I had a rock tumbler as a child and really enjoyed it. When my youngest was a child we bought her one. She was eager to enjoy it too, but somewhere after starting on that path, we lost track and it everything inside turned into a solid mass. We tossed it and forgot about it. On a recent beach trip, I collected handfuls of rocks, as I am always likely to do, and, upon return, remembered how I loved my childhood rock tumbler. I immediately researched, ordered and eagerly anticipated its delivery. Of course, with Amazon Prime, that was only a couple day’s wait. As soon as I unboxed it I thought “what am I doing?” I have neither time, nor space for yet another hobby. I thought “what will I DO with a pile of polished, pretty rocks?” I would gather them in my hands and feel their silky smoothness. I would likely gather them in some beautiful glass bowl and…then what? I have toddler grand kids frequently at my home. They put small colorful things in their mouths and up their noses and feed them to the dogs regularly. And I don’t even have a single space to display a bog bowl of pretty rocks. So I quickly decided “I’m Returning the Rock Tumbler” and will, for NOW, stick to painting them when the mood strikes.
The kids jump, and call, and send koo wees up to the koo wee sky! When I draw happy characters like this I find myself smiling and I don't even realize it. I hope that happiness comes through in the art. - From "Graham's Up the Tree"
Sometimes I like to draw things in the reverse (filling in the light areas, leaving the dark areas bare) and then flip them to see how I did. Today's warmups turned out pretty well. My favorite is the kid on the top, whose head & hair echo the strawberry shape. I wish I'd distinguished the girl's legs from the dog's body on the left more, but overall, not bad.
So Mum goes for the phone and these guys slip out the door to see what Graham is doing up in the tree... I can't believe they'd just leave their food behind like that. I mean... look at it. Mmm.
The part of us ruled by those mischievous little Angels. Selfishly cheerful. Beautifully naughty. Destructive in their creativity. Mostly lost in the rudiments of time. . . Unless you hold on tight.
Graham's Up the Tree! ("and there's nowhere else he can go!") - my 4 year old ran around the house for weeks misquoting the story with his own interpretation of an Australian accent. Calling it out over, and over, and over again.
"Billy gets there last, wiggles up a spot..." from the Graham's Up the Tree book. I grew to love these kids after drawing them so much. They sort of became real to me.
For these Grahams Up the Tree drawings I used a Pilot Custom 823 with FA nib. This pen is legendary. It has a very soft nib and a giant vacuum filled tank of ink so you can write and draw for days.
"Her cricket kids traipse in to wash their hands." Cricket is a popular bat-and-ball game in Australia where the winning team gets to eat crickets at the end of a match.
Our local antiques store had a huge treasure trove of vintage Native American themed toys and gifts this weekend. I realized that 1) I'd owned a lot of them and 2) none of my friends had. It never occurred to me that my collection was particularly large or unique. Doesn't every kid have a fixation on this country's indigenous population? Apparently not. I love the visual language of the Navajo and Hopi especially. My Kachina doll collection was the bomb.
