Spot the bunny and emergency stick figure

Dear Sarah - 035

Hi Nikki,
February 4, 2025

Hope you are home, safe and sound. Funny you should post a drawing of ants. I just mentioned fire ants in our book.

Do you follow @Jane Heinrichs on Substack? If not, you should. She illustrated a board book I wrote, and I edited her middle-grade novel. She is a fantastic artist and writer, and a lovely person. In a recent email she said (re: our drawing adventure) "the only way to improve at anything is combining dogged-determination and playfulness." This is now my mantra (not just for drawing but for things like, you know, getting up from a cross-legged position without using my hands).

I skipped the drawing lesson on drawing stacking tables (I just couldn't see the fun in that) and skipped ahead to Advanced Cubes, in which I drew cubes, arches, ramps and, in the spirit of playfulness, some spheres and a bunny.

More in the spirit of dogged determination than playfulness, I walked to the library in the cold and wind, only to find it closed! There is a book I really want to read waiting for me. Grrr. Most schools are closed, but isn't the library an essential service? It is for me.

Dear Sarah -
February 4, 2025

Funny you should mention the library as an essential service. For much of today I was battling the dregs of a nasty cold (last night I coughed so hard I thought I had dislocated a hip… actually! It was only a wild collection of muscle spasms, but it was a tad scary!) and preparing for tonight’s Fireside Chat with Authors at the Canmore Public Library. The authors I was interviewing were terrific - the crowd brave enough to venture out in the cold were treated to a great conversation with Bernadette McDonald (Alpine Rising is her latest) and Sharon Wood (Rising is her memoir of, among other things, her experience as the first North American woman to summit Everest with the 1986 Canadian team). It was a wonderful evening spent discussing books, writing, and mountaineering but the result is that there was no time for any kind of drawings.

So… remember when I said right at the start that even a stick figure would be fine? Well… I’m playing the stick figure card today and proceeding from here directly to bed.

Here’s to dogged determination! Fabulous playful advanced cubes, btw - perfect hiding place for the bunny :)