January Drought Over

Our ditch is full of water. Today’s supposed to be rainy and very windy. I’m heading into Sacramento with some friends to go to the Crocker Art Museum. We’ll be sharing the road with about 2 million other people who, deprived of snow during the month of January, need to make up for lost time. Many dollars will be transferred to orthopedic surgeons this weekend…

A trip to the library last night: Danny Gregory’s Creative License was in the new book section! If you’ve never drawn anything past the age of five, or if you have but got discouraged by comments from teachers or peers or parents or siblings, pick up this book and pick up a pencil (or, even better, a pen, the easier to free yourself from the tyranny of the eraser). I promise you, you won’t regret it.

When I sit and sketch or draw — on a curbside, as on Sunday next to a spectacular flowering quince while most of Davis was watching the Superbowl — I get so absorbed I go into a sort of trance. About five people I knew walked or cycled by while I sat there, and each time I looked up at them with a glazed expression, not helped by the fact they were mostly backlit by the sun, apparitions, almost. There is no better therapy for me. The overwhelm of the sumptuous color, the figuring out its complement in order to render shadows (for this coral, turquoise); the sexual pumping of the bees, never sated, plunging themselves again and again into the heart of every blossom; the audible yet still invisible arrival of an Anna’s hummingbird, displacing the bees momentarily from their copulations with flowers, finally peeking at me through twenty spikey stems: bliss. Whether or not the drawing or sketch is any good is almost irrelevant: the act of sitting, slowing down, really looking — it’s probably the closest I get to meditation.

I’ve been finding lots of good sketching and drawing blogs lately. Making a Mark is eye candy for devotees of the colored pencil, and the current collaborative online Van Gogh project Katherine’s involved with is definitely worth a look; Lori over at Chatoyance sketches freely, passionately, capturing wonderful expressions (which, of course, is all of them: when you’re working with people, every piece of them becomes an object of wonder, worthy of attention); I receive Julian’s Postcard from Provence daily; Aussie calligrapher Graham McArthur has a spectacular blog, Eidolon. Trumpetvine Sketchblog features Martha’s incredible instructions on how to eviscerate a Moleskine planner and turn it into exactly the kind of sketchbook you want. (We ran into Martha at the December San Francisco Sketchcrawl and got to see this beautiful creation in action.) Illustration Friday grows each week with more and more participants.

Grab a sketchbook: everything’s fair game. Next worldwide Sketchcrawl: Saturday, March 17. I’ll see you out there. (Or inside: today’s not such a good day for outdoor sketching here in Northern California.)

PS: At right is an almond blossom I drew for Jennifer, whose birthday is today (February 10) and who is dealing with freezing temperatures in Sweden: Happy Birthday, dear Jennifer! The original’s on its way…