Phone doodles, flowers and memories
Dear Sarah - Day 314 of our daily drawing exchange
Hi Sarah -
do you ever pick up a pen and start doodling during a phonecall? I was chatting on the phone with my iPad close at hand and had no particular plan. I started with this photo:
It was snapped inside a shopping centre in Paris and I thought the colours were cool. There isn’t much left of the original in my manipulated version, but it was a chance to play around with some new brushes and experiment with moving the colours around.
I feel as though I can branch out a bit now and not be so hyper-focused on bridges and food as I’ve submitted my Rome project and am doing a few final edits (and compiling my bibliography) for the Paris/psychogeography project. I should be able to finish and submit that by the end of the day tomorrow. Whew!
It’s been great to have these projects to focus on, but I’m looking forward to being able to do more playing around and experimenting for a bit.
Cheers,
Nikki
Dear Nikki,
Of course I doodle while on the phone!! One of my drawings today is doodle-adjacent! Your doodle eye is a bit creepy, but in a good way. Congrats on submitting the Rome project.
Indoor day today, working, doing laundry and messing around with flowers. I picked the last flowers from my deck last week and before I tossed them in the compost I decided to draw them using different implements. I used Kai’s favourite chunky paint pens first—not much nuance but very cheerful! And I think it’s the best vase. Then I did a scribble drawing using coloured pencils, and finally an ink brush drawing. Changing the tool certainly changes the tone! I also drew two more shelves in the cabinet—so hard to get the proportions right!
And yes, that is a Jewish star in a frame. It came from the Theresienstadt concentration camp, where Monique Polak’s mother, Celine, was sent with her family. When the camp was liberated, Celine’s mother grabbed a bolt of the yellow cloth stamped with the Jewish star and the word Jude. She had no idea where they were going, and cloth, even this despised cloth, might be useful. The cloth came to Canada with Celine. Over time, she gave away all but one yellow star. After I edited What World is Left , Monique’s YA novel based on her mother’s experience in the camp, Celine gave Monique the last star to give to me. I had it framed in a shadow box, under conservator glass. You can’t see it in my drawing, but there is a dotted line printed around the star. That detail breaks my heart.
In the shelf below that is my mother’s Quimper china, a small photo of her taken in Algonquin Park, and two watercolour paintings she did of the Quimper. It’s all very meta. She would have been beyond ecstatic that I am drawing and painting.
XO S
