sketching the garden

nasturtium were a new challenge in the morning of June 20th

June 30th found me tackling the big stand of hot pink day lilies

July 4th was the hardy white sweet peas

one single Casa Blanca Lily from July 8th

I have been writing morning pages, a la The Artists Way, since 1994 when my friend performance artist John Kelly turned me on to writer Julia Cameron's great self help book for folks who are creative an find they are suffering from a creative block. Then about ten years later came a round of inspirations from Illustrator and writer Danny Gregory with his book Everyday Matters and subsequently I sketched every day in a small pocket book freely. Eventually I lost the practice of sketching daily. I do have a big stack of my own hand bound pocket sized sketch books full of little 4x5 inch pen and ink drawings.

Sometime earlier in June I picked up Danny's recent book An Illustrated Life with dozens of artist's sketches and descriptions of how much they depend on daily drawing to find their way in the world and I was reminded how important drawing is to me. I need to be drawing more than just a weekly figure at my figure drawing group. I need to really make drawing a daily event in my life. I decided that I would like to try sketching in the garden daily after completing my morning's writing. Flowers are very seductive for their beautiful lines and geometry both as subject for photography and drawing allowing you to get to know them so intimately thorough careful observation. So far sketching is paying me back for the effort. I wanted to share some of the results. I just loaded 30 new sketches on flickr.com in the "sketch set" follow the link and have a peek at some more of the results.

I sketch lines with an old fashioned fountain pen and rarely add some watercolor or wash. I am happy my latest routine of daily sketches in the garden. The usual rule is that a habit will stick if you keep it up for 90 days. What this week also showed me was that the habit is still developing. We had our first day of rainy weather since I started and I had to stay inside. It was a shock, I didn't know quite what to draw and flashed back to winters stuck inside writing and trying to find interesting things to sketch inside. I considered that I need to be preparing ways to adapt and be nimble about my subject matter for sketching if this habit is going stick beyond the garden months.