The Yule Ball

I love dances.
Or more accurately, I love the idea of them that I hold in my head.

In all of my attendance of required dance functions throughout my life, I don't really recall dancing that much. I spent a lot of time in uncomfortable plastic chairs arranged around the perimeter of gyms. Watching. Once you learn how to turn of the part of your brain that wants, not even as much to be invited by a particular boy to dance, but simply to be invited by any living person to participate in what is going on, it's like watching a living painting.

In paintings, the artist never lets on how sweaty the guy's hands are, how clumsy uneducated feet are, how bad the Prom committee's president's brothers' band really is. No. Everything is nicely arranged in paintings. We artists work hard to make it so. Perhaps because life is messy. Because we know in real life, somebody is going home with hurt feelings, or ruined shoes, or a broken heart. We know because we saw it from our flimsy plastic chairs. We heard who cheated on who. Who couldn't handle his snuck in Jagermeister. Who accused who of being pregnant with who's baby.

But with a stroke of a brush, it can all be different. The whole scene can be the golden moment trapped forever. The moment he felt ten feet tall. The moment she really knew how it felt to be a princess. Let there be twinkle lights. Let's forget we're in a gym that may or may not have had the floor scrubbed since the wrestling championship. Or the "Regal Room" at the Holiday Inn with its 1970's carpet. We're at Hogwarts now and it smells of snow and evergreens. It's Christmas. Anything can happen.

Because art is magic.

Figure study

It's strange, yet inspiring to me how art and the process of making it can help us live vicariously, or moreover appreciate a quality in a subject that we can't appreciate in ourselves.

I think I've been fairly emotionally removed from my pregnancy. It's probably a defense mechanism, because I know it will end in pain. Also joy, but notable amounts of pain. And here in my thirtieth week, in the dead of August heat in the South, all the discomfort refuses to be ignored any longer. I don't feel beautiful or feminine or whatever. People say "you look amazing!" or "you're carrying so beautifully", and I suppose I need to just take the damn compliment, but I can't help but feel it's unearned. "Oh, thank you, I've been parting it down the side," or "Oh, I decided to wear my belly 'up'" this season.".....I don't know what I'm doing differently from any other pregnant woman, so I don't know what to say. It's just interesting to see how people perceive you: They think you're beautiful when all you can think about is your brand new pair of cankles and how the baby seems 10 lbs heavier as the humidity climbs. I guess I should be grateful, either I have great self-confidence or am just oblivious. Lots of women feel this way from the moment puberty sets in. Whether hair, weight, freckles, lack of thigh-gap, etc, there's usually something about our appearance everyone wishes they could change.

Yet somehow, it all melts away when I'm drawing. I've always loved drawing the female figure. The curves and soft angles, lumps, bumps and all, there is something so soothing and therapeutic about the way the charcoal or pencil traces their paths. I feel like women just come in a greater variety of sizes and shapes than men do to, so the ever changing topography of the vast array of models is a constant source of delight and fascination. As I fill my page with studies of pregnant women the feeling is the same. "These women are beautiful!" I think. And somehow through the connection of observation and reverent study it's as though I feel more beautiful simply by taking part in that beauty by putting it on paper. 

We're all pretty familiar with the Dove ad that had an artist draw subjects based on ways they described themselves. But I think one of the magical things about art is that it can change how the artist perceives themselves as well as their subject. How different would the world be if we took the time to draw each other? 

*or draw on each other for that matter

The Boy Who Lived

Started reading Harry Potter to the bump.

Throwback Thursday: The Eleventh Hour

Mmmm...my cravings are back again. If you're craving a tasty literary treat, look no further than Graeme Base's The Eleventh Hour. It's a classic who-dun-it with a romping animal twist.

The story follows Horace and his attempt to throw himself a fabulous birthday party to be ended by a magnificent feast and the prescribed Eleventh Hour. All his animal friends are invited to the costume party. After various games and party shenanigans, the animals stampede to the dinner hall, only to discover that one of their number has beaten them to it and scarfed down the whole thing! Readers are invited to solve the mystery (or for the impatient, rip open the sealed answer pages) and retrace the story looking for clues. 

Not only will you read the story again and again searching for clues, you'll want to just soak in the marvelous illustrations of all the fantastic animal friends. The feast scene in particular has been dancing in my brain for several months now. All the tortes and cakes and fruits and treats just glisten, it's enough to make your mouth water. Anyone who loves animals, food, or mysteries will treasure this book!

Toucan study

I downloaded a demo for Corel Paint and have been messing around with it..............................IT'S SO COOL I WANT IT RIGHT NOW WHY DO I HAVE TO BE SO POOR ALL THE TIME?!?!?!? 

I'm usually so good at denying myself stuff, just because the world is so full of things I either legitimately don't want or concretely know I don't need. But this falls into the really-want-and-kinda-need-I-mean-I'd-use-it-even-though-I-already-have-Photoshop category. Insert massive whine here.

Swarms of babies

Drawing for my sister who is about to become a Certified Nurse Practitioner/Midwife. So proud!

Just us chickens