The Ooh! Factor

Pomegranate, watercolor and colored pencil, 2013

Ooh! or stretched out - ooooh!! It sounds a bit silly but have you paid attention to when you say, ooh! to something? How do you feel? Are you curious? Are you interested? Saying, ooh! is your intuition telling you to look closer and explore some more. Do you follow up on that spark?

My most recent ooh! moment has been in designing a new course that I’m very excited about. It will be a creative, interdisciplinary, deep-dive exploration around the topic of food. How the creative process happens will be in play.

I’m calling it What Do You Bring to the Table?

Everyone is to start with a food they’d each like to explore, and then based on where interests lead, the fun of an open-ended discussion can begin. Historical, culinary, artistic, cultural, botanical, ecological, environmental, economic, musical, linguistic and literary perspectives are some of the possibilities of directions to head.

I’m offering a 90-minute sampler preview of this course for $19 or bring a friend for $29. We’ll meet online via Zoom on Friday, January 8th at 9:00 am Pacific time, or Sunday, January 17th at 12:00 pm Pacific Time (checkout WorldTimeBuddy.com to convert to your time zone).

Bring your curiosity, a food to add to the discussion buffet, and an open mind. Let’s have some fun talking about food!

What was your last ooh! moment?

'Tis the Season

Mandelschnitte, ink and watercolor

I have another holiday cookie recipe to share with you this week. Mandelschnitte.

It is a friends’ family recipe from my junior high school days. Cinnamon and cloves. So fragrant. I loved the smell and the taste of these cookies and looked forward every year for a chance to have them again.

Life happened and my friends and I moved to different places. The cookies became just memories until years later when we reconnected. I asked for and got the recipe. The first time I made mandelschnitte using their recipe, it took me back to when I was a young teenager in their kitchen. It had been over 30 years since I had had them last. It still makes me so happy to have this recipe. I make it and pecan balls every year now for Christmas. Let me know if you try it and what you think.

Do you have a recipe you only make this time of year? What is it and what’s its story?

Beauty in Symmetry and Repetition

A mandala, partially done, ink, 2020

Mandalas have been on my mind recently. In Sanskrit mandala means circle. From that perspective, I’m interested in the design and aesthetics of what happens with patterns within the shape of a circle.

Many mandalas have radial symmetry and pattern repetition. These elements appeal to me visually. The process of creating one has a different kind of pull. The putting down of a simple shape and repeating that around in a ring quickly becomes meditative. It’s easy to get caught up in the process of adding a detail and repeating, adding another detail and repeating, and so on.  Time has passed without being aware of it.

I thought I never really had made a mandala before but that’s so not true. Perhaps I haven’t drawn something like the one above before, but there are so many places in everyday life that have mandala characteristics – kaleidoscopes, a crimped pie crust edge, decorating a cake, pizzas, tree rings, many flowers, snowflakes, quilt designs like Hawaiian quilts and mariner compass patterns, knitted hat patterns, compass roses on maps, patterns on plates and glasses, circle dances and, and, and … Where do you see mandalas in your life?

What do mandalas mean to you?

Keeping Traditions and Yet Adapting

Recipe for Pecan Balls, ink and watercolor

Today was both my daughter’s 18th birthday and Thanksgiving in the US. It was also 2020, (who will forget this year?) and my son was on the other side of the country having Thanksgiving with his roommate. So many phone and video calls over the day, not to mention sharing of food pictures!

This got me to thinking about traditions. Part of why holidays and certain times of year are so much fun is the anticipation of things done only then. Special dinners and/or cakes for birthdays. Apple cider in the fall. The bedside table of goodies when visiting my parents. But going out to look for holiday lights in May seems a little strange as does eating pecan balls in the middle of August or asking everyone to come home for the 4th Thursday in March.

This year was different in many ways from usual, but with my daughter turning 18, it was also a milestone. A good one. I thought about what future celebrations and holidays will be like with the kids, but not kids any longer, joining in and adding their twists and flairs to whatever we are gathering for. I’m looking forward to it.

It’s nice to have the parts you like to look forward to but it’s also good to enjoy the changes and novelties that may be introduced because of circumstance or time.

What was the same for you this year and what was a new pleasant change?

If you like Christmas cookies, the pecan balls illustrated above are a good one. My family’s been making and eating them over 50 years. Enjoy!

The Pomegranate Trail

A pomegranate flower

I love pomegranates. I always have. I love the fruit, the taste, the color, and the strangeness of them - groups of arils separated by an astringent membrane. For some reason I have a radar that senses any mention or sight of them. It only happens for me regarding pomegranates. It does not happen with raspberries or grapefruit - equally beloved fruit preferences of mine.

I was at a book club earlier in the week and we were talking about The Chinese Translations, English translations of Chinese T’ang dynasty poetry as interpreted by the poet Witter Bynner. Poems that had caught the interest of various group members were read aloud. One was:

To One Unnamed IV
A faint phoenix-tail gauze, fragrant and doubled,
Lines your green canopy, closed for the night…
Will your shy face peer round a moon-shaped fan,
And your voice be heard hushing the rattle of my carriage?
It is quiet and quiet where your gold lamp dies,
How far can a pomegranate-blossom whisper?
…I will tether my horse to a river willow
And wait for the will of the southwest wind.

by Li Shangyin (813-858)

I was captivated by the idea of what a phoenix-tail might be, as well as what might the carriage and gold lamp have looked like in this poet’s mind’s eye. A connection to nature and place play a big part here. I wondered what it would be like to be so familiar with the sights, sounds and scents of the plants mentioned. My attention was, of course, drawn to “a pomegranate-blossom.” I realized I didn’t know what one was. I’ve never seen one. Pomegranates don’t grow in northern climates. All I know is the fruit, not the tree and not the flowers.

I went looking for pictures of pomegranate blossoms after book club. I was surprised to learn how deeply colored the red-orange flowers are. Most of the fruit blossoms I know: apple, quince, plum, blueberry, strawberry, raspberry, and blackberry, are much more muted, pale and delicate in their coloring, than the very showy pomegranate. I drew one so I can remember it. Does this change the meaning of the poem for you?

Now to imagine how a pomegranate-blossom might whisper.

Following Inspiration

A Giant Pacific Octopus

There’s a lot to be said for developing a creative habit and setting to work every day even when you don’t want to or what you’re doing doesn’t seem like much. There’s also a lot to be said for allowing time for your mind to wander and explore new things – going for a walk, exploring a new neighborhood, meeting people, reading, watching movies, listening to podcasts, etc. Seeing or hearing something new can spark curiosity and inspiration can come. 

This past week I started listening to a book that a friend recommended, The Soul of an Octopus, by Sy Montgomery. She said that the audio version was read by the author and was really good. I agree! The author is passionate and very curious about octopuses and how they live. With her enthusiasm, she has piqued my interest in the marine world.

While octopuses are the stars in The Soul of an Octopus, there are lots of other marine creatures mentioned that I don’t know much about. I now want to learn more of and draw some of the various marine life mentioned in the book. It seems like a great place to start learning from. I seem to tend towards lists and collections, so I’ll be making a list of animals to draw.

This is now the second book I’ve been inspired to do drawings from. Last year I read Life of Pi by Yann Martel. I loved all the animal references but realized that there were a fair number that I didn’t know what they looked like. So, I made a list and have been drawing my way through it.  

Writing this reminds me of Gerald Durrell, the British naturalist who wrote various stories of the animals in his childhood. Rosy is my Relative was one of my favorites. Rosy was an elephant. Another possible place for ideas.

Various octopus trivia to leave you with:

• The plural of octopus is octopuses not octopi. Latin endings aren't supposed to be added on to Greek words (even though we try!)

• An octopus has no bones. The only hard thing is its beak which means it can fit into tiny holes and cracks that the beak can get through. A giant Pacific Octopus can fit through a hole the size of a quarter.

• Octopuses can change the color and texture of their skin and do it repeatedly in fractions of seconds. While it’s good for a picture, when they’re red, they are not happy.

Where did you get your last bit of inspiration from and what are you doing with it?

Little by little

October seems so long ago, doesn’t it? I thought I’d share with you how my monthly project of drawing Amsterdam went and what can happen drip by drip, day by day. Consistently showing up adds up to a lot of progress. I have no immediate plans with what I’ll do with my travel journal aside from enjoying it. It might be something to try on-demand publishing with. I do know, however, that I will offer a workshop on drawing architecture in the spring as part of my monthly Sketchbook Sampler series.

1st spread from #inktober2020, Days 1-6. These are mainly train station pictures with a fare card and a random person I spotted headed in the right direction.

2nd spread for #inktober2020, Days 7-15. I love all the detail and deliberate ornamentation on all these things. Fun to look at and fun to draw.

3rd spread for #inktober2020, Days 16-25. This was my first glimpse of a canal as well as some of the narrow houses that Amsterdam is known for.

Start of the 4th spread for #inktober2020, Days 26-31. I’ve always loved doors and windows and bits of art that I come across. Signs with cats on them also capture my interest!

I really enjoyed this daily dive into drawing Amsterdam, so for the immediate future I plan to continue drawing it daily. I am enjoying all these complicated, fiddle-y buildings as well as the challenge as to what to draw from each picture.

Related to showing up daily, check out the newly published book, The Practice: Shipping Creative Work by Seth Godin. The book is about having and keeping a creative practice as professionals. A certain part of the material comes from observations from the first running of The Creative’s Workshop, February – July this past year. I was part of that group of 400 plus self-described creatives. We were a talkative and productive bunch. The organizers said we created over 50,000 posts during that time! There have been books written and published, record deals made, podcasts recorded, blogs started, communities started and grown. I highly recommend the workshop and think the book will be quite interesting.

If you get the book, let me know if you spot me in the inside cover.  

What do you work on bit by bit? Are you able to do it daily?