Inktober Day 17. A story for birds and snails.
16 October 2019
Inktober Day 16: Well I fell off the list of official Inktober prompts over Indigenous People’s Day long weekend, but it seems to me one of the prompts was “dragon”. So, belated but hurrying to catch up is this nonsensical sprite.
15 October 2019
Back to the tangle of everyday life, trusting that the openness, connection and kindness I found over the weekend will stay with me even when I have to turn all my attention to pragmatic tasks.
At the end of a longer than expected day, I sat with paper and ink, just to doodle and play but I think the result is a kind of self-portrait of re-integration of the magical weekend retreat with the regular world as I have come to move through it.
Though I didn’t plan it, it still reads as a face with a different expression, turned upside-down.
14 October 2019
Back home in my studio, rich with the memory of singing together to the point that I lose myself into the sound, and lose the sound of my own voice in the tapestry we wove together.
Did I mention that the full moon lit the night the entire weekend, even with occasional cover of clouds. The lake, the surrounding tree-clad hills burnishing to gold and red and brown in the day, webs of pale and dark in the night. As the season changes to cold, I need the reminder to go outside, to breathe.
AND ALSO: Twilight Covening marks the anniversary of my daily drawing practice, which I started during Sarah Rosehill’s Otter Clan 10 years ago.
10 years of daily drawings. When I started, I had no ambition or idea that I would still be doing this now.
13 October 2019
Inktober Day 13: I had time this afternoon for a long break, to walk around the lake and find a place in the sun. The lake is low this year; there are beaches in new places to me. I could see where the water carved out under the mat of roots, making little caves where the waterline normally is. This network of roots made wave shapes.
12 October 2019
Inktober Day 12: This year at EarthSpirit Community’s Twilight Covening, I am in the Crane clan. We spend much of the day singing Lithuanian sutartines, as taught by Will and Lynn Rowan. These songs are sung in parts, with buzzing, sparkling harmonies, like autumn katydids, spring peepers, or I suppose in Lithuania, flocks of cranes. There is space for breathing built into the songs, so you can sing them literally for an hour without fatigue.
11 October 2019
Inktober day 11. I am at EarthSpirit’s Twilight Covening, and off the official Inktober prompts. This came after the evening Releasing Fire on the beach, letting go of anything that might hinder me from opening myself fully to the weekend’s offerings.
10 October 2019
Inktober day 10: Pattern
My first formal schooling was at Mrs. Coventry’s School in Dacca, East Pakistan. I loved when we were assigned to copy patterns on lined paper. To my American ears, it sounded like “pattens”. I think the theory was dexterity practice toward eventual penmanship
I still love repeating designs, and I love the feeling of writing longhand, even when I don’t have words I want to write. That doesn’t bother me; as a child I was surrounded by writing in characters I was not taught to read, and by languages I never really learned to speak.
I still love to hear the sound of other languages even if I don’t understand them, and various non-language calligraphy makes its way into not a few of my drawings.
9 October 2019
Inktober day 9: Swing.
8 October 2019
Inktober day 8: Frail
I am grateful to the community of artists and illustrators I follow on Twitter, who generously share words and pictures of their work, their process, and their lives. Though I can’t aspire to their level of craft and professionalism, they provide inspiration that feeds my daily drawing practice.
