Here's a doodle from a meeting at the office. The meeting was a big overview on Sherman Anti-trust compliance.
I've really played around with this doodle in photoshop, using some neat brushes I found at rebel-heart. Miss M can make some groovy cool brushes!

It was twenty years ago today

Today I called work and left a message for my boss that I would not be coming in because I had to take care of a family situation. Since I did not elaborate it may have sounded strange, and tomorrow I will have to explain, I suppose.

The long version or the short and for-good-company version?
How about this: Marriage enrichment. My hubby and I both needed to spend a day together just the two of us, no kids, a whole day, at least until we had to go pick up the boys from school :)

We had a really nice time, relaxed, and stress free, and we were able to carry on conversations without interruptions or trying to give one another a status update or instructions or "constructive criticism!"

Today, I just realized, marks twenty years since our first ever date, when we were 18. We went to a high school football game. It started to rain. We had to sit pretty close together on the bleacher under my umbrella. I have no idea who won that game.

Against the Wind

"Only a fool wishes for what he wants. A wise man works for it."
-Peter van Winkle

Doing My Work

What is holding me back from doing my creative work? What is holding you back from doing yours?
Sometimes I wonder if all the surfing around and finding "inspiration" in the so many wonderful and beautiful, and brilliant and clever designs, creations, and images among all the internet bookmarks is getting in the way of my own creating. The inspiration is so big, so great, and so much fun to find that I choose 'finding inspiration' over doing my own creative work.
Does this make any sense?

Maybe all this inspiration is really building up a kind of resistance in me.
Maybe not.
I don't think the idea is to always come up with something new and different. As if.
There is nothing new under the sun.
I think the idea is to do creative work. No matter what. Now. Today!

"The highest treason a crab can commit is to make a leap for the rim of the bucket."
"The awakening artist must be ruthless, not only with herself but with others. Once you make a break, you can't turn around for your buddy who catches his trousers on the barbed wire. The best thing you can do for that friend (and he'd tell you this himself, if he really is your friend) is to get over the wall and keep moating."
"The best thing and only thing that the artist can do for another is to serve s an example and an inspiration."

-The War of Art, by Steven Pressfield,
who writes from the hip about breaking
through blocks and winning inner creative battles.
Cool.

On a Day Off...

When I take a day of vacation to stay home with the boys because they are out of school I always think I'll have all this extra time to "catch up" on all my little projects, errands, housekeeping, and maybe even get something creative done too.

I was off on Monday and today this week and so far the most 'creative' thing I have done is videotape the hairstylist while she was cutting my hair. Oh, and I embroidered a little too.

Tonight I'm cutting and gluing. I want to fill up my sketchbooks so I can buy more.

This is the challenge: Fill Up The Sketchbooks. By January 1, 2006.
How hard can it be?

Polaroided

Polaroided, originally uploaded by Tifty.

Since it's been a while since I scanned anything to upload here I thought a neat polaroided picture would be about right here. It's a Flickr Toy, found here.

I'll have a little time to update tomorrow, I hope. Fresh doodles coming soon!

Art Studio

There is a new group at flickr. It is called Art Studio. The idea is for people to post pictures of their art studios, or creative spaces, or art nooks, craft corners, or hole in the closets where they usually spend time creating.

Every February the magazine Home Companion will feature well-known artists' studio spaces, and this is my favorite issue, sometimes the only issue, I buy all year. I love seeing artist studios.

Several years ago, on one of my visits to Sweden, we visited the (now a museum) home of the famous Swedish artist Carl Larsson. It is a home where every wall is a work of art, painted and decorated by Carl and his wife Karin. If you ever get a chance, go there! Carl Larsson also drew and painted his own home and studio interior many times. So inspiring!
We also visited the museum home of another Swedish painter, Anders Zorn. On the property it is possible to peer into his log cabin art studio, or ateljé, I imagine what it was like to paint by the light from a lantern at night, or from the light of the sun streaming in the small windows.

My "studio" is the top of an IKEA hobby table, in a spare bedroom. It used to be the space on the kitchen counter before we moved the boys into a room together, after we bought the solid oak bunk beds at SAMs. I like my space. Sometimes it's a mess. Sometimes it's tidy.

Autumn Apples

Just the other day when I was cleaning up my hobby table, I found a box of water soluable crayons amid the mess. They were bought a while back and I guess I sort of forgot I had them.

Of course this little discovery warranted immediate cease-clean-up, and a full engagement into Operation Explore Potential Fun While Using Watercolor Crayons! An old magazine was laying open on the hobby table, where a picture of a box of apples smiled at me.
There was my subject.

Some of the outlines were drawn with terra coloured PITT artist pens, but this drawing (click to view larger) is basically all done with the watercolor crayons.