Learning to Draw

Well, I did it: I ordered a book (some seem to believe it to be *the* book) on learning to draw: Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, by Betty Edwards.

Years ago, Mom went through the early portion of this book with us kids, but I don't think I was more than ten or so at the time. It's been awhile. About all I remember is drawing birds, and even then, my younger brother (now a graphic design professional and an artist in fact) was so obviously so much better than me I hard a hard time even trying.

I don't really fancy myself an artist, but there are times when I wish I had the ability to sketch ideas visually as well as verbally. I'm also just curious to see what it does to the way I perceive the world around me, what details I notice and retain. Seeing more clearly is as much a benefit for writing as it is for drawing and painting.

I'm looking forward to this little adventure!

What about you? Do you ever draw or paint? What do you feel you get out of it? What do you like best? What do you find challenging or frustrating?

Perspective Audience

I actually have worked on more serious posts, but they aren't polished enough for me and may never be. So instead, you get this.

More index card doodling: typical default filling of seats for various event types, overhead representational view.

(And I illustrate this as the sister of a Highland piper, someone who like bagpipes and who has been to performances populated by people who are as enamored as I. Because...no matter how much you love the pipes, them are LOUD. Especially in a small enclosed space.)

Punctuation Mark

Because why not.

Just Plain Silly

I have no explanation or excuse for this.

(Don't mind the false starts and extra lines that wouldn't erase...)

The knowledge that I mostly doodled it while listening to rather dark Rachmaninoff adds a certain je ne se quois.

Are You Good Enough?

A rose I drew awhile back, and almost immediately hid from public

 view, because it's...shoddy. But you know? Shoddy is OK.

This post by Stephanie of Rhodia Drive really struck a chord with me:
Art Making is Accessible to Everyone

I am afraid to mess up. More than that: I am afraid of being found inadequate. In many ways, I've always felt like this. While my brothers happily doodled away as kids, I would set the bar impossibly high, and give up in frustration when I couldn't reach it.

To some extent, I've gotten past this in writing and music--especially music. Yes, I do have moments of frustration. I wish I'd started younger. I wish I was more consistent. I wish certain aspects came to me more intuitively. But I enjoy music within my own limitations, with full knowledge that I'm never going to reach stratospheric greatness.

Writing can be a little more challenging. There are times when I wonder why I work at it at all, because I will never be able to write in the ways some of my favorite authors write. I don't have Vernor Vinge's scientific mind, therefore "I can't write." I don't have Ralph McInerny's grasp of theology and knowledge of academia, therefore "I can't write." I've never suffered extreme poverty or pain, I've not traveled to exotic places, I've not done x, therefore "I can't write."

Getting beyond that, to find my own voice, to accept my own style...this is difficult. But, at least on an intellectual level, I know "all God's creatures got a place in the choir." I'm not, for example, Gene Wolfe. But neither is David McCullough. Neither is Elizabeth Berg or Terry Pratchett, or Jasper Fforde, or Elizabeth Moon, or a multitude of other authors (or casual bloggers) I've enjoyed. Some writers create extravagant and scientifically perfect worlds. Some expose, through meticulous research, a particular period in history. Some simply make you laugh. Some help you to see plain old folks just a little more clearly. Somewhere in that spectrum, there may just be room for me. It may not always be the room I'd prefer at given moments, but...there's room.

Art--as in visual art--has been more challenging still. And I think it may well be key to overcoming what is really a false sort of pride: this fear not even of complete failure, but merely inadequacy. Because it's OK to create art for fun. It's OK to create art imperfectly. It's OK to create art with no larger purpose than simply creating art: for the joy and childlike wonder of exploring artistic expression.

I like this quote from the post on Rhodia Drive. "...they learn to be OK with the quality of their expressions and do it anyway. This was my path. I wanted to make art and so I did."

From the Realm of Realllly Bad Puns

The sentences are examples taken from old grammar text books, because the idea of doing so amused me.

Monsters and Musgraves

Sometimes my desk looks like I killed a large, blue-blooded monster and tried to mop up the evidence. (In reality, this was just an unfortunate incident with a sample of Private Reserve Electric DC Supershow Blue--luckily most of the ink made it into a pen!)

And sometimes, even though I can't draw, I doodle monsters. Like this guy. (Apologies to Hank Sr.!)

In other news, I already broke my pencil buying moratorium. You knew that was going to happen, right? It's my birthday Monday. I used that as an excuse. That and the free shipping on Amazon orders over $25.  Has anyone else tried the Musgrave Test Scoring 100 (especially Speculator)? If not, I may pass some out. I'd be curious to get your thoughts.

Untold Stories and Lies by Omission: a Lettera at Last

The paper I was typing is kinda wrinkly due to my stamp experiment, so the scan isn't completely even...sorry 'bout that.

The Art of Typistry

Typewriter Mystery on Shordzi's blog
The ETCetera Archives (Note: the article on decorative borders was in Issue No. 48.)

(Oh, and yes, I know how to spell layered and essence. It's an authentic typecast, what can I say?)

Milk crates full of memories...

Faced with housework, I procrastinate in every way possible. This weekend, I organized my journals while putting off vacuuming. After my move this spring, they'd been crammed onto shelves in no particular place or order, so I gathered them from the four corners of the house and arranged by date. (Mostly by date, anyway--for some reason, there are a few journals in 1997 that overlap. Apparently 1997 was the Year of Living Disorganizedly.) They span some twenty-seven years now: that little one all the way on the left was given to me for Christmas when I was six, when I was first learning to write.

And of course, once they were all nicely organized like that, I proceeded to yank them off the shelves (those classy milk-crate shelves...) and look through them. Some are in better shape than others. The colored journals I favored in the nineties fared the worst: the blue fountain pen ink I used in some entries vanished, and at least one journal was the victim of temporary storage in a damp basement. And there are large gaps in the record: I tend to write more when there isn’t as much going on, which means that most of my entries, especially those in the most recent journals, are mundane daily details and rambling. Their value is in the writing of them: they help me process my days and sort out thoughts, and many may never be read again. But other content makes me smile, or laugh out loud, or get a little weepy. Inconsistent though they may be, they contain a lot of memories, these books.

There is evidence of my long standing fascination with office supplies:

Translation: John and Jim got a car. I got crayons.

There are birthday reports:

I recall this as one of my best birthdays *ever*, especially the bird seed, strangely enough!

Book reports:


I’ve waxed poetic:

I was twelve when I wrote this entry, and apparently hadn’t yet learned appropriate apostrophe use in its vs. it’s. I guess I’ll cut my young self some slack....

I’ve attempted artsy:



Sometimes relatively casual entries make me smile, looking back. Stumbled across this comment about a conversation with my brother as I was flipping through...


A wedding and several children later...I’d say it turned out pretty well!

I’ve recorded thoughts on births, deaths, current events, pets, books and music, bemoaned my own bad habits and worries about the present and future. Reading through these, I’m amazed at how much I’ve changed in some ways, and how little in others. It’s kind of fun to revisit once in awhile on a rainy afternoon.

And speaking of revisiting and rainy afternoons, tomorrow is the one-year anniversary of the day I picked up the gloriously restored Olympia SG-1 from Blue Moon Camera.



Happy rebirthday, big guy!

Pencil art of a different sort

On the one hand...he's rendering pencils unusable. On the other hand, this is so flippin' cool.

Pencil Tip Micro-Sculptures