posting I was asked if I could post the series of sketches I've done of those statues, and it sent me down a small rabbit hole. Above is the same scene two years ago, but with fountain pen and a wider viewpoint. It's honestly one of my favorite all time sketches, catching that crazy spring rain. Here is last week's version, closer up and in watercolor crayon.

I tend to sketch scenes I love over and over again, and Dixon is one of my favorite places to sketch. Here are the guys from the front for a change, with the overall view of the museum entrance.

I've also sketched them from inside a tent at one of the evening events Dixon puts on.

And finally with Autumn foliage, once again from my favorite front porch bench.

I treated myself to a day out today. I've been working on the memoir but not really sketching lately, and it's good to do work that's looser, not for publication, just for myself. (Not to mention that I don't want to show too much of something I'm hoping to publish, so I haven't had a lot for the blog lately.)

The Mary Sims exhibition at Dixon is amazing. I've been several time with various people, but I hadn't take a bunch of time just to drink it in slowly. I went round the whole thing, sat and looked at various pieces, and finally figured out a couple I'd like to sketch. I love her crazy intricate still lifes with shadows that are as robust as the objects themselves, but I knew I'd make myself crazy trying to capture one (especially with the pencil/crayon I'm limited to inside the museum). So I headed back for my other favorite works, which were the early portraits. The top one is maybe my favorite piece in the whole show, but since Dolph Smith is one of my favorite local artists, that may not be an objective assessment. I love that he and Mary, both lions of the Memphis art world, are united in this piece. And his sweet wife Jesse memorialized as well.

I also sketched this graphite and acrylic portrait. It's so minimal (flat background, as all hers are, just not something I could catch with dry materials). She uses graphite so extensively on her canvas work, which isn't something I've tried at all. The effect is wonderful. And I loved seeing her use so much gold paint. I'm always drawn to the metallics and then wonder if I'm just being cheesy, but it's good validation to see her love them as well.

It's been a rainy day off and on, and there was flat NOBODY in the cafe at early lunch time. I went ahead and actually ate inside, which was a treat. Usually I'm wearing a mask indoors. And I had fun doing a quick fountain pen sketch at the same time. I really should get out and draw more people as I'm working on the memoir, which is so figure heavy. It's never been my strong suit, but I am having a good time. This was actually my first sketch of the day -- I was starting a new sketchbook with a short, happy memory. You can see the spot for my name and information (which I ALWAYS fill out in case I lose a book) in the bottom left. Now that I'm home with my waterproof ink, I'll attend to that.

I was heading out, and the rain suddenly burst back on the scene in a pretty impressive downpour. I decided to sit and sketch this scene I'd been eyeing anyway. I love drawing Rodin. I started with the crayons since I'd had them out for the museum pieces but added some real watercolor on top. It was a lovely way to pass the time until I could walk more easily to my car.

I'm still working away on the graphic memoir, and it's slow to tell a story in watercolor, but I'm also still excited about the project. I haven't yet made it to the summer in Greece that is going to be the central part of the book, but here's a small glimpse of the table setting -- distance in my early marriage, both physical and emotional.