Remember the posts about the cat drawings and the book that inspired them?
(In case you weren’t around back then, or don’t want to go digging - here are the links)
This evening I wanted to do something light and fun so I went back to that same library book, Drawing Lab for Mixed-Media Artists, by Carla Sonheim mostly because her subtitle includes the word fun.
I skipped ahead a bit to the chapter called Cheater Blinds. The instructions are to find a family photo and then, using a thick black marker pen, do a sort of modified blind contour drawing (you’re allowed to look at the sketchbook page a couple of times). After getting the basic outline down, you switch to a finer-tipped marker and add some shading, still mostly looking at the reference photo and not the drawing.
One of my favourite early photos from Australia is of me on a pony (prophetic, I would spend much of my childhood either on a horse or wishing I were on a horse… and much of my early career as a writer of children’s novels writing about remembering how great it was to be on a horse…) with Dad standing close by. My mother took the photo (she is in very few of our photos from childhood - she was always the shutterbug).
Like most of my childhood riding pictures, there’s no helmet in sight (my drawing might have fooled you, but the closest I got to a helmet was a cowboy hat that blew off at the slightest hint of riding action). When I think back to some of the antics I got up to when Dad wasn’t close by, I shake my head and wonder how on earth I managed to reach the ripe old age I am now.
Knowing my passion for ponies (according to my mother, my first word was ‘horsey,’ something for which she never quite forgave me), we often drove to a place outside Sydney called Ryde. I only remember the name of our destination because I thought it was funny that the place where I went for pony rides was called Ryde. My mother soon put me straight by telling me the two words sounded the same but were spelled differently. As I was just learning to read I found this unfair and weird. But kind of cool.
This would have been about the same time when my mother taught me one of the first jokes I ever learned to tell. I was perhaps four, so imagine this being said in a teeny girl’s wee voice:
“Antidisestablishmentarianism is a very long word. Can you spell it?”
Unsuspecting grownups would then fumble along with A-N-T-D-I-S-E…no, wait, let me start again… etc. while I was nearly apoplectic trying to hold in my giggles.
Finally, after some effort, the adult would typically ask, “Can you spell it?”
To which I would reply with the smug superiority of a four-year-old about to deliver her punchline, “Of course. I-T.”
This feat of spelling prowess was then followed by peals of hysterical laughter.
I found that joke funny for years. Almost as funny as the dreadful joke my mother taught me about the pregnant man and the baby elephant. I shall spare you, but that one nearly got me kicked out of grade two.
That’s all for tonight. See you tomorrow.
You don’t need explanations for what those blue buttons mean, do you? Didn’t think so. Annoyingly, though, I do have to say that the link to the book on Amazon is an affiliate link, meaning that if you click on it and buy that book Amazon will share a few pennies with me. If you really don’t want to cut me in on your shopping, please order at your local independent or do as I did and find a copy at the library. I’ll never know…