I’ve started a routine of daily sketchbook journaling.  That is, if doing something for three days straight counts as a routine thing.  My Moleskine has been sitting in my junk drawer, mostly blank, for months.  I decided I didn’t like the paper.  I decided I wasn’t good enough at drawing.  I decided I didn’t have the time.  I decided I couldn’t decide what to designate the book for (thoughts, dreams, practice sketches, photo ideas, don’t-forget sketches, technique experiments, etc.).  I decided it was too small.  I decided it was too expensive to waste on my juvenile skill. 

Moron. 

I paged through this book, which I picked up at the library, and realized how idiotic and arrogant I was being.  I’ve been wanting to draw.  I love to draw.  It is one of those things of which I simply do not tire, and cannot get enough (like chocolate).  I’ve been wanting to improve my skill, to work out kinks in technique, vision, and medium.  I’ve been wanting to record a few of the little glimpses of beauty that surprise me daily (and evaded my camera).  And all that was stopping me was a group of really pathetic excuses.  I have the book, I have paper, I have pens and inks and graphite and acrylics and markers and brushes.  What, again, was it that I was waiting for? 

(Ready, set, go.)

This is definitely an exercise in letting go of expectations and perfection.  I now try to have the book open on my counter (requires a clean one, though), or in my purse, or in the front seat of the van, and I jot down thoughts and doodles.  I just draw, without intention, whenever I get a chance.  It’s still extremely frustrating, not being able to give it my all.  But I’ve come to realize that I can do this, or I can do nothing.

So, in the tradition of SNL/Mike Myers’ Simon, I’m overcoming my humiliation, and showing you a few drawings from this week.  (Well, hello, my name is Terri.  And I like to do Draw-rings.)  This is from my second Moleskine day.  It’s just something little and rather insignificant, but it felt so good.  (…which is somewhat ridiculous considering I do actually doodle all the time, on envelopes, on the sidewalk, on shopping lists; but this sort of felt like committing?  I guess?)

Then, Hercules took all four kids to a local football game the other day, and I had precisely one hour to a) sleep, b) clean, or c) cook.  I chose to. . .  draw.  The next drawing  (pencil and sepia ink on rough watercolor paper) is a hint of a vision that has been trying to work her way out of my head.  It was either very, very good to scratch this particular itch, or very, very bad, in a past-the-point-of-no-return way.  I will be restless until I resolve what this is trying to “say,” and how to “say it.”

Today, I was an unjustified martyr, as I watched a friend’s kids (and mine), while she went out by herself for her birthday.  For the first couple hours, I was without the youngest.  Figure that: “freedom,” with six kids under my care.

Oh!  And, this is important, if only indirectly relevant:  Our very good friends moved here from England a few years ago.  When I learned that the Mr.’s name was Simon, I couldn’t help but walk around the house singing, with a very sad Mike-Myers-impersonating-British-child accent, “Well, hello, my name is Simon, and I like to do draw-rings…” all day long.  I did exercise good social skills, however, and restrained myself when accepting our first dinner invitation.  Dimples, however, marched into their house singing the Simon song, with an even sadder mommy-impersonating-Mike-Myers-impersonating-British-child accent. 

I would have been humiliated, but I was still trying to digest the fact that upon our arrival, Simon was planting grass seed on the front lawn.  His greeting for his first-time dinner guests: “Whoops!  Oh, Dear.  You’ve caught me spreading my seed!”

No, maybe that wasn’t important.