THE ROMANCE OF IT ALL

Is the act of drawing better than the drawing? Yes. If the act of drawing is a sacred act, then the place that you draw also becomes sacred.

I am always very interested to see the context in which any of us draws. Sometimes artists publish a photo of their drawing board. Or we see their collection of pencils and pens. There is an aura about that spot.

I don’t know about anybody else, but when I see someone drawing say in a city, I am immediately captivated and charmed. Or when I happen upon a studio where an artist does their drawings, there is something incredibly romantic and fascinating about that place.

I am incredibly lucky 1) simply to be able to draw and 2) to have the focus to draw daily and 3) to be able to draw at first light in the morning and 4) somehow have no shortage of topics that I am interested in drawing. I have no idea how I got so lucky.

So this morning as I was drawing before first light on my screen porch wrapped in a blanket and wearing an insulated hat, I happened to look up at the table that I typically work on, and this is what I saw. Teresa had put bowls of tomatoes from the garden and peaches from the farmer’s market on the table last evening. And I just thought how lucky I am to be able to sit there and draw.

When all you need is your sketchbook, your watercolor set, a brush, and a pencil, this scene is available anywhere and any time. The only other object missing is my iPhone, which of course I used to take the photo. And if you look closely enough you can see the grandaddy longlegs which kept crawling across my sketchbook until it seemed to find that it liked the watercolor water.

Below, is the drawing that I completed. It was based on the work of an aboriginal artist named Tom Djawa. I found his work on my phone as I was researching aboriginal ranggas.