I was staring at the whiteness of the blank page and getting nowhere, so I started to ‘bounce’ my pen tip on the paper making little ‘dribs and drabs’ across the page. I looked at the marks and decided to keep going. I continued just twirling and pushing and pulling the pen around the page, only holding the very end of the pen so I had little or no control over the marks I was making.
This is sort of like the exercises Carla Sonheim has you do in her classes to loosen up. She does it with watercolors and then has you turn the page around and look at your marks from different angles to ‘see’ what is there.
It was given to us back in May and after all these weeks (and many dress rehearsals in different places throughout the house) she has finally settled on where she wants to be.
We were at the zoo. We loved the zoo, my mother and I. The parasol ants were her favorites but me; I liked the baby animals in the petting zoo. So we always saved them for last.
I would take my quarter to the machine, crank out a handful of pellets, lovingly cradle them in my little hands and make a beeline for the lambs. They were so cute and fuzzy! I couldn’t wait to feel their velvety wet noses nibbling on the food.
As I was swaying at the top of the fence, llama nipping at my ankles, I saw my mother seated outside on the bleachers with the other mothers, laughing hysterically.
I kept crying for her to come save me but apparently when your six year old daughter is being marauded by wild beasts the proper protocol is to sit and laugh with your contemporaries!
My mother loved to tell this story. The part she liked best was how my ‘little red sneakers’ were just the right size to fit in the holes of the chain link fence.
I’ve been trying for weeks now to figure out how to capture my sketches on Tablet so I can share them here. (I know..... you’ve waiting with bated breath! LOL) Anyway……I’m fascinated with watching time lapse YouTube videos of other people’s drawings. I figure if I’m captivated by it you would be too.
Tablet is an android device and because of this it needs to be ‘rooted’. A fancy word that means you have to go into places the normal user shouldn’t go to unlock certain settings. (I don’t recommend doing this, you risk ‘bricking’ your device or losing things you don’t want to lose.)
But I figured if I did ‘brick’ it I could just buy a new device (’walk towards the lowercase ‘i’……) that already has the capabilities to screencast without messing about in the settings.
And downloaded and tried and failed and Googled again and tried and failed. Called on my personal tech support and tried AGAIN and failed.
Then I found a site online that would do it for you. I broke down and paid. It was worth it. The frustration level had outweighed the nominal charge.
I did some research and found a simple screencast app, downloaded it to Tablet and thought I was all set.
The app was glitchy, only captured the first few frames and then stopped, wouldn’t play back, wouldn’t capture audio…..you get the idea.
I’m sure it’s a form letter, automatically generated, but it’s nice to know they got my query and they didn’t leave me flapping in the breeze the way it was ‘way back when’ we used snail mail for our submissions.
1. I never see artwork like mine in it. (Of course the reason for that might not be one I like…….LOL)
2. I’m tired of reading all the ‘I was discovered……….my blog led to my fame and fortune……….. I got a lucrative licensing deal from my blog…..I have thousands of readers…….yada, yadda, yadda… kind of stories. For honesty’s sake I’d like to hear more stories like, I started a blog four years ago and I’ve worked my way up to almost fifty followers! Yay! Because I think that’s more the norm. I get discouraged and feel like a failure when I read all these ‘made it’ stories.
3. And yes, I have enough of an ego that I’d like to be in print. There! I said it! It’s out there! Yes, I’d like the external recognition of what I do.