A cup of tea always makes things better...

My Irish grandmother, Nana. Hannah by birth, Annie to her friends, she always maintained that a pot of tea was the cure for all things. In my last post I wrote about the recent trauma of having a cold mug of tea dumped unceremoniously over my journal/sketchbook. With the help of my lovely soulmate's sense of positiveness I was able to turn the disaster around. What I'm still trying to come to terms with, is that on top of all this, one of the pieces I was most devastated about, after drying, well, sort of... looked... a lot... well... better!!!

Obviously I don't have the "before" picture, but just let's say there were no smudges on either side of the picture...

We had spent the week camping early October in Goldstream Park (near Victoria) and it did more for my soul than anywhere has in a very long time. I sat by the fire most days sketching and writing or just staring into the flames. For this particular piece I had drawn the trees straight onto the paper with a fountain pen filled with black ink, and then went back in with a watercolour brush filled with water to bleed the lines, which created the effects on the trunks of the trees. While the paper was still wet, I would dip the nib of my fountain pen into the wet spot, which would suck the ink onto the paper, bleeding further as it went.

I would come back to this piece again and again. The leaves of the trees and bushes were painted using my Windsor and Newton watercolour set, and then enhanced with Pitt Brush pens. Staedtler Triplus Fineliners.  Gelly Plus 0.4 point pens by Monami Co. Ltd. (brought back to me from Hong Kong by my friend Janie) added details. Silver pens put the finishing touches to the leaves on the bushes. It's one of my favourite pieces in this sketchbook journal because of the memories it brings back of a very meaningful time and place.

And then the mug of tea hit...

Cold herbal tea with almond milk and blackberry honey poured into the pages of my sketchbook journal and through my sketches. On the left hand side of the double spread page it smudged the trunk and the dead tree beside it, bleeding ink and colour out of both sides of the trunk. 

On the right hand side it smudged the trunk and softened the smaller trees beside it. The end result was a suggestion of mist, signature of the West Coast of British Columbia... a distant memory of mountains...a will- o'-the-wisp perhaps... 

To finish of the piece I glued one of the bits of fungi that I had picked up and dried between the pages of my sketchbook journal. Somehow it seemed to belong now on this page, a wandering spirit of the forest.

 My grandmother was right in so many... a cup of tea always does make it better...

Looking like a real artist...

So in the van today, as we turned a sharp corner, my tea mug (with about 2 inches of cold milky herbal tea with honey in it) tipped right over onto the unbound open edge of my sketchbook/journal, drenching the pages and everything within...

My dear sweet soulmate (the driver of said van) patted me on the (also wet) knee and says: "Now it looks like a real artist's."

Rude words abounded ~ I was devastated. It wasn't his fault at all but you see, I have this thing... I love prisine notebooks. I like them neat. And tidy. And, above all, clean. Not for me the mucky, dog-eared look. Ruffled pages seriously disturb me. Uneven paper edges actually keep me awake at night. I can handles water wrinkes, just. Only as a result of a watercolour sketch. Smudges bother me though. It took me, literally, years before I stopped carrying whiteout in my purse along with my journal to correct my spelling mistakes. Come to think of it, now that they have those whiteout pens I could... But I digress...

Words smeared... Paint ran... Ink spread... Pages stained. There is an unsightly tea stained mark along the bottom edge. My poor sketchbook/journal, proud in its crisp, clean state now lies battered and mottled. Bruised and worn. Like a warrior home from a war that was lost. Dejected.

Which makes me feel sorry for it. Because on some level I know it senses that I may just pick it up later tonight when I go to journal and reject it. Needing, no craving, the safety of a new, clean, and might I add, DRY, place to write and sketch.

Waiting for the ferry on the way home I did do a quick watercolour sketch. I had to. The first rule of thumb when you fall off, is to get right back on. Works for bicycles, horses, and skates too I understand. So hopefully it worked for sketchbooks. I did a quick sketch of the scene, did a watercolour wash, and then began filling in the details with Pitt pens. Absorbed in what I was doing until it felt good to be working in there again.

Am I going to abandon it? As someone who has had abandonment issues with toasters in the past (that's for another post) I don't honestly think it's within me. After all, this journal sketchbook has seen me through an awful lot these last couple of months. I'd have to be a pretty lousy person to discard it just because I forgot to put my very tall and unstable mug of tea somewhere safe in a van that delights in throwing things all over the place just because it can turn on a dime. I did mention the driver who loves same, didn't I?

It's really been there for me. Accepting without crisitism all that I had to say or draw. So I'll see this somewhat unsightly sketchbook journal through to the last page.

Besides... apparently, now, it looks like it belongs to a real artist...

Just call me "Pumpkin"

Several years ago I broke a tooth on the front right hand side of my mouth. Having lost another tooth further back on the same side several years previously what remained was a HUGE gap, then one tooth, and another HUGE gap, or so it seemed to me. So much for all my talk of  “Inner Beauty… and “It’s what’s inside that counts…” and "It's not about looks." Yeah - right!!! It had EVERYTHING to do with looks. I looked like the Wicked Witch of the West!

I was feeling very self-conscious and extremely sorry for myself as I had to wait one whole day for my dentist to rebuild the tooth for me (and he did an amazing job) so woefully milked it for all it was worth that evening, with the man in my life.

We spent a lovely evening eating (me very carefully) and talking (me mumbling a lot) and laughing (me hiding my mouth behind my hand) and at the end of the night he hugged and kissed me, stroked my face and wished me good luck at the dentist’s next day. As he held me in his arms he smiled and said…

(Wait – just to put this into perspective, I grew up in Belgium and it was only when I moved to Canada at the age of twenty five that I first encountered Halloween. So take that into consideration as you read what happened next.)

… So he smiled and said: I’m just going to have to start calling you ‘Pumpkin’ then kissed me again, hugged me tight and said Goodnight.

I smiled all the way back indoors. Aaaaww ~ He really must like me, I thought – he has a nickname for me... How lovely…I smiled as I made my tea. I smiled as I got ready for bed. I even smiled at myself in the mirror.

I smiled as I lay reading my book. I wrote about it in my journal. I smiled as I turned off the light and began to fall asleep…

AND THEN I GOT THE VISUAL!!!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN PUMPKIN !