Back when I started writing professionally I had a kid, a full-time job, and several time-consuming board positions. And, an inconvenient desire to be a full-time writer. In lunch hours and coffee breaks, in the car at the side of soccer fields, and propped up in bed at night, I wrote half a dozen novels for kids and dozens of shorter articles for magazines and newspapers. [Eventually, I was able to quit my day job and write fulltime, but those early days… man, exhausting.]
These days, drawing practice feels a bit like that.
I have a sketchbook and basic tools (pencil, eraser, fountain pen, water brush) with me pretty much always and steal moments to sketch whenever I can.
Last night I was caught in the act propped up in bed, working on hand lettering when my SO snapped a photo of me drawing, pencils and pens spread out beside me. He sent me the photo and I then used my phone to draw (with my finger, a truly weird thing to get used to doing) a version of the photo in the Fresco app.
What is happening more and more is that as I go through my day, I not only find stories everywhere (pretty much every snippet of overheard conversation, every raven observed stealing food from an empty table, every peek into one of my father’s sketchbooks is a story waiting to be told), but now everything I see (soup bowl, early morning sun catching the top of the mountains, a howling wolf - and, yes, I recently saw one of those) is a potential subject to draw.
Dad always said that drawing was more about learning to see than anything else. So, I’m going about my days with my eyes open, drinking in all the visual delights - colours, patterns, textures - the world has to offer. And, yes, attempting to capture a tiny fragment of that in my sketchbook. Of all those impressions and practice squiggles, stories are beginning to emerge.