Seahorse in Crayon.

It's not been all that easy to keep up with anything creative lately. First the lack of supplies, then the lack of inspiration, followed by the fact that weather makes all paper corners curl and most importantly lack of a table to work on. Of course, there are tables in the house, but I am so used to working in my own space with no one around me, listening to an audio book, that I have been working in the spacious guestroom, right, which has no table.
The picture didn't quite work out the way I wanted it, and you can see Fleur's fingers, but that adds charm, I think. Perfectionism is not something I strive after. Rather, I prefer spontaneity and we had a good time making the pictures. The drawing I like, a little bit of reality and a little bit of fantasy. They do exist, leafy seahorses.

I used Faber Castell crayons from the children's drawing section, marked 'for children 3 years and over'. I think I fit the category, besides I never nibble on my pencils.

Little Helper.

A painting by Fleur.

Fleur

I have a little helper who held up some artwork for me to photograph because during the monsoon here, everything is wet and light is scarce because the house has a canopy of tall tropical trees that keep out a lot of light. When you sit on the veranda leaves and flowers drop down, and now and then a coconut.

Mangosteen.

Mangosteen is delicious, no doubt about it. You cut along the circumference of the fruit with a sharp knife, twist it so that the halves come apart and then lift out the sweet, white flesh.
I am still on my quest in finding supplies, but I did find this sketch book with very thin paper and a 16 color box of oil pastels. All in the children's drawing department of Carrefour. Although the drawing doesn't quite merit being posted, I did enjoy using the oil pastels (first time) and they blended really nicely when working from dark to light colors. They will work better on a slightly more toothy paper.

The Okavango

The Okavango Delta is a place of beauty. Tucked away in the heart of Botswana, it is a sanctuary for birds and wildlife. We traveled to the island, where we would set up camp, in mokoros; hollowed out tree trunks which are punted through the shallow waters of the delta, keeping a leery eye out for hippopotamus. If we were thirsty we would dip a cup over the side of the canoe, and drank deeply, having been told that the water was pure.

Cape buffalo looked up as we passed by, water dripping from their mouths and elephants cautiously watched us, sniffing the air with their trunks.  It was exciting as well as very idyllic.

After we had set up camp under a Sausage tree that would occasionally drop an enormous torpedo-like pod to the ground, the men in the group went down to the water to fill the jerrycans, while we, women, watched.

A fisherman stood thigh-deep in the shallows, while he fanned out his hand-made net and threw it into the darkening waters. All was well with the world. But wait, what is that I see? What do the weights of his net resemble? Batteries, large flashlight batteries! I waded out to take a closer look and saw that the batteries had holes drilled right through to attach them to the net. In my mind's eye I could see the cadmium oozing out into the pure waters of the Okavango, that I had drunk so deeply and without a care.

That night, as I made my last stop behind a bush, I watched closely to see if my pee didn't glow in the dark, but was distracted by another enormous sausage whizzing past my ear to drop to the ground with a thud and hastily made my way back to my tent by the light beaming from my eyes.

I am cleaning out memorabilia, and found some wonderful old postcards that my family had sent each other while they lived in Africa. I used a card by C. Barry to draw this wonderful wise woman. I drew with pen and nib and Indian Ink without setting up a sketch first. Wanted to see if I could sketch without an eraser.

Odosketch

My early morning Sunday ritual is going through my favorite blogs with tea or hot cocoa (or Diet Coke, depending on the weather) and if at all possible, a pain au chocolat or something similar. How About Orange mentioned Odosketch and I went to look. I just drew something really quickly, but for the true sketchers of this world, this might be quite enjoyable. Your sketch will come out better than mine, because I uploaded mine, as I couldn't find where it was embedded.

This well-preserved woman sat at a table in the restaurant where I had dinner last night, eating almost nothing.

EDM Challenge 304

Just a quick doodle to draw a bow and to use the watercolor pencils I have had in my drawer for as long as I can remember. "Everyday Matters" makes me want to do things I have not done before, and I think that this is what it is all about.

Foreign movies.

You say tomato, I say tomahto. When I say ball, you hear bowl. Seriously. 

A friend was going to bring my dog to the office, and I asked her to also bring the bowl. She called to say that there was no bowl in the kitchen. Puzzled, I told there was one by the fridge and heard her say, "Oh, you want her ball". I have told this story to others and Americans hear bowl for ball and I, when they say it, hear ball for bowl and bowl for ball. As if life is not confusing enough.

I was having dinner with a very likable man and we were making the usual small talk, which I am not good at even at the best of times. I asked him what kind of movies he liked and distinctly heard him say, "porn movies". I know my eyes must have glazed over when I looked up from my plate. He held my gaze and said again, "forn movies", (which I know are, to some people, almost the same as porn movies). "Ah", I said somewhat relieved, "forrin movies". 

Oh well, you say tomato, I say, tomahto. What does it matter? No reason to call the whole thing off.

I used pen and ink (Hydrus, Phthalo Green and Venetian Brown) for the peacock feather and washed in a watercolor for the yellow.
Lately some readers have asked if the photos and drawings are my own. Everything used in my blog is my own and all photos, writing, drawings and made objects etc are done by me with the exception of a few and I always mention if they are by someone else in the text.

Rare birds.

Recently at a concert, where a soprano from New York sang the stars from the heavens, I glanced around as I settled in to listen. Across the aisle sat a baby-boomer Harley guy, with tattoo's up his arms and in his neck; his  chains catching the light. His face tilted upwards, his eyes closed, listening to the music in quiet appreciation. Although he seemed oddly out of place, it was good to see that we don't have to fit into society's little boxes.

The same week, at Petsmart, I approached a store associate, who was standing by an older woman with a mangy looking little dog on a lead.  He had sad eyes and was missing a large part of one of his ears. The elderly woman turned and gave me a snarling smile, telling me that it was not yet my turn because her dog was being trained as an assistance dog. Her expectations were clearly high. I looked at the dog and he looked up at me with tired eyes, and I am sure he was saying, "Do I remotely look like a dog that would be able to do that?". I wanted to pluck some of the woman's tail feathers, but thought better of it.

Later at the dog park (my life seems to revolve a lot around dogs), a man sat down next to me on the bench, while his wife settled on the armrest. He was hesitant to talk, but when he did he mentioned Mark Twain's autobiography, which is on the best-sellers list. I said, quite innocently, "So you are a NPR listener?", because that day it had been mentioned on the radio. I added that I liked listening to BBC news on that station. "I don't like that stupid English accent", he snapped. His wife scoured the sky for any birds flying by to study. Now there is no denying that my accent sounds British to some, but it's not. I realized that he wasn't happy at being found out that he listened to what he might consider a "liberal" station. I felt like feeding him a worm.

My accent sometimes incites reactions that are beyond my understanding. Like the woman in a car, who was in the assumption that I had locked my dog in a car with closed windows. She screamed that she had already called the humane society, so I walked up to her to explain, but she just bellowed, "Go back to Canada, and stay there". "Why would I want to go to Canada?", I asked but of course, I knew what it was about. My accent. I should have tied a knot in her beak. Silly bird.

You meet some rare birds sometimes and I am not talking about the biker at the concert, who didn't fly with the flock.

The birds in the drawing are a Sunday morning practice. I wanted to see if I could do something like this.

Seydou Keita, Mali photographer,

One great discovery I made while researching Mali was the photography of Seydou Keita. A personal discovery that is, because this pioneer photographer had already been discovered. I used one of his photo's for the above illustration, and sketched it on copy paper, of all things. The young woman's stance, with her foot on the chair, her wide skirts and especially her arms and hands fascinated me.

Keeping it tidy.

Frankly, the drawing has nothing to do with what's on my mind. I just drew this big, old crab for my 6 year old niece to send to her in reply to the pretty card she sent me showing off her new talent in writing in cursive. 

Drawing, writing and reading are my methods to not have to think about the sorry state of affairs in which we find ourselves. During the week, it is part of my job; in the weekend I force myself to find ways to distract my mind for else one might lose it and that would be very untidy.


There has been a little bubble of an idea floating peacefully along in the back of my mind for many years. Never really acted upon. Never used for any purpose. Sometimes surfacing, often not.
Last weekend, when not even drawing could still my restlessness, I suddenly sat down and wrote the outline of a story and since then I have been collecting facts to which I can attach my fantasy and a new diversion was created.


Main character: Sophia Mumms, adventurous, young traveler of limited means in a post-WWII world, embarks on a journey that takes her to Mali and beyond.


Now I had to discover how she would travel (cargo ship), what she would eat; where she would sleep; who she would meet and most importantly what would she find herself in the middle of (murder and theft)? A story needs excitement, an intricate plot, subplots and some romance. So I have found myself looking for answers to many the questions I have. Although I have traveled extensively in Africa, my interest has always been East Africa, and now I am discovering the West through names like Dakar, Djenne, and Timbuktu; people like the Dogons, Fulani and Tuaregs, and a 2,500 mile river, plied by river boats and pirogues, forming the back-bone of the first part of the story. 

In my travels on the web, I stumbled on Sophia herself. I found this marvelous blog by Sophia, Djenne Djenno. This is not my Sophia, but a modern day artist, and life adventurer who runs a hotel in Djenne, Mali. There are such amazing people to be discovered, that one hardly need write fiction. Reading her enjoyable and interesting blog I am strongly reminded of Isak Dinesen and her time in Africa.
listening to: Miriam Makeba - Africa, Nawang Kheechog - Rhythms of Peace, Joe Cocker - Ultimate Collection.

Poppies. Poppies will put them to sleep.

 I was reading a story in the most recent New Yorker by Jill Lepore called "The Iceman" and it is about 'cryonics'. No idea what that is, well, neither did I till not too long ago. I was taking a certification class in San Francisco in Neuro Liguistics, and because our class was once a month over a period of time, many of the students would stay in the same hotel for the days we had class and we got to know each other quite well. 

When she entered the room in her bright yellow stiletto's on that first morning, teetering over to an empty chair, I remember thinking how the shoes did not seem part of her. There was nothing else glamorous about the woman, in fact, she was pleasantly plump and her clothes were a little out of date. She had the face of a friendly Russian peasant, and if given a muffin bonnet and mittens, would have not been out of place in a Dickens novel, with her deep set eyes and her thin, mousy hair, which reached to her shoulders.

It was quite some time into the classes that I found myself at the same table with her at dinner and, just like in class, it was clear that she liked attention. She said she was a medical doctor, but could not practice in the U.S.A. because she had received her degree on some island in the Caribbean. It was remarkable that she wore a different pair of stiletto's every day, always a little too large and clearly always expensive, just like the handbags and briefcases she had. We all have our little weaknesses, and if this was hers then who was I to judge?

Every time we talked, which wasn't often as I was beginning to avoid her, because of the free medical advice and increasingly peculiar stories about her husband, she lisped an invitation to her home in Vegas. She had recently moved there and had a lovely home with a lovely guest room. She was sure I would enjoy a visit to Las Vegas. It so happens I am not as infatuated with Las Vegas as many others. At the time, I had to go to quite a few conventions, and these were often in Vegas, however, after we had our last class, I agreed to  come and visit. It seemed a little off that she kept saying that I should come by car and not fly. I am only 5 hours from Vegas, so I would have gone by car anyway.  Just before I left she suggested I get tickets to a balloon flight and a show for us both.

The balloon flight was expensive, so I only got myself a ticket and called her to arrange her own, but I did get tickets to the show.

When I arrived, I stood before the closed door, of the 'lovely house' for what seemed like a long time, even though I had called her when I was within the city limits to let her know I had arrived. I rang again. Silence. Then after another wait, her husband opened the door, and let me in to the darkness within. He told me I could wait for her in the living room, and left again immediately. I sat and looked around me. It was a nice house, two storey, but the furniture, though expensive, was ragged and worn. Long tatters hung down from the sofa's. Interesting books were on the table. Beautifully bound books on subjects that are not commonplace on a coffee table, on ancient history, astronomy, and medicine. My vigil lasted a long time, and glances on my watch told me that if we didn't get a move on, we would miss the show. There certainly was no time for the lunch I had already missed.

When she made her grand entrance, down the stairs, balancing on her high heels, it was almost as if she had forgotten we were to go to the theater and I reminded her that we should leave, if we wanted to be on time. She returned up the stairs to change. I stared bleakly at all the spheres of marble, wood, pottery, shell and other materials that decorated the room. Too many balls, I thought. 

Seeing she lived there, I thought she might drive us to the theater, but she reluctantly told me that they did not have a car.  We got into my car and I asked her if she knew the way. It was no matter she said, she would ask her husband, and started to call him before we were out of the driveway. The call became a comedy. They argued and argued, and he would ask her what she was seeing now. Did she see a brown building with orange lettering on the left? Then she should go right, and she would in turn report this to me, but as things go, I would be on the wrong side, and would have to make a turn and a turn and a turn and so on it went.

I am a patient woman in many situations, but this was getting to me and I asked if she could just put him on speaker phone please, so that I didn't need to deal with second-hand information. Her husband, she said, did not speak to other people, only to her. I wondered if it might be considered overly dramatic perhaps, if I banged my head on the steering wheel a couple of times and let out a long, loud scream.

Late that night, I was told where my room was and it was definitely not the 'lovely guest room we have'. It was a makeshift bed in the computer room, but I was tired. Not too tired to see the size 14 shoes in the bathroom though. It gave me some idea who was staying in the 'lovely guest room we have' and sure enough, the next morning I found myself face to chest with what I would call an American basketball player with no manners. I looked up at him as he did a little dance around me to get into the bathroom first. 

We had a 'to do list' that day, with lots of errands like picking up prescriptions, do some shopping and paying bills here and there. I was beginning to feel a little used by the time we had lunch, and when the bill came, my companion acted somewhat  alarmed, and then sighed with relief, I knew I was being  taken for a fool. She had left her wallet in my car, but would definitely pay for lunch later. Naturally I paid, just like I had paid for dinner the previous evening.

For some strange and peculiar reason, as we got back in the car, she said that  she felt that I had trouble that could be resolved with Black Cohosh. I was  totally unaware of having any trouble at all that might require Black Cohosh. Now, we had to go to Wholefoods to pick up Black Cohosh, however most of the 2 hours we spent there went into shopping for other things. Not by me though, because I settled myself in at the coffee bar and did some people watching. I did notice that when she went to pay with a check, she was asked to go to the upstairs office. I must have looked a little puzzled then, I am sure.

I considered leaving and going home when we returned to the house but I was hot and we decided to spend some time in the pool. This is when she suggested that I become a member of the Alcor Life Extension Foundation in Scottsdale, where they would remove my head after death, freeze it and live again hundreds of years from now. By now my eyes must have started to bug out a little.  She explained cryonics... in detail. I tried to make my way out of the pool as I don't do well with stories about frozen heads, but on she went. She was also wondering if I wanted to finance her business that she had in mind (mayor light-bulb moment for me). I am far too polite for situations such as these. Cut off my head and finance her business. By now it was after midnight, I was hungry and I was contemplating peeing in pool because the mad woman kept on talking about frozen body parts.

She acted quite surprised when I said that I had decided that I should head home. What? Without dinner? It was close to 3 a.m. She felt that I couldn't leave until she had given me the Black Cohosh. I felt that I could, but that I would really like the money that I had spent on the ticket and lunch.

It took a long time before she opened the door to the bedroom, to which she had retired to change, and let me into her boudoir, with its glamorous orange fur headboard and bedspread and gold colored walls. She was clearly distressed, her little peasant face nervously smiling at me, as she pattered around in her feathery high heeled slippers and diva-like dressing gown. She paid me in cash, which surprised me a little. I didn't think I would see the money at all. She went into her bathroom as I waited on a little full-skirted tabouret in gold and lace and I watched her in the mirror as she opened the new bottle of Black Cohosh, take out some capsules, and fill it again before she put the cap back on. 

In the first light of the new morning I hit the road, still shaking my head in amazement at this other worldly experience, opened the window and threw the bottle of Black Cohosh out on the freeway. "Poppies. Poppies. Poppies will put them to sleep. Sleep." The words of the Wicked Witch of the West rang in my ears as I headed home.

The poppies were painted in Hydrus watercolor on smooth drawing paper. My favorite paper to work on.

Feather paper cut and drawing.

A guinea fowl feather in pencil; a guinea fowl feather cut-out, backed with cheese cloth, dyed in tea, and a poem by Isak Dinesen.

If I know a song of Africa, of the giraffe and the African new moon lying on her back, of the plows in the fields and the sweaty faces of the coffee pickers, does Africa know a song of me? Will the air over the plain quiver with a colour that I have had on, or the children invent a game in which my name is or the full moon throw a shadow over the gravel of the drive that was like me, or will the eagles of the Ngong Hills look out for me?

Isak Dinesen is the pen-name of Karen Blixen, best known from the film "Out of Africa". She was a formidable writer and had a farm in Africa. She was also twice nominated for the Nobel prize in Literature, and a Danish baroness.

Often I reread her work, my favorite being "Out of Africa", knowing that I am attracted by the romance of the period. I grew up in post-colonial Africa and there were then still remnants of those bygone days. For a child, it was a happy place to be, full of adventure and discovery. I recently read "Dark Star Safari" by Paul Theroux and he describes his travels from Cairo to the Cape in the new Africa, with its hunger, disease and inability to help itself. Fortunately, not too long ago I had read "Africa Trek" by Alexandre and Sonia Poussin,  who travel by foot from Cape Town to Cairo, which off-set the starkness of Theroux's novel and focused more on the generosity, kindness and laughter one also meets in Africa. Africa, Africa, Africa, when will I stop dreaming of Africa? My dreams are just dusty memories.

I too have traveled from Cairo to the Cape, though certainly not on foot, but there were buses, trucks, ships and trains involved. I did it in increments, visiting one or two countries at a time. However, I carelessly appear to have skipped a bit like the whole of the Sudan and Ethiopia. Just don't know how that happened, but I do know enough to have an opinion on Africa. I also know much has changed. In cases for the better, but in much I think things are worse than before.

Still when I decide to draw a feather, it's no wonder that I choose a Guinea Fowl feather because my drawing is an escape of the times we live in. I see too much hardship around me these days, and indeed I find it difficult at the moment to see much pleasure in daily life, so I draw and paint and relive memories. All I need is a pencil, some paints, some paper, and since recently an X-acto knife, to travel to Africa.

Sea Anemone.

I have to be careful not to accidently take a sip of the glass of orange water that stands in front of me and which I have used to clean my brush.

Today we had quite a little quake. It lasted a long time and everything that could rattle, rattled. I had read that animals sense an earthquake in advance but Athena clearly does not have that knack. She slept until we started to feel the house shaking and was as surprised as I was. She then sidled up to me, seeking protection, and I had to shoo her out the door because even though our earthquakes are never severe, I thought it might be better to be outside. The  5.8 magnitude earthquake's epicenter was 22 miles southeast of Calexico, in the Baja.

Mastercarve rubber stamp.

 

I had this big block of Mastercarve just waiting to be sliced into. I used a soft pencil and drew the design on paper, turned it over and, using a bone folder, transferred the drawing onto the Mastercarve. With a Speedball lino cutter I cut away the parts I did not want to print. It was surprisingly easy and the slicing and cutting very therapeutic and relaxing. With a very old ColorBox pigment stamp pad, which still worked very well (must be 10 years old), I quickly printed up some correspondence cards which I am now off to write and get into the letterbox before the mail lady comes by. Sharing is more than half the pleasure of making things.

I have 'ColorBox - various colors' on my shopping list for when I go into town this week because I know I will be making more stamps.

Hydrus.

Pen drawing using Dr. Ph. Martin's Hydrus watercolor.

Yupo.

Yupo is a synthetic watercolor paper. In fact, it's not paper. It's 100% polypropylene. I haven't done much watercolor painting ever but when I did do it, the wetting and stretching of the paper seemed a lot of work and even then my paintings bubbled. Yupo did what it promised and it was easy to work with and on. Worth a try if you are into watercolors.

Pen and Ink Still Life.

I have a tendency towards broad strokes and avoiding detailed work but you can't do that with pen and ink because it just becomes messy. So this is a study in self-discipline too really.

Pen and Indian ink.

In spite of having a boatload of new inks and paints what did I use? Indian ink and a nib pen.

Vermicelli.

I am working in a sketch book made in India and I wouldn't be surprised if it's the famous Elephant Dung paper. However I think that it may be produced in Sri Lanka. More elephants there, you see. If it were made in India, it would possibly be made from cow dung. Got to make do with what you've got, I say. Still, my pencil occasionally collides with rather sizable pieces of straw no matter what chewed it.

Whether or not there is poop involved, it works fine for what I am doing: making rough sketches for designs that I am going to stencil on fabric (very excited). While drawing these, I became suspiciously aware of their familiarity until I realized that I grew up with this design. My family had a company that made gorgeous (now there's a word I seldom use) embroideries on evening gowns, bridal gowns and all kind of gowns. I call them gowns and not just dresses because they belonged to another world, where people dressed up and went to the opera, wore gloves and stolas, and, for heaven's sake, used cigarette holders. Those people did not wear a dress, they wore a gown and an especially gorgeous one if it had been through the hands at Holland Artistic Embroidery Works.

Photoshop meets the 50's.

I have something in mind that requires a bright, yet simple design and suddenly I found I had made this very 50's looking sketch of seedpods. I drew and colored it only once, but with the help of Photoshop I was able to see it in different color combinations and make my choice. Personally, I like them all.