Everyday things in May

I'm jumping around the EDiM list this week because I was drawing "on location" so I drew things to which I had access--from my purse!

EDiM #14: Something you use every day…

I went to Burroughs High School in Burbank yesterday and the day before, to promote Teen Summer Reading. Julie, who runs the library there, invited me to come hang out during the lunch hour both days, and gave me a table on which I could spread out my flyers and brochures and poster for "Teen Meetup in the Burb."

Of course, teens being the busy and self-involved beings that they are, most of them walked past my table without a glance, making a beeline for their own seats, their friends, their homework, or whatever. So I pulled out my secret weapon--I got out my sketchbook and started drawing. In only a couple of minutes, I had a few kids gathered around the table saying "Oh, are you drawing? Can I see? Can I look through the rest of your sketchbook?" which was the perfect opportunity for me to say, "You can keep a sketchbook like this all summer!"

EDiM #20: Your wallet or billfold

"Oh, I can't draw," is a typical response, and I countered with "Of course you can! Come to our sketchbook journaling workshop (holds out flyer enticingly) and we'll teach you!"

So maybe this year, for the first time, we will have significant numbers of high school students (as opposed to 12-year-olds) at one/some of our programs. Not that we don't love our 12-year-olds, but it's so difficult to persuade the older teens to participate that we make an extra-special effort. Hope it pays off.

I have a big painting to work on this weekend, so I will probably get further behind with my EDiM drawings…but let us not lose sight of the point of the whole exercise, which is to get you to DRAW EVERY DAY. So I will consider any and all artistic efforts to count. And maybe catch myself up later--or just do the assignments I want to do! (Yes, I am more like my teenagers than not…)

Two more for May

I started doing them out of order, although still within the ones I have missed. I'll get to them all eventually! Here are:

EDiM #13: The last thing you bought

Technically, that would probably be cat litter, but who wants to paint that? So instead, a skirt I just received in the mail from eShakti.com. It is just below knee-length, and is gathered/pleated onto a waistband and has wonderful rows of tucks around the bottom of the skirt, the bottom one decorated with a same-color tiny strip of flat braid. Their clothing is so creative. I started drawing it and realized I couldn't fit the whole skirt into my square sketchbook, drawing at the scale I had started, so instead I stopped and did a "detail" circle.


EDiM #15: Something you could throw (or give) away

This sweet potato has been waiting patiently on my counter to be turned into soup, and while it waited, hidden behind a large carton of rice milk for which there was no room in the cupboard, it decided that it was not done living yet. So it sent out a LOT of healthy sprouty leaves. Since I've heard it's not a good idea to eat potatoes after they have sprouted, I considered tossing it onto the compost heap, but then I thought better of it, looked up online how to grow sweet potatoes, and discovered that if I scrape these leafy things off the potato and put them in a shallow bowl of water to sprout, I can plant them and have my own plants. So into the water they go, and if they're ready this coming weekend, that's what I'm going to do!