Teddy bears on parade and a noose
Dear Nikki/Dear Sarah--Day 390 of our daily drawing exchange
Hi Nikki,
Another glorious day here—walked on Cadboro Bay beach with Jen and then wandered out to Ten Mile Point. Tea and a muffin outside a cafe afterwards. Perfection.
I came home and caught up on a few daily art prompts, and on one sketchbook prompt. Listening to Chopin piano music, which always makes me tear up a bit—my mom used to play us to sleep by playing Chopin nocturnes.
I’m not putting all today’s art efforts in this post, though. Just two. First up, three portraits of the same teddy bear (my son’s).
[Sidebar: back in the day, teddy bears (at least the British brand, Merrythought) were not soft and squeezable, like modern stuffies. This one has a “voicebox” inside it that used to growl when you tipped the bear over. I just looked on Etsy and found that they can fetch $200+. Hmm.]
The prompt was to wrap three pencils together (I used charcoal pencils) and scribble the teddy. Repeat with three pens, and end with three coloured pencils. I love the results.
For the sketchbook course, I was supposed to find three meaningful things to glue onto a page of my notebook, after which I added water-soluble pastels, water and ink. It does have some meaning, in that it contains two lovely Rilke quotes (one glued and one written) but the other things aren’t particularly meaningful. No way was I going to glue my Tom Petty ticket stub to the page!
XO S
Hi Sarah -
I LOVE the teddy bears! And the bright colours of the memorabilia pages are great!
I am reaching the end of The Stronghold and this is the image that comes to mind.
It may be a metaphorical noose, but that doesn’t make it any less ominous.
Snuck out today (after showing property earlier and before my weight training class and the evening writing critique group) to shoot a couple of quick games of pool with Fabio. I won the first one and then lost three in a row. I feel as though I should take some lessons as my skill level is pretty much where it was back when I was 14 and first picked up a pool cue.
This may be a good retirement activity to add to my ‘someday’ list.
Until tomorrow -
Nikki
Hi Carol,
Neither of my kids want their Merrythought teddies, and all the grandchildren have many, may stuffies. So I'm going to try and sell the teddies on eBay and then spend the money on my grandkids. Or maybe buy myself more art supplies. Hahahaha!
Hey, Nikki, if you find time to take pool lessons, maybe I can join you. When I went to writing courses in Saskatchewan, it was always the activity of choice for other writers, and I'm terrible at it. Sarah, I love the teddy bear scribbles. I just found a vintage 1960s? baby camel as part of a harlequin mismatched waifs and strays nativity and I recognized it as Steiff because of its stiffness. It's cute but it will probably eventually end up in a box to sell on eBay when I am an old lady wearing purple and selling my stuff to buy groceries.