Laurelines

Laurelines in Artful Blogging, Autumn 2009!

I've been wanting to tell you about this for months, but I've waited until it was an actual fait accompli. Last year, I happened upon a copy of Artful Blogging; Visually Inspiring Online Journals at my bookstore and was very impressed with the beauty of its design and content. It's a Somerset Studio publication and these are known for their extremely high quality. I thought, *sniff, sniff* that someday I'd like to be in it. But no, that wouldn't happen. There seemed to be more expressly inspirational blogs in it, like Andrea Scher's Superhero Journal (also featured in the autumn issue) or heavily photographic blogs focusing on craft, design, or lifestyle, such as Carol's Garden, also in this issue. Carola was an early blogging acquaintance, so it is fun to see her in this context with me!

Laurelines isn't an illustrated journal, per se. It isn't a lifestyle blog, though it is a repository of images from my art and  life. It's not about crafts.  So, I was thrilled and surprised last April when Christen Olivarez, editor, wrote and asked if I'd like to be in it! I said, yes, yes I will, yes. In writing the essay to accompany my images, I thought about exactly what Laurelines, now in our fifth year, IS as a blog. Excerpts follow:

Line by line we write paragraphs, pages, books. Line by line we make drawings, sketchy or highly polished. Line by line we trace in paint the geometry and calligraphy of the visual world.

As a person who both writes and paints, I live by lines, and in my blog, Laurelines, that is evident.

A blog is a story that unfolds in real time. It is not subject to the rules of fiction writing, or of non-fiction writing for that matter, but if you do it right, there's a continuity that is discernible---a storyline that hangs together whether you spend a month drawing in Paris, as I did in 2006, or whether you're documenting the birth of your daughter's first child, as I also did, last fall.

[The text continues with a discussion of my yearly art plans, my way of self-directing, my themes.]

You can see that my path may be linear, but it goes places. It may be directed, but it curves and meanders, just as my drawn line does.  My way is not everyone's.  But for me, guidelines of my own making give me focus and focusing frees me... . In life as in blogging, if we're conscious and we persevere, if we're receptive and patient, we'll be following, and also creating, our own story, line by line.

The autumn issue hits the newsstands August 1 and, though I say it who shouldn't, it's smashing! Check it out!

More food, more feet, and the prez

August is one of my absolute most favorite months. Yes, August is about to cross our threshold and not a moment too soon, really.  More on that topic in a few days. However, here we are, still, in July--- and that's not such a bad idea, either.
It being July, I am still knee-deep in food painting, food thinking, and taking early morning power walks. Here are some cases in point, plus a sketch I did while watching teevee last night.

My life in food and feet

This foodie illustration job is taking longer than it was supposed to, but don't they all. In between drawing and painting food, and thinking about drawing and painting food, I take walks.
I've begun a little illustrated walk journal, for the fun of it in itself, but also to get in the spirit for my upcoming stay in Brittany. I'll be painting there, but I want to keep a small daily sketch journal, too, with text incorporated with the images on each page. (I have already posted some pages from this journal, below.) My sketchbooks in the past have consisted largely of sketches, with very little, if any, text.  I have used this blog to tell the stories that accompany those sketches and I will continue to do that. But it'll be fun to make little illustrated travel journals, don't you think?
So, a sketch from this week's foodie world (not one of the illustrations for the book, just a personal record of a lovely Wednesday evening with my husband), as well as a few pages from my walk journal.

Sketchcrawl, parasol

What's next... an overhaul? Not that I don't need it---adamantly I say, I do. But do I have time for it? No, I do not.
Okay, but yesterday was the 23rd International Sketchcrawl, and I DID make time for that.  Do not ask me why I chose to sketch a plastic buffalo with a broken tail because I have no idea, other than,like Mount Everest, it was there. Earlier, I spied a woman drinking coffee and later I sat inside the shadows of an arbored covered walkway. And I sketched.

So where, you may well ask, is a parasol in all this? On Friday, I was featured in a lovely new blog called The Ginger Parasol. I blushed upon reading what the blog's author Dana Cochran wrote. Want to go see for yourself?

And, if you go, why not leave a comment? Dana is brand new at blogging and some comments would probably gladden her heart.

Sketches, three, in early July

I'm a member of Sketchercise, a group started by the formidable Katherine Tyrrell (is there much on the internet relating to art that she HASN'T started?) and, as with many of my other groups, I've been MIA of late. So, with the parade of projects almost completed, I can now turn my attention to more relaxed (and colorful) stuff. Note the word 'almost.' I have NOT totally finished the projects, but this was a holiday weekend and I said what the heck---I'm going to play.  Two sketches for Sketchercise and one of my town, just because. More to come this week, in color and in black and white!

Food in black and white.

Once I finish this project of a suite of food images for a food lovers' guide to my area, I'll be ready, more than ready, to plunge back into the water (paintings) again! Actually, though I love color, I've really enjoyed this dip into black and white world. I have 20 images---thought I 'd share a few with you. Btw, Daniel Smith's Lunar Black is a FINE product! It granulates so exuberantly, you almost think you're painting in color!