About

And that’s Nina! Not looking so happy because we’re on a noisy bus.

I’ve always enjoyed drawing, or trying to draw, and when I travel, I would take a notebook for the trip and make little watercolors of things we saw, places we went. (I was not very fast; sometimes this meant that I would sit somewhere doing my drawing while my husband/travel companions saw whole museums, excavations, towns. I drew the Lion Gate of Mycenae and never got to see the inside; just south of St Remy, where Van Gogh spent his last days, I drew a big Roman arch outside the unearthed town it had led to, and never saw the rest; and in Ephesus, spent the whole time in front of one bit of ruin. So: I missed some things. But I sure have a clear memory of those things I drew.

For years I told myself, getting home from trips, that I should continue to draw, that I should draw every day, even if it was something small. I would carry a little notebook—for a while, those charming little Moleskine notebooks. Sometimes, highly irregularly, I would sketch something. Then in 2018, my husband bought me a sweet little leather notebook/cover by the Japanese company Traveler which came with a refillable insert. I loved the feel of it, and the idea of refilling rather than using a new sketchbook each time. Within a month I was actually doing daily drawings. I started making my own sketchbook refills, and then I bought myself a whole latigo side of leather. I made two sizes of notebook cover/holder: one small one (each page 3.5 x 5 inches) for daily drawings, and one larger for traveling (each page 5×7).

daily/smaller notebook

I have been doing (at least) one drawing every day since August 5, 2018. My personal rule is I don’t have to ‘finish’ a drawing, but I have to start one I can return to, and usually do return to, and tinker with, and add to, over the next days or sometimes even weeks. I’m not sure if I’ve gotten better, but I’ve gotten faster, and I’ve learned to experiment more with the various tools out there. Often I’ll start from a photograph, and sometimes mess with it.

I make refill notebooks of whatever paper I want to try, usually mid-weight watercolor paper, like 90 or 140 lb, usually cold press, but sometimes hot press, tinted, mixed media, or other stuff as well.