Robyn's Sweets: 2017

So, it's Spring Break, and I promised my sister I would finally illustrate the children's book she wrote this week. So, I picked up a nice, hardbound sketch book and some alcohol based blending markers and busted out my art supplies.

I might have also ordered some ebony pencils and art gum erasers,because... art supplies are my heroin.

I think I've had art on the mind a lot lately. In my fifth grade reading class, I was teaching poetry using "The Road not Taken" by Robert Frost. not because I have an affinity for that poem,I actually don't like it, but it was in the STAAR resource we were using, so I had to.

While trying to get them to visualize the poem using the scant sensory language, I asked them to draw a picture of what they saw. I got a ton of roads with cars on them and one train track. So I went through, line by line and asked them what each line described, as I sketched out what they said, using crayons, because it was on hand.

My instagram from work. Typos are because i have fat thumbs, and am not technically supposed to be instagramming.

I suppose the juxtaposition of the quick sketch against the poem's title is what got my brain spinning about art, and how I have an on-again-off-again relationship with drawing. I've always been a doodler. It's in my blood. My mother is a consummate doodler. Her vines and butterfly trails are legendary. But my junior high art teacher, Mrs. Acker, she was so dang encouraging, I loved it. So I did Art in high school, too...

But I left. See, my friend was an "artist." She wore john lennon glasses, wrote in only lower case letters and drew skeletons because "they were the most pure image of a person." Literally, an "artist." There wasn't a place in our friendship for the cute little doodley things I would do, because, Art was Deep. And I was insecure. I wrote a book once, about that toxic 15-year friendship.

So, I tried art again in college. It was awful. I don't know if it was because I went to an all girls school, or what, but some of the men there were totally abusive dickfaces. I dropped after 3 weeks. Apparently, I didn't understand shadow.

Here's the funny part about that. I believed I could draw anything because of Commander Mark. Most positive and affirmative art program on the planet, dudes. When I taught math last year, and it was geometry time, kids were like "How are you drawing those cubes?" and I'm just like... how are you not? Foreshortened squares, man. Go watch Secret City. No, really... Go.

Off the tangent, the stupid week of "The Road Not Taken." Did you know that in most super informed circles, this poem is about how Robert Frost was embittered and actually obsessed with how everything bad that happened to him because of things in the past. The sigh in the poem people misread as a happy sigh, is actually a melancholy sigh... "It's all because of this one moment in my youth..." Whiner. Seriously, though, go read his autobiography.

So back to my rotating world of hobbies. I started doodling in earnest yesterday. Because I need to be able to draw an adorable, anthropomorphic spider, in various situations, consistently. And I also kind envy hand-letterers. I dabble and post on my instagram.

So, everyday this week, I'm going to do what Commander Mark taught me... "Practice, practice, practice!" and "Draw, draw, draw!"

Mark said this all the time.

And to keep myself accountable, I'm going to post on my blogger, and on my probably on tumblr. Because, you know what? There is a place in art for cutey doodles. And people on tumblr love that shit. Yeah, they like skeletons and deep crap, too, which is really, the lesson about art. There's a place for everyone in the art world, people. Even for literary nerds who like to doodle and plan to illustrate their sister's children's book.

He's cute.

A doodle quote.

Doodley Pages. Feel free to close up on my "hitchhikker's guide" whale.

Doodles and inspirational quotes rule.

Other things I am nostalgic about: "The Effects of Gamma Ray Radiation on Man in The Moon Marigolds." That's where this quote came from. Killer opening monologue.