Fourth of July was a full day for me, starting with milking the goats at Vida Verde Education. On my way back, since I was with my partner who had never been to Martin’s Beach, we decided to stop and check it out. We were the first ones to walk the beach that morning.
But we were not the first to see the message placed on the bluff top like the “Hollywood” sign. I wonder who the lucky couple was.
Today I cracked open a new Moleskine notebook – the small watercolor album. I’ve never used it before, but there is liberation in a small blank page.
I sat with a piece of seaweed in front of me on the beach, and was able to take the time to let each layer of paint dry, adding more layers until I found the olive green-brown that satisfied me.
Today my gift from the sea was the chance to pay attention to the way colors mix on a page. And to sit for long enough to feel the quality of the ocean’s embrace. I was inspired to jot these words down too:
Ocean’s Embrace
She approaches with a low rumble
as if a stampede of galloping hooves roll in
from the horizon.
She rolls and curls
and like many gentle fingers
she envelopes with a
soft touch
Soft yet definite
holding the power
to move boulders
grain by grain
crumbling walls
dissolving manmade
structures overnight
reminding us
of our brief time here.
Today – Friday, June 3, 2016
Check out more of my journey in sketches on Miramar Beach in this gallery.
After the rain, there are the flowers.
This spring, I’ve been out on my bike, and on my own two feet hiking along the California coast.
I’ve also been inspired by children’s books, and the amazing artistic freedom shown by so many illustrators.
Check out my new portfolio of Wildflower Collage Illustrations (some of which are available NOW in the store as limited edition prints) and below, enjoy a sneak peek into my landscape sketchbook from this spring. All sketches were done outside! Follow me on Instagram to see these images in their natural environment. Continue reading
Rainy day. This morning before I sat down to draw, I picked up my copy of The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. I received my paperback copy in 1993, as a high school graduation gift. She was an actress; he was a university chemistry professor and my dad’s PhD advisor. Both of them came to my graduation ceremony, as they were good friends of my parents and had no children of their own.
Well, I am in love.
I stumbled upon a description of a new batch of images released by the Wellcome Collection in the UK.
Engravings and colored illustrations from old books continue to fascinate me.
And today, taking a look at medical and botanical images from as early as the 14th century, I am reminded of the importance of our curiosity throughout human history.
There are many special places along this small strip of California coastline I now call home.
One of them feels particularly special because I get to visit every two weeks as a volunteer goat milker. What began as a once-in-a-while opportunity has become part of the rhythm of my life. The rhythm of rising early on a Monday morning and driving south on Highway One. The rhythm of the seasons, the fog, the sun, and the changing colors of the hills on San Gregorio Road. The rhythm of cows and calves, of yellow mustard flowers, of the black earth freshly tilled, of the harvest.
What makes a place special, anyway?
I have started hiking again. After many months of biking, beach sitting, yoga indoors, and other forms that had replaced the simple act of walking under the trees, I returned to hiking.
This weekend, on Valentine’s Day to be exact, a six and a half mile hike with grand views and not a soul in sight.
Hiking reminds me that the only way to get “there” is one “here” at a time, by the rhythm of my own breath and the pace of my own two feet one in front of the other.
This was a place built by women.
She had come to meet a friend at her home on top of the hill. Her friend wasn’t home.
Maybe she’d remembered the wrong day. So she walked down the hill a bit, looking for a neighbor who might know.
Only to spot a woman banging on her water tank’s reverse thread coupling with a hammer yelling, “WHY? WHY? WHY?”.
It was, she says, a sister-in-need moment.
Time to help with the skills she had learned all those summers of her childhood on her uncle’s ranch in Oregon. She knew how to live in the weeds. Always carried a toolbox in her truck. Had one that very day, in fact, just another walk up the hill. She would end up fixing the toilet, too, and staying another seventeen years.