Doodles 🖼️

It’s been a hot minute since I shared some doodles, so I felt like a post would be in order.

I’m not above using erasers or cover-up tape to make my drawings better if the first try goes awry. 😉

For my birthday last year, my awesome sister got me a doodle journal. I’ve had lots of writing journals over the years, but never one specifically to encourage my development as a visual artist.

Each page has a prompt. They range from very broad and easy to interpret to real headscratchers that make me amp my creativity and test my sketching abilities, like the day it suggested drawing the final scene from a movie (gulp!).

I spend just ten to thirty minutes on each drawing (the shortest sketch was my Easter tulips), often in-between grading and making a snack or at the end of the day when I’m wide awake but too mentally tired to dig into a draft in-progress.

I find I care much less about whether the sketches are realistic enough to satisfy my inner censors and much more about the fun of using the art supplies.

The slowdown is very rejuvenating on my nervous system—almost like swimming, I can feel the languid time opening up. I was thinking about that a lot this week, as I paged through what I’ve doodled so far and treated myself to a box of soft oil pastels, which are new to me.

This has also given me a chance to practice doodling people, one of my weakest skills. I gave it a whirl on a doodle of a Jane Austen book cover as well as my version of The Bard.

I used a variety of colored pens, colored pencils, gel ink, whatever was handy on these sketches.

Sometimes, I accompanied the sketch with a short sentence or two reflection, almost like a journal, either in answer to the prompt or just a thought on my mind, such as the day it was 18 degrees outside.

Enjoy this medley of doodles from my sketchbook, and may you continue to find enjoyment and inspiration in your own writing and artistic journeys! Create on. 🥳

Thanks for taking a look at these sketches and for all of your support of my books and teaching. Signed copies of my latest poetry book, Does It Look Like Her? , available at my Etsy store: clickety-click. Also, available (unsigned) through Amazon: clickety-click. 📔

This prompt asked doodlers to draw a self-portrait of themselves from another era. I drew myself in an 1860s tintype. My 1860s self is not as smiley. 😁

New Doodles and Reflections 🎉

I felt like doodling some teapots yesterday, and then I sat down and wrote a few reflections that fell out of my head in essay form on the theme. Just fun to share. 🌞

For a few years, I bought a lot of tea kettles. I wasn’t starting a collection; I was gifting them.

If you had invited me to your wedding or to your housewarming party or to a similar occasion in that stretch of time you likely received one of these beauties wrapped in a roll of polka-dot or confetti-print paper. I bought them one at a time, brand new, and with the individual receiver(s) in mind. They were, in that way, personalized.

Sometimes, I picked enamel ones with a spate of blue, green, or red geometric designs or tiny, hearty yellow flowers across the belly; other times, I picked a plain kettle of shiny russet or a penny color; or a glass or porcelain teapot. It depended on the store’s stock and sometimes on my mood or the color combos that seemed to match the friend or cousin or coworker I was shopping for. Some of the kettles came in printed cardboard boxes and some did not. Regardless, I hand-selected and filled-in a personalized message for each kettle.

I always added a box or two of the sachets filled with pocket-square sized, often-flavored tea (orange pekoe, black tea, green tea with mint, English breakfast tea, lemon or another fruity flavor with fun, often alliterative product names) to go along with the gift so that it was immediately useful, immediately (I hoped) a part of the recipient’s daily life.

In my enthusiasm to gift, I could have planned better. Thinking back on it now, I guess I could have/should have asked if they even liked tea. I could have just gone with something on a registry, to ensure they didn’t get doubles and have to return it. I didn’t know if any of my recipients already had kettles. I loved tea, still do, and what I wanted to gift most was what I loved most: the ritual of starting with something basic and elemental and fortifying—water that would also become some steam, herbs—and within just a small amount of time (usually less than 5 minutes) a whole experience: a break, or a companion for the morning, or afternoon, or evening when sleep was futile, was created. Over and over, this comforting surety of rest and fortification.

Most tea is made now (mine included) in a small microwave that gives a tiny chirrup of beeps and then stops. Sometimes, I wait with my eager spoon a few feet from the muted window as my mug spins and spins inside the machine, and sometimes I use that time to fish through my many boxes to find the flavor of the day. It never gets old—selecting the flavor.

I don’t have a kettle at the moment and haven’t gifted anybody one in years, but I still love everything about these simple beauties: their hollowness and their heft; their handle like a purse a great aunt handmade for me when I was a kid that lifts up or can be tucked back, out of sight when not in use; the elephant-trunk curve of the little spout; the dainty lid with its knob that makes an easy lift-and-remove or fit-into-the-groove possible.  They do not require an app to operate; they run on the thought to use them, time, and patience.

Those minutes waiting for the water to bubble are a handbrake—Slow it down, down, and down again. The additional moments of the sachet simmering fragrance also speaks a similar language—Don’t leap ten steps ahead; be here. 

One day soon, I may likely find the perfect one to gift myself. But even if that time is a ways off, there is the ritual of the cup, the water turned to curlicue steam, the flavor. There is the everyday transformation to stillness and reflection: much like words, available for combination, creation, consumption, and recreation. A small part of the day, but one that betters in its own steadfastness, in its own pleasing way. 

Purple gel pen, colored pencils.

Some kettle practice. 😉

My first kettle that somehow ended up in proportions looking rather like a genie lamp! 🤣

Strawberry Doodle and Poem

Trying something new today--a poem I wrote to coordinate with this doodle I made and then colored in this week. 🎉

“Strawberry”

Remember

how Grandma’s lawn

although about an acre

expanded, endless

in bare feet, the orange

tiger lilies that grew almost

as tall as you

wild in a tangle

of July sun

in the far corner

of the garden?

You can return

anytime you like

in your mind’s eye,

even more than

twenty years after

the land, the house

was sold

when you were already

an adult

you keep this

summer, this sweet

strawberry taste on your tongue

as if seven again. Recall

all the days and days

awaiting then

into a new millennium, faraway

feeling as the spangled cosmos.

The Power of Simple Joy, Camera Doodle, and Photography for Writers📸

This afternoon, I’ve given myself a few hours to rest. I started with some reading, some writing, then an afternoon nap, then some doodling, and now this post.

May has been bouncy and active in a good way, and it’s always refreshing to work in little pauses whenever possible for the simple power of joy—you know, those hobbies or spaces of free time that are the first to get shoved aside in a busy schedule.

Photography is certainly one of my places of simple joy. So is doodling, so I combined them and worked on this perfectly imperfect doodle of one of my film cameras, the Canon Rebel K2 I got for a song in 2019 or 2020 online.

This summer, starting July 3rd, I’ll teach one of my favorite online courses, Imagery Power: Photography for Writers. Just looking at this camera reminds me of the creative fun that awaits in the class—in which students are free to use any kind of camera (or a mixture of cameras) they fancy, from cellphone cameras to digital cameras to disposal cameras to photosensitive paper, to make their own photographic images and then write about them.

I’ll use this handy-dandy book, Photography for Writers, that I wrote as a class text and also have just written some new prompts that’ll be fun to take for a test spin. Teaching the class also inspires my own photographic process, and I’ll be doing the assignments alongside my students.

Have some time this summer? Care to tap into some simple photographic joy? No previous photography experience necessary. I’d love to work with you and a friend. Sign-ups currently open! More details: Imagery Power Clickety-Click.

As we think about summer, the time is perfect to pause and think about how to work in a little more time here and there, a little more time this week or as soon as possible, for these little pauses that bring you joy. To summer and much happiness ahead!

***

If you’re looking for an online class to jumpstart your creativity later in the year, I also have these two courses coming up:

An Insider’s Look at Launching as a Freelance Editor (NEW!) One-Day Webinar, September 15, 2023, 1-2 pm

Food Writing for Fun and Profit (starts October 6, 2023, 5-week class; sign-ups open)

New Notebook, New Season, New Doodle📝

Starting a new notebook—this little 5 x 7 beauty was a whole $1.25—is always a good feeling for me. Potentiality on each page. I’ve been experimenting with different types and sizes of paper for my doodles.

Last night, right before sleep, I broke out my new notebook, my 0.7 mm lead pencil, and my colored pencils and made an outlined sketch of a photographer. It was a peaceful, simmering hour as I drew a preliminary/reference sketch on scrap paper, opened the second page of the notebook (I often skip the first, as it sits a bit askew in the binding), and then started this drawing.

Filling in the figure was a particularly pleasant part of the process as well—colored pencils force a kind of quiet contemplation and over-and-over-and-over patience that slows my thinking and flashes me back to childhood hours quietly coloring or writing.

It’s probably not surprising that I would choose to draw a photographer in motion. One of my other happy places is photography (a few years ago, I wrote a book that combined my writing with my photography practice and tips, Photography for Writers).

Much like when writing, when I’m behind the lens, the daily drops away. I like the challenge of making what I see and how I see it into a composition. I like that it’s not an easy process nor a process I can take for granted or even a process that I fully steer, but that there are many do-overs available—as many as I have time and inclination to make.

Mostly, photography is a place of rare transcendence where the world slows and I make my thinking and my seeing into something at once me and not me. It’s a good space.

This is my first go-’round with sketching what I’m calling a silhouette portrait. Kindly ignore the erased shoulder and erased original feet, which I only realized after pondering them were pointing in the wrong direction from her body’s stance along with the smudge at the bottom of the page by the date. We’ll just call those markers of authenticity.😁

I have to say, though: I was a little surprised that one or two elements of this drawing felt to me like what it feels when I’m behind my camera: a liminal in-between space that just is what it is and unfolds as it should (if, frequently, not as I would have originally imagined).

Or maybe this is just my fancy-pants way of saying I couldn’t believe it actually sort of resembles a human and not a stick figure. 😆

The little notebook says “Plan” on the cover, but as we know, there are many things we simply cannot plan. Mostly, we can move, slowly, in a slightly new direction and see what happens, and then repeat the process as the happening unfolds. Drawings, photographs, writing, ourselves—all unfolding.

“Interior/Exterior: Reflections on Drawing a Scene” 🖼️

Happy March! I had so much fun writing a fresh flash essay about my doodle last month that I decided to create another one to share. 🤗

“Interior/Exterior: Reflections on Drawing a Scene”

I almost wrote this reflection yesterday afternoon, but I was hungry and promised myself that after eating I’d get right to it.  And then, I just needed to pay a bill quickly and I’d sit right down and write. And then, I remembered a time-sensitive email, and then…well, you know the rest.

Yesterday’s writing didn’t happen.  

Alas, I had the “perfect” hook pop into my head yesterday, but tonight is no longer yesterday. So, scrap that. My tone today is different, and my hook has evaporated like a cartoon bubble. So be it. This reflection won’t be about whatever that would have been, and that’s okay, too.

Earlier this week, I also promised myself some time to doodle during a break, and I did follow through on that intention. I decided to try to draw a scene—a whole interior SCENE!—which I haven’t attempted since…probably middle school. Yeah, it’s been a hot minute.

I usually doodle one thing at a time, or parts of a scene, or words/phrases paired with a mini doodle or two, but to fill a whole sheet with myriad elements kept my brain and my hand hopping.

I put on some music, broke out a coffee-table book filled with gorgeous photos, picked the one that called to me most as a reference photo that I then adjusted as I went.

I started my scene on a scrap piece of newsprint paper I bought online this summer in a jumbo, 500-sheet package.

There’s something about knowing that I’m not going to save the first drawing because it’s on the kind of paper that tears when an eraser hits it that frees up my creativity. Nobody will ever see this first sketch so, who cares? Onward!

Without contemplation first, hand motions of pencil on paper are often quite soothing.

I try to get that way about more things: that not skipping ahead to envision outcome. Sometimes, my creative process lands, and I don’t stop to examine or even to think about forming whatever I’m creating until I have a draft or five. Those are the best days.

More often, though, my mind loves nothing more than just to keep skipping ahead. Ahead, ahead, ahead!

I’m certainly not the only creative to find my process varies like this. Depending on my day, my mood, how tired I am, how hungry I am, fill-in-the-factor-here, the challenge of crafting something is either easier than imagined, or more frustrating than imagined, or (most frequently for me) somewhere in-between, but it’s rarely the same type of journey more than once.

Each piece needs something different of us, like every friend, like every life circumstance.

My original sketchbook scan in all of its uncropped glory, spirals and all.🤗

So, my interior scene (which I also drew in pencil first, free-hand, on the sketchpad page and then traced with felt-tipped marker and pops of color from watercolor pencils) has some walls that are certainly not architecturally sound, a baseboard that shouldn’t look like it’s cutting through one of the plant’s fronds, some picture frames that are crooked despite practicing perspective, and a chair that I’m pretty sure doesn’t even resemble a chair.

On the other hand, I got the happiest kick while drawing the arched doorway between the rooms that reminded me of more than one friend’s home, and drawing the little locks on the big bay window, and then having a light-bulb moment about adding in a pop of life-giving green on the plants, and attempting some splash of light across the floors, and making the one rug a sisal rug with squiggle motions, and then drawing lines for wooden floors, my favorite flooring—all, nothing but joy and in the flow. 

The floors!

The wooden floors. That’s right—I was going to write something about those yesterday.

There was also originally going to be something about the lemonade I tried recently and loved. But today’s reflection needed to be the way it turned out here—about the challenges (for me, anyway) of drawing whole scenes in scale and with perspective but doing it anyway, and something about the comfort of putting elements together that make an interior that becomes exterior, which is also, pretty much, what we do when we create, whether it’s a conversation, a painting, a poem, a dance, or a birthday party. So be it.

On the balance, not bad for a cozy interior. Not great or professional, but not shabby, either.  Onward!

Indispensable: New Doodle Art and Flash Essay 😃

I don’t often publish musings or unpublished essays in my blog, so I thought it’d be fun to sit down, write one, and share it tonight. Ta-da. 💐

Indispensable 

I’ve begun to sort through clothes and such for donation a half an hour here and there, a half bag at a time, low-key and gradual. 

I’m very grateful to have more than I need. It’s meaningful to inventory and also to pare back and then pare back again. To make room and space. To share. As I’m sorting, I imagine the new uses and happiness the items will bring others as I fold and accumulate things in the donation bags as well as the money it’ll bring the thrift store and their charities. A few things had a random pull or hole or stain and went into the circular file/garbage.  I also have found some sweaters and dresses I forgot all about and haven’t worn in a few years, so they feel new to me and ready for another season of enjoyment. I call the latter “shopping in my own closet,” and it’s a great way to save money and time.

The process of sorting is, much like the rest of life, figuring out what is essential—what lights us up inside—and what we’re tired of and ready to change or switch out for a while.

I’ve also been reading a new book about sketching and so my mind is in the mood for seeing older or ordinary things with fresh eyes, like the beautiful shape of the dish-liquid bottle. Suddenly, walking into the room, I saw the bottle outline anew and took a half-hour break to break out my new watercolor pencils that I’ve had in my tote bag of art supplies for almost three months but not used before now. I’ve used dish soap since I was a kid and literally never thought about the shape of the bottle until drawing this sketch.  My hand-drawn bottle shape turned out a bit different (read: uneven) than the uniformly graceful curve of the original bottle, but there’s authenticity in that, so instead of scrapping it, I ran with it.

Also, the word “indispensable” is one that makes me sweat before I write or type it, because I’ve misspelled it for years. I looked it up about five times before doodling it with the marker and misspelled it when I first typed this paragraph. It’s a tricky word, with several different vowels and the –able ending instead of the –ible. My brain wants to insist it’s an –ible. I have to slow down or doublecheck. Much like the process of sorting, it has something to show me, something worthwhile I get to learn again and again at my own pace and little by little, like most worthwhile things.

So, I almost chose another word for my sketch, but then I pushed through it (and checked it a few more times, just in case), using the word after all. Sometimes, it’s worth persevering, and other times, not so much and it’s okay to sort it out and do something else. You’ll know as you go; do what works best for you in your art and in your life.