Getting Through It

 

I've always kept a little collection of wise and helpful words in my head. I certainly don't live by them every day, but they are what I aspire to. The oldest is the Bob Dylan line that I've held onto since my teen years. Also from my teen years, the (maybe) Goethe quotation that was on a poster in my parents' kitchen with a photograph of Willi Unsoeld and Tom Hornbein climbing the West Ridge of Mt. Everest. The Lynda Barry quotation (which she got from someone else but I can't remember who) is something she refers to often in her writing classes, and has served me well over the years when I felt stuck. The Frank Herbert quotation, is from Dune, but once a few years ago, I saw it on a random dude's t-shirt and couldn't get it out of my head. It was during the first Trump administration. I asked my husband Mike about it later, "is that a quote from Nietzche?" He laughed and said, "No, it's from Dune." Anyway, it's the one I think about the most these days.

#cat #plant #ginger #baseball cap #drinking #running #filing cabinet

Sketchbook thoughts

This sketchbook I just made is 3 inches high by 4 1/2 inches wide. My own sketchbooks is 3 1/2 inches high by 6 inches wide. I believe sketchbooks should be small because you should be able to fill the whole page in one short session of drawing. I think you should date the page. I think you should work in ink. I made these little  sketchbooks because I'm teaching a workshop for high school students in a few days about how to keep a regular sketchbook. Its short notice, so I couldn't ask them to go out and get their own sketchbooks, plus, let's be honest, I'm a control freak and I want them to have this sketchbook.

#sketchbooks #small is beautiful #clouds #Tahoma #skyway #forest #control freak

I'm an eighties bitch

 

I keep a dream journal; it's specifically printed for the purpose, it's called the Wander Dream Journal, published by Baron Fig and I bought it at an adorable art and office supply store called Post in White River Junction, Vermont. I was told Post was started by some former Center for Cartoon Studies students, which makes sense because it had some comics specific supplies tucked in amongst the other stuff. I love this journal because I've been trying to record my dreams since I was a teenager, and this journal has helped me sustain this practice for the first time! That said, months often go by between dreams that motivate me to record them, but at least they're all in on place. The format is helpful. There's a page for recalling the dream, a 1/2 blank page to draw what the dream looked like, and a 1/2 page for interpretation. Along the margins are little boxes to check like: Recurring? Lucid? Mundane? Fantasy? Nightmare? It is the perfect balance of a controlled/freeform journal. Highly recommended! I bought it in February, 2020, right before the pandemic went into full swing. If I keep up my regular pace, I'll probably finish it by the end of this year. I remember far more dreams than I record, but it takes a lot of effort to get anything down, or at least that's always been my experience.  Sometimes I have this feeling I'm letting all kinds of awesome material slip through my fingers when I don't record my dreams. But lately I've tried to cultivate more of an "oh well" attitude towards the whole thing. I catch what I catch. The good thing is that this method of recording them seems really effective. When I look back through the journal, the dreams come back to me with remarkable clarity. I have used dream imagery as raw material for comics over the years, but so far, I haven't used anything from what I think of as my pandemic dream journal. I guess it still feels like a work in progress.

I love a man in a uniform

 #hair #glasses #honor #medal #curtains #shoes 

do or don't look back?

 #Douglas Fir #early automobiles #picnic #Thermos #lenticular clouds #pacificnorthwestcolonialism #ladiesinhats #atmospherics #January

The Immeasurable Side of Life

Don't get me wrong, I love a good measuring device. I am most fond of thermometers, all sorts. And I get that we would be nowhere without the ability to measure. And that almost all scientific breakthroughs are related to finding new ways to measure the heretofore intangible. But so much intangibility remains, for which I am thankful, because these are the realms of art, magic and religion. And though I am a practitioner of only one of these fields, I have deep respect for the importance of all of them.

#Douglas Fir #hands #stack of books #house #profile #hat #clothes

Wednesday