I’m getting excited about our summer growing season already. We’re looking for seeds, planning new raised beds for vegetable crops, and designing a meditation garden. It will be in a secluded area and will have room for meditation and yoga. Definitely something that will be used by both of us in the months to come.

On the other side of the cabin I have a herb garden. I was out there trimming back the sage a few days ago. I may have gotten carried away, but the plants came back nicely with lots of new growth last year and I expect they will do the same this spring. The last few days I’ve been looking at raindrops, unable to spend time in the garden as I’d love to. We had early-spring weather for a week. Now it’s gone.

Today’s sketch was of meditation. This is not me… I sketched from a photo of a woman meditating. My goal is to learn to draw more realistically… I have a lot to learn. This took about thirty minutes, maybe a little more. Well, this is a small part of the complete drawing. I cropped it.

My significant other (Baba Bob) looked at this and said it was a perfect image for a female character in my WIP novel, Oja. He’s now reading that novel and offering ideas. He is my idea man…. he comes up with some great ones. I keep encouraging him to write novels of his own but it hasn’t happened yet.

A few days ago I did another meditation sketch. This was of my Quan Yin figurine, with a fictional background. She’s a Chinese goddess of mercy and vegetarianism…

The top drawing was done with a hard 5H art pencil, and the bottom one with a soft 6B pencil. Can you tell the difference? They are both colorized in Paint Shop Pro (brown and green.) Before they were just white and gray pencil sketches.

I’m trying to do a sketch every day so my skill will improve. Art is a lot like writing – the more you do the better you become. Some people think it is all just talent – something you either have or don’t have. But it isn’t like that at all. Most people quit learning to draw when they were about 10 to 12 and our USA schools don’t encourage art much after that. Only a few students will enter high school art classes, and those will probably be the ones that showed more aptitude as younger children. The others got discouraged and gave up!

If you’re one of those artists who gave up drawing before you got good at it, you might like to try again. I’m learning with the help of a classic art book, The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain: A Course in Enhancing Creativity and Artistic Confidence.

I’ve decided to add some of my art to this blog, which up until now has been a writing blog only.

A print of this is available through my Zazzle.Com account. Just click on the picture to see the print. I will be adding more designs to that account in the near future. It is something new I’m starting to work with as a way to use my art.

Dating Palms
Beyond the ocean, beyond the ordinary seas, two palms grew side by side, inseparable from day one.

My interest in art isn’t new; I’ve been dabbling for many years. However now that all of my children are adults and no longer living with me I’ve decided to spend a lot more time practicing and creating art.

Of course I haven’t given up on my writing! I’m currently starting a first revision of Oja, which I wrote last November during NaNoWriMo.