pause in posting

I have so much to post from my sketchbook and travel notes. Issues with internet in my studio are causing delays but hope to have new stuff to show very soon.
Meanwhile enjoy some scenes from former swampy weather days.

 

write it down

sketch before painting-Lilies by Janice Skivington 2017

The poet Isabel Allende urged, "write it down before it is erased by the wind."

(This is how I feel about drawing flowers from life, they are erased by the wind so soon, hurry and make your notes.)

fever

“It’s spring fever. That is what the name of it is. And when you’ve got it, you want — oh, you don’t quite know what it is you do want, but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you want it so!”   Mark Twain

fresh

first birthday joy

Happy 1st birthday to this little sprite!

 I have published these sketches before and I hope to make a few new ones this afternoon as we gather to celebrate her birthday.

last day of kindergarten

Today is the last day in art class for these 5 year olds. Next time I see them they will be 6 year olds and 1st grade beginners.
At the end of art class after portfolios were assembled, I began to sketch one little fellow who always needs to have one more thing to do. The others were still coloring and free drawing on the outside of their portfolio folders.

Soon my sketching became the main event. I had to sketch everyone and each sketch had to be fast, my models wriggled, giggled, stared and smiled gapped-tooth grins. Here are four quick studies.

a tiny complaint about springtime

Springtime! Daffodils! Tulips!

What is there to complain about?
Just this; why does it happen so fast? Why does spring have to come all at once?

I feel like the guy in the zombie movie who is in a hospital in intensive care. He wakes up after two weeks spent in a coma and the whole world has changed. Nothing is the same, nothing even looks the same. And there are zombies everywhere, in all the flower beds, the suburban lawns, the shopping malls, everywhere.
I go outdoors after months of coma-like cold gray winter weather and spring has exploded, tulips and daffodils and little blue irises. Like fireworks going off in celebration but then poof, gone, withered away into smokey blank stems.
My tiny teeny complaint against Spring is that it happens too fast.
Oh, and the allergy season, all the trees blooming at once?

mothers

God could not be everywhere, so he created mothers. ~Jewish Proverb

I know it isn't Mother's Day today. The commercial Day is still a week away. I had made these sweet sketches while visiting in Mexico. 
My daughter-in-law finding a shady spot to nurse her very wiggly 9-month-old child in a park. The park is called the Alameda. I wonder if every town has an Alameda?

a book to travel

The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page. Saint Augustine of Hippo

as small as a world

“may came home with a smooth round stone
as small as a world and as large as alone.” 
― E.E. Cummings

maggie and milly and molly and may E. E. Cummings, 1894 - 1962