sketchbook

Thought I'd post some of the sketches I've been working on while riding the bus back and forth. So many creative outlets are presenting themselves to me, i truly feel the gentle calling and i am walking along the path again. i get lost but pick it back up. it's been 7 years since Julian was born and I've been on another planet but i'm slowly getting back in the waters of creation. someone told me when i first got pregnant that i'd have to stop for awhile at least 5 years my kids would need all of me...and i remember i shuddered standing there with my paintbrush wondering how the heck i'd stop. i don't think she was entirely correct though because you can stay creative even with small children just i different ways. so for now i am sketching and painting and moving closer and closer back to my oils but now my life is bigger and fuller and so the mediums i work in have grown too. my gardening saved my life during the times i wasn't drawing or painting. i don't know why i stopped for so long. it's ridiculous...why would you stop something that save you from going into the depths? so the sketching, and the visual journaling, the life drawing at work, the little painting group i found just recently, and the artistic mothers online group. these people and places are keeping my spark alive....

Visual Journaling

it's keeping me alive. i'm taking a class offered by my work and taught by a wonderful photograper/artist named Evah Hart. She's an amazing person and this is the second time i've taken her class. it's been a constant challenge to balance art, motherhood, work. But when i sit down to create something and it doesn't matter what happens just something, putting pen to paper, putting paint somewhere, cutting pasting...it acts as a lifeline to art making. because i feel it's so important to create every day and so challenging the small tasks that we work on in the class are so perfect for my daily life. i'm already sketching so much daily on the bus and now the class and working on the journaling when i can and the life drawing once a week and the project i want to create. things seems to be in a very creative place right now...and interestingly enough..i seem to be happier than ever before. hmmmm.