We knew our fifteen-month-old Conor was ready for his first pack of Crayolas when he started drawing in blueberry juice with great conviction.
I started thinking about different things that “depth” (the word for last week’s Illustration Friday) could refer to. I thought of depth of water, of depth of mind, or the depth of feeling that grows in relationships over time. Last Friday was also our fifth wedding anniversary, but Doug and I started out as friends over ten years ago.
It was on our first anniversary, shortly after my grandmother passed away, that Doug wrote me this poem. I keep a copy of it in the back of my sketchbook.
precipitation
after the sadness
heart in hiding during the black hours
sighing wet with williows, dipping and swaying
and lying fallow, sheeted with moss and primrose
through dim and dusk
in the gloaming
the tidewashed sky of tumbling candle flames
an ash tree blooming moist the crimson of its young
and, far off now, the jay winding through treetops home
with restless wing
on the veranda
swept up in the descending blue
your eyes shining, gleaming mirrors of the scene
now hear it! the fading thundering drum
of a rainstorm distant
in a heartbeat
the rhythm of the world awakens
meadows and vales, swallows and crickets
your soul surveying what tongues deny
of the divine
within the moment
tender fingers reach through dewy twilight
to find mine, we two spirits met in wonder
and I am filled with the electricity
of a heartbeat
- D. Johnston, September 9th, 2002
This is an underpainting for a small piece in egg tempera, and I will post more images of it as it progress. It is based on one of the many studies I collected when we were living in Nova Scotia, and is of the very place Doug wrote about in this poem.
This has been a pretty exciting time in our household. A few months after the release of his D*I*Y Planner Hipster PDA Edition to rave reviews, Doug –with the help of dedicated friends from around the world– launched DIYPlanner.com on Saturday. This illustration, which graces the front page, is a play on Escher’s well-known drawing by award-winning artist, Brad Reid. Brad, who is a life-long friend of my husband, also happens to be an art school buddy of mine, and is our baby Conor’s godfather. A brilliant painter (one of my favourite pieces is here), Brad has (like me) put his work in oil on the back burner, but whereas I’ve started to explore egg tempera he is experimenting in digital work. He recently set up a blog, but hasn’t yet settled on a name for it.
I am so proud of Doug, and with good reason. DIYPlanner.com is about much more than productivity and the ever growing-list of beautiful template designs being offered free to the world under the Creative Commons licence. It is a community site to meet the growing needs of the “back to paper movement,” with a daily blog with great writers from different fields and a guest poster once a week. It is a place where right and left brain thinkers meet. I dashed off a 14-point post on nurturing creative energy in the Arts and Illustration forum. Feel free to jump in!
This site is not just for organizational geeks and the technically minded: things have become much more accessible (yes, mom this means you too!), and the site is even including material on journalling, scrapbooking, mind-mapping, and other topics that might benefit creative people. Template submissions from more artists and designers are definitely encouraged! The “official kits” have been downloaded about 400,000 times to date, and the daily hits are 20,000 and climbing, so you can be assured of a lot of interest… promotion and a great way to help out people in need of advice and guidance — what more could you want?
Big News! Conor started walking on Sunday! We just put a favourite book on a chair and to get it, he walked several feet from the couch that he was cruising along .
I may not have time to take part in Illustration Friday this week as we’ll be busy with Conor’s baptism. I have to piece together another outfit for him: Doug quipped that our pearly knitted number with ribbons (inherited from an uncertain source) would be far better suited for the Ice Capades. It wouldn’t be so comical if it weren’t such an apt description. It is pretty cute, though…. Will he resent me later if I take a picture of him in it?
We’ve waited till Conor was a little older because I very much wanted to take him back to the old family church that generations of his family had built and maintained. I feel closer to my grandparents there. The original building had been moved from Fair Island, a small island in Bonavista Bay, across a sheet of ice during the Great Newfoundland Resettlement.